English teachers get all the glory. Ask a representative sample of people what teacher they remember the most fondly from their school days, who encouraged them to pursue a particular dream or a career, and I’m willing to bet a disproportionate amount name an old English teacher.
And it is true that the majority of them are wonderful! (My seventh-grade literature teacher was a Buffetthead who read The Hobbit aloud to us and told us stories about her husband the retired FBI agent; she was a wizard with a cloud of perfect grey hair.) They have unfair advantages — more often than not they’re also chairing the Quiz Bowl team and directing the school play; you see more of them than your pre-calc teacher by necessity. So here is your chance to praise the slightly less showy geometry and orchestra and geography and government and biology professors of your youth. Give them their fair due.
If you were homeschooled, please list your favorite parent. Be honest.
Tags: i think ms. frizzle was a science teacher but i’m not sure, inspiration, talk amongst yourselves, teachers
I had an amazing Physics teacher freshman year of high school, who had a tattoo on her wrist and a nose piercing, who now is a clothing designer. This is how she describes her business, Dangerous Mathematicians:
“Dangerous Mathematicians custom-designs tailored suits for women. We specialize in wedding suits that mix traditionally masculine and feminine style in the context of high-quality fabric and construction.”
I MEAN C’MON, SHE IS THE BEST. She basically put the idea in my head that you don’t have to look/act like everyone around you to still be a smarty pants in your field. She also taught me how to make a catapult.
wow she DOES sound amazing
I HAD to go look this up and holy shit these suits are gorgeous, everybody go look!
Dangerous Mathematicians
Right!? Can I marry that lady in the maroon-ish tux with the gold chain?
I was just coming here to say THAT SUIT WITH THE CHAIN!
AUGH that white cutaway jacket??? I laaahhhhve it. Give it to me in all the colorways and prints!
Mrs. Talbot was the nicest science teacher. She was sarcastic and sharp, but never cruel. Her husband also taught at the school, and their daughter attended as well. The husband had an affair, they split up, and I think he left to go teach at another school, but since it was a fairly liberal girls high school he was basically hated on and given constant stink-eye by every student in the school as soon as the facts were known, and all the girls formed a protective huddle around Mrs. Talbot, who would occasionally tear up in the classroom.
Oh I guess that doesn’t make her sound inspirational but I guess I think of it in an emotional sense, like, what a horrible thing because her family was ripped apart and literally all her coworkers and all the students knew why, and yet she carried on so bravely, I was really impressed. And she was just a really good teacher as well, I think, she had a really good way of explaining concepts in easy to understand ways.
Coming out of lurkage to say: wait, was that at Sydney Girls’? I graduated from there in 1997! Mrs Young the history teacher was pretty amazing (at the end of my HSC my pile of history materials was about 15cm thick!), and the Latin teachers, too. Also many English teachers, but that’s for another thread…
My best friend went to Sydney Girls!
Though I am working even as we speak to become an English professor, and my favorite college instructors are all from English, my favorite high school teacher was my French and Spanish teacher, Mademoiselle/Señorita Cliett. She was blind and absolutely hilarious, if you knew how to listen to her, but everyone cheated in class because she couldn’t see. BUT SHE KNEW. Anyway, Mlle Cliett was the epitome of sweet, old lady who does not give a fuck, and listen here, you had better conjugate that verb in the future perfect right quick before I come bang on your desk with my hand, and is someone passing notes over there? I hear the distinct rustle of paper.
I had an amazing Spanish teacher in college. She had a non-academic background, and sort of dressed like she was still bartending, and somehow her classes were always rigorous without being stressful, and she was just so fucking cool I wanted to die.
My favorite was my goverment/civics teacher, Mr. McEachen. He also taught a class called History of the Sixties, which mainly consisted of us learning about the Vietnam War and listening to The Doors. He grew up in Detroit in the seventies and told us this story about how he was delivering papers one morning when he was about 12 years old and he got mugged and stabbed by someone. He’s lying on the front lawn of this building bleeding out, when a man runs out and carries him across the street to the hospital.
The building he was lying in front of was Hitsville (Motown recording studio) and the man that carried him to the hospital was Smokey Robinson. No way to be cooler than that.
My favorite teacher without a doubt was a calculus teacher, who was also my math team coach. (Math team!!) He somehow got my whole class to enjoy and master calc enough to all pass the AP tests, which really should just be enough. He would also let us take class periods to just walk around outside and identify birds, as he was an intense bird watcher, or play ultimate. Basically he treated us like adults who deserved a break without compromising our mastery of the subject matter.
I had a largely antagonistic relationship with all of my English teachers, but I will admit they were better than most other teachers in the school.
God bless all ye teachers.
My favorite teacher was also my math team coach, though she taught me algebra and geometry in middle school, not calculus. It was a critical time for a nerdy girl, and I credit choosing to be okay with liking math (and the social stigma thereof) instead of blending in to her. Also my husband was on that math team, and she claims she knew we’d end up together about 4 years before we even liked each other. So she’s pretty good at a lot of things.
My 10th grade math teacher was also the cheerleading coach at my school, and she would come up with these cheer mnemonics for us to use to remember things. To this day, I still remember the quadratic formula, because she set it to the tune of a college fight song (no idea which one). I’m someone who has never had a knack for learning or retaining mathematics, but her methods were so catchy and persistent and her one-on-one tutoring so kind and understanding that my grades in math that year were higher than they ever were before or after.
Also, not academia, but still a teacher–my piano teacher was the most valuable resource of knowledge, wisdom, and personal support in my life. I started with her when I was 7 and kept on until I graduated high school, at which point I stopped taking lessons (but didn’t stop seeing her). She was the person I went to with things I didn’t want to talk to my mom about, and is a lifelong friend. Not only did that woman teach me how to make beautiful music with my hands, she also taught me a ton of things I probably couldn’t have learned in school or at home and provided a loving and level-headed sounding board during my formative years. If there was a universal award for best person in the world I’d give it to her in a heartbeat.
