Steven Ward, my high school electronics/physics teacher. When selecting classes for my sophmore schedule, I need a science class but none of the traditional science classes interested me. Me and a buddy decided to take basic electronics instead. The class was a hoot. Mr. Ward made the class fun and I actually learned something. As a junior I took advanced electronics and as a senior, physics. Even when graduation time rolled around, I figured I was destined to spend my life as an auto mechanic, both my father and step father both made there living in the automotive fields. The lack of a full time job at graduation and the want to get out of the house led me to the US Navy and a job as an electronics technician. This led to a job at Boeing after I was discharged and as they say, the rest is history. I even tried to screw this up by taking a year long class on auto mechanics after I was layed off from Boeing the second time. Boeing called me back and I consider myself a pretty good auto mechanic on the side.
I won’t post names here, simply because that goes against my nature; these people, however, deserve to be praised.
My 4th grade teacher was a hard teacher. She wouldn’t cut me any slack because I was smart, “gifted,” or whatever–something I needed. Also, she was the one who stopped the vast majority of the worst teasing that I got in grade school; and she did it all while not embarassing me. Very cool. I still run into her occasionally.
Additionally, I had a teacher for four years in high school who helped me explore my latent writing talents. Because of her, I have a passion, an art, a means of expression, and a shitload of confidence that I didn’t have before. Of course, I probably would’ve become a doctor or something if it wasn’t for her…but I wouldn’t be nearly as complete a person as I am now. She’s still my friend.
This brings back good memories of Margaret Maple - I had an 11th grade Art History class taught by her. Her passion for all forms of art fired my own discoveries of art, including finding my personal best artistic outlet: photography.
Through her and her class lessons and field trips, I learned appreciations I still have for many eras and forms of art. Those forms include some that I did not think of as art previous to this class, such as architecture, for instance. A great building can certainly be seen as a work of art. I recall an exhibition I visited that one of the local art museums had about the work of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, including putting up of a small model house based on his designs.
Mr. McCarthy (history teacher) taught me how to think critically. I was a high school student in a military school. This was the early 80s. We were very jingoistic. I remember seeing a bumper sticker that said “My Country, Right or Wrong” and agreeing with that sentiment. In our ignorance, this belief went back to everything America ever did, including fights against civil rights, violations of treaties with Native Americans, etc. He would ask us our opinion of some action taken by a historical figure, and then challenge us to back up our opinion. We all hated it, and rarely volunteered an opinion. We just wanted to be told what was going to be on the next test. I think he was growing frustrated with his inability to reach us. I looked him up a few years ago, but he wasn’t at my school anymore. But he planted a seed. It wasn’t until my second year of college that a light went on. I was in a literature class when the teacher described the motivations of a certain character. I found myself disagreeing with him, and we had an excellent conversation about it after class. The teacher was impressed with my criticism. He disagreed with me, but congratulated me on actually thinking. After that, I wasn’t afraid to look at something (anything) and ask if that’s the way it should be.
I’ve applied that lesson to a variety of aspects of my life, including relationships, personal politics and philosophy, and my understanding of the world around me.
Now, after 15 years in the corporate world, I am studying to be a teacher. I want to be just like Mr. McCarthy.
Mrs. Kramer: One of the first teachers who saw some potential in me. In first grade, she decided to give me second grade homework on the side. I was lucky enough to appreciate her belief in my abilities to perform the extra work at that early age.
Ms. Creighton: A really great high school English teacher whose syllabus I enjoyed despite the fact that I wasn’t into literature (go figure). I even heard her defend me being a dork to other students.
Mr. Madden: Not only a great English teacher, but a pretty good golf coach as well. We won our division all 4 years I was there, and by my senior year I was scribbling gibberish in a notebook.
Brother Jude: The guidance counselor who I really felt was frustrated with me, as I was the bright underachiever. I can just imagine the parent/teacher interviews. I always felt that he liked me, but he couldn’t figure out why I acted the way I did. My only excuse is that I was a teenager trying to figure things out. That does not in any way diminish my respect for the man.
Prof. Nolan: She was my favorite professor in college. I think I caught her eye when I caught her humorous misspelling of “fallacy” during class ;). I ended up becoming a TA for her, and talked with her outside of class quite often. Definitely the closest teacher/student relationship I have ever had.
Prof. Ellman: My favorite professor in law school. He was a great constitutional law professor, and one of my favorite classes in law school was his “constitution and socio-economic rights” class, which was a great small discussion class.
My fourth grade teacher. I think she treated her class as older kids instead of just a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds. She gave all the classes except English and the arts. I liked her, and I learned a lot in her class.
My fifth and sixth grades math teacher. She wanted her students to learn and like math.
My eigth grade science teacher. That class was hard, but still… most students couldn’t dislike her. She was one of the best teachers I’ve had. She cared for us, when we went on field trips, she came with us, when one of us needed something, she would give it to us or help us get it, etc.
