Often as children, we don’t fully realize how influential our teachers can be in our lives. They don’t just teach us about math, science, reading, and writing, but they teach us about life. Teachers often teach us about right and wrong, justice and injustice, and not just how to be a better person, but how to make the world a better place!

This is exactly what this New Jersey teacher has been teaching his children for the last 50 years. How? By always keeping an empty chair in the classroom. Dan Gill has been teaching elementary school for more than five decades. During the entire length of his career, if you walk into his classroom, you’ll notice one peculiar detail: An empty chair.

Ask him or his students, and you will discover that this chair is always left empty. It is not an extra chair ready and waiting for visitors. It is not there for time-outs or in case another chair breaks. Rather, the empty chair in Mr. Gill’s classroom is their symbolically. It is there to teach his students a valuable lesson on inclusion and basic human rights…

Every year Mr. Gill teaches lessons about the Civil Rights Movement around Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. The chair is his way of helping the kids to connect more personally with the importance of the movement and basic human rights. Mr. Gill grew up in New York City. When he was nine years old, he went to a birthday party for a kid who also lived in his building.

He didn’t go alone, however, he went with his best friend Archie. Their gifts tucked under their arms, the pair rang the doorbell. The child’s mother answered the door. When she saw Gill and Archie, she told them that there were no more chairs left. Gill was confused and said that it was okay, he could sit on the floor or go get some more chairs, it wouldn’t bother him.

The woman repeated, sorry, there just weren’t any more chairs. It was at that moment that Gill realized why the pair weren’t welcome. It was because Archie was black. Both he and Archie left in tears. The empty chair in his classroom is his way of symbolizing that story for his students and helping them understand it better.That day is one that Gill has never forgotten.

It stuck with him all the way into his adult life when he became an educator for his career. His career has spanned more than 50 years. Near the beginning of his career, he moved from NYC to Montclair, New Jersey. He has been instrumental in integrating Montclair public schools. The school where he works today, Glenfield Middle School, has transformed into a magnet school for the arts.

Glenfield became a model for school desegregation because to Gill. “We need to be an opportunity class,” Gill told TODAY. “Archie was refused the opportunity to attend the birthday party due to the woman’s bigotry.” Gill is proud of his contributions to the struggle against racial injustices against people of color and other minorities in the United States.

He will not, however, hesitate to state that this is a continuing movement. There is still much work to be done. He hopes that by teaching inclusivity to his kids – the young brains who will grow up to define laws, culture, and what “goes” in their society – the world will improve. He claims that he believes his method is effective.

When guests enter his classroom, his students are among the first to inquire, “Do you know why we have that chair?” They show the sign and explain what it symbolizes. This is how Gill knows the message is sinking in. Gill, 75, is finally planning to retire after more than five decades of teaching.

He, on the other hand, is not going to let his lessons go away. He suggested the concept of a book called “No More Chairs” at a recent literary festival, where he will continue the same lesson. He intends to dedicate the novel to Archie. Despite the fact that he and his boyhood best buddy had lost touch decades before, Gill discovered Archie’s family on social media and reached out to them.

The book’s purpose is to inspire other educators to retain empty chairs in their classrooms. He hopes that schools across the country – and even beyond – will teach the chair lesson and the need of inclusion.