Reading the Gender Divide thread got me thinking about one of my favorite teachers;
Mr. Booth, my 5th grade (1971-2) teacher and the only male teacher in the school. He was young, probably right out of college. He drove a red Mustang, wore plaid bell bottoms and combed his mustache with a little mustache comb he kept in his desk. On Fridays, he’d let us bring records (45’s or albums) to school and he’d play them throughout the day - not on the crappy record player the school had for film strips but on his own stereo that he brought from home and kept in the classroom! We listened to everything from 3 Dog Night to David Cassidy. We were the envy of the other 5th-grade class whose teacher had to have been 80 years old (in our eyes!) and cranky. Who knows what we actually learned - I just remember the fun we had that year. He did teach us what we needed but it was done in such a fun atmosphere that going to school was a treat. I think he only lasted the one year at our school. I often wondered if it was because of other teachers’ complaints or if he just moved on.
Who was your favorite teacher?
Toss-up between Mr. McGuire, my 9th grade general science teacher and Mr Owens, my Honors Physics teacher.
We did all kinds of cool stuff in Mr. McG’s class - took apart and reassembled engines, built rockets, threw eggs - all in the interest of science!! 
He taught us the everyday practical side of science.
Mr. Owens had the most amazing blue eyes… Um, but I digress. He also linked science with real life and he didn’t show preference of the boys over the girls! That was pretty remarkable in 1971 - to acknowledge that girls could science, too! I think his attitude is a large part of why I had the confidence to become an electronics technician, and then an engineer.
Runner up is Mrs. Jankowski from 5th grade. She was tough, but she was also funny - used to tell us she rassled dinosaurs when she was a kid!
My two favorite teachers were men, but I had quite a few really good teachers from elementary through high school. Fifth grade teacher was the first male teacher I had and he was great. Awesome sense of humor, really connected with 11 year olds. My other favorite was a high school physics and chemistry teacher. He was tough, tough, tough, but also fun if you didn’t get on his bad side. And extremely intelligent, the smartest teacher I ever had, probably including college professors.
Many of those professors, by the way, were just awful. Mostly men, as I was an engineering undergrad.
Mr. Vasconcellos, grade 8 Science class. Taught me about the universe and was the main reason I became an atheist at age 13. He didn’t teach me that God didn’t exist, but he made it clear that we could explain things that showed the Bible was made-up stories. He taught me that facts matter. Once I learned that the Earth was 4.543 billion years old, and not 5,000 years old, my eyes were finally opened to the truth.
I’m just going to ignore the glaring false dichotomies from Post #4 to state that I had very few teachers that I liked.
A couple that stand out are my 8th grade science teacher (a woman) because we did lots of hands-on activities and she had a great sense of humor, and my 9th grade history teacher (a woman), probably just because the subject matter was interesting to me.
Now college is a different story. I had some great professors.