My tenth and eleventh grades math teacher. Most of the math I actually learned in high school was in the three courses I took with her. She was very good transmitting information and explaining concepts. She could even explain physics and calculus concepts to us and we actually understood them! Her class was hard, but many of her students agree she was an excellent teacher.
My eighth and tenth grade Spanish teacher. She gave us adult/college level novels, challenging us to understand them, review them, and criticize them. In eighth grade she also taught some grammar besides literature, and I remember her for being the only Spanish teacher in high school that actually taught grammar. In tenth grade it was Puertorrican literature, I’ve never had a class that demanded me to read so many works and discussed them in class. She also wanted us to compare the old works with current problems.
My tenth grade history of Puerto Rico teacher. She was more laid back in a sense than other teachers. She expected the students to read the material, come to class prepared and discuss what they had read and relate it to contemporary Puertorrican society. I liked that, although many others didn’t. She also wanted us to read history books and review them, and write a research paper. She taught us how to write a research paper for the social sciences.
Mr Hibbard was one hell of a biology teacher. He was lively and enthusiastic and made sure we understood what he was teaching us. Everyone from his classes remembers the difference between breathing (Mr Hibbard takes exaggerated deep breaths) and respiration (Mr Hibbard vaults up onto the lab bench). He drew good clear diagrams on the board with colored chalk (explaining, asking and answering questions) as he went, which we copied into our notebooks. When the time came to revise for exams, we had a kickass set of revision notes.
Mr Aitken taught us Chemistry and god damn, we learnt Chemistry. He put my best mate and me through S level Chemistry (a supplementary, harder paper to A level Chemistry) and we had great fun doing past papers together one hour a week. Sadly, he died four years ago. He was a great teacher and a top bloke and I miss him.
Mr Sharpe, Mrs Ayres and Ms Klemm taught me A level English in one-one one supervisions and in their classes. I’m extremely grateful for that. They took time out of their schedules to take a bright 15 year old and treat her like a college student. I only wish that I’d taken Ms Klemm’s advice about what subject to study in University. She was right, and I was wrong, and sometimes I still kick myself over it.
I don’t particularly feel that this thread is one to be forgotten. There are too many people blaming teachers for their kids’ problems to let these memories stay in the back of our minds.
That said, I’ve got one:
My seventh grade science/math teacher. He’s one of those who don’t really care what the rulebook says, so much so that he often told jokes in the middle of class that could very well get him in trouble. He, unlike a few other teachers I have had, actually had a sense of humor. A good one, at that. At the beginning of the year he taught us a karate-type move majig, and throughout the year mentioned as often as possible Shao-Lin monks and the like, teaching us more about Eastern cultures than we would have thought was possible then.
Rather than just telling us what we had to know to pass the seventh grade, he actually connected with us. He had to take ‘corrective’ algebra in high school, so we felt a common thread when we just couldn’t get it. He would answer any question you posed him: he replied truthfully when asked what a boner was.
And, I think (a this is almost a WAG here), that he was either atheist of agnostic. Upon being buggered at least once a week about whether or not he believed in God, he would reply: “You would have to define it for me” or something along those lines. This mattered a lot to me because that was the first year that I considered myself atheistic, and a non-theist teacher in a world that was (seemingly) full of everything but uplifted my spirits.
Also, he had liberal views about, as far as I know, everything. Once it got out that the drama teacher was lesbian and pretty much everyone was gossiping about it, and he said something about how that sort of thing doesn’t matter (I can’t remember it right now). But it shut most of them up. This is exactly how I feel, so again, to find that someone could actually not hate homosexuals was (I felt at the time) a rare thing and thus cheered me dramatically.
He noticed talent when he saw it. When we were doing genetics, he asked a few of us smart peoples to do one of those gene-squares (Punnett square?), only instead of the usual 2 by 2, a giant (at the time) 5x5 (Or maybe it was and 8x8, anyway, it was rather big). We knew what we had to do and how to do it, though couldn’t magnify it to that scale. He told us how just once, and we got it. He has this method of teaching that just makes it click (if you bother to pay attention).
Heh heh. Sorry, just remembering when he gave me the email address of someone he had been told by his wife had a rather lot in common with me. One of my classmates went up to him and asked “Have you got anyone for me?” in one of those voices you can’t help but laugh at.
By far, he was the best and most influential teacher I have ever had, and, I am predicting, ever will.
sorry for the gushing on and on. Stuff just keeps coming back to me.
Mr. Brown, my biology teacher during sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school. For one thing, he was excellent at explaining huge amounts of material in ways that make sense to everybody, even when he had very large classes. But he also paid a lot of attention to the ethics of science. Every Friday he would bring in an article about a current issue or controversy and make us write an essay about it, then we would have a class discussion the following week. He convinced about half his students to be bio majors in college.