Awwwwwwwwww your piano teacher!
Yeah, I wanna second Piano Teacher. Kevin was a total resource for me when I was a young, angry, angsty kid who just wanted to pound out Russian tunes all day. He talked me through a lot and kept me laughing. Basically even when I realized that my tiny monkey hands would never take me to a Music Performance degree or career in piano performance (which was hard), he was there for me and taught me the importance of loving doing art and performing anyway, which has stuck with me.
Also he taught piano at a local Catholic university and the tales of his students were hilarious to me at age 15. Plus, he gave me the importance of dissonant music, for which I am forever grateful.
Basically even when I realized that my tiny monkey hands would never take me to a Music Performance degree or career in piano performance (which was hard), he was there for me and taught me the importance of loving doing art and performing anyway, which has stuck with me.
Oh, you are my people. I have small, square hands with shortish stubby fingers. My grandpa lovingly called them “sausage fingers” (he’s where I got my square, stubby hands). But my piano teacher told me that means absolutely nothing if you love what you are doing, and even if you can’t hit every note in a certain chord with the hand you’re supposed to hit it with, that’s what creative fingering and rolling chords are for, and small hands folks do just fine even with Chopin and Lizst and all those other infuriating “use all your fingers spread as far as possible” composers. Who also happen to be my favorites to play, ha ha ha suck it Chopin! My small hands will not stop me!
Basically I <3 HER BEST TEACHER EVER
LITTLE HANDS. I stopped piano partly because of mine, but I kept playing violin… and my technically full-size violin is a lot smaller than my mom’s violin.
Somewhere, adolescent me is wanting young you to tell me I’m not crazy for attempting Liebestraum over and over again on my upright while you’re loving Chopin. Also I think someone needs to write something about Chopin and his crazy life on here. Or maybe Lizst?
I would offer, but I doubt I’d come even close to the amazingness that is Kate Beaton’s Chopin and Lizst!
Also of course you weren’t crazy for attempting Liebstraum over and over. Unless I was also crazy for attempting the Hungarian Rhapsody (screw you, Tom and Jerry, I can totally do this, too!).
Of the roughly 100 people that came to my wedding the two that I was most happy/excited about their “yes” RSVPs were hers and my academic advisor’s (and he also a very inspiring teacher, he was the resident Germanist and the graduate advisor for me when I came to grad school after having also been my undergrad advisor and basically he taught me to question everything and gave me the most thorough groundings in methods of historiography I think anyone worth their salt would have bothered giving anyone even in institutions generally seen as “better” than the state school I attended. I have no regrets, and also he is now a great friend).
(not that any “yes”es were less exciting, I just… those two people mean a lot to me, you know?)
Private music teachers are the best. As a kid/teen it was really rare for me to have one on one time with an adult outside a family member and it was so so important. I totally credit my teacher for not only making me a way better player but also for breaking my usual pattern of being the best or quitting. She taught me that music is fun and you don’t have to be a professional to enjoy making it.
She taught me that music is fun and you don’t have to be a professional to enjoy making it.
Yes yes yes. And also a resounding yes for the importance of having one-on-one time with an adult who was not family. She was just as integral to my upbringing as my family was, as far as I’m concerned.
Mr. S, my junior year chemistry teacher, taught with an unhinged delight. When he saw the blank incomprehension on our faces, he would whip up a metaphor to explain the interactions he was describing or conducting, and sometimes he would build upon those metaphors until they became truly ridiculous. But he never minded looking silly; he only cared about tipping us over into understanding, and he knew that our laughter at his occasional goofiness was balanced by our respect and a soupçon of fear.
He is one of the first teachers – one of the first people, really – who taught me to value the grind of plain hard work over intelligence or insight or talent. I was raking in all As except in his class, where my average was an F (an F!). Before the midterm, I came to him after school and asked if there was an outside source I should study, some remedial text, something to get my head around the ideas we were working with.
He walked me through experiment after experiment, talked over the most basic of principles, sat down and picked around my (extremely poor) understanding of his subject, until we figured out where I was going wrong. In one semester, I pulled that grade up to an A+, and I would never have done it without his patient encouragement and dedication.
It was years before I understood he’d done more than just help me pass his class. He’d taught me a lesson my parents never did: the importance of admitting “I need help” and then working as doggedly as I can to understand. I looked him up a few years ago to see if I could thank him in person, but I can’t. I’m too late. This will have to do.
“Unhinged delight” brings to mind a professor who taught at my college–I never got to take a class with him, but I did see a couple of his talks and he was so enthusiastic and bouncy that I was always interested in whatever he was talking about.
As the granddaughter of a beloved and now gone teacher, if you can find his family and tell them, trust me, it will delight them. My family loves hearing about the lives my grandmother touched and the funny memories people have of her.
my favorite high school teacher was a math teacher who convinced the school administration to let him both teach chaos theory and non-euclidian geometry to a bunch of 17 year olds and take some of us on a exchange trip to Hungary. i used to run into him at concerts sometimes on the weekends, and got a christmas mix cd from him every year. he was the reason i realized that math was interesting and also that i was good at it, and because of him i studied it pretty far into college. in fact, he’s a large part of the reason i began to view myself as a smart and capable person instead of an awkward horrible mousy girl. he was a better teacher than many of the professors i had in college. last i heard, he was at university of chicago teaching other high school teachers how to be awesome teachers, which is exactly how it should be.
I, gym and playground beast since birth, forwent a week’s worth of recess to build a motor in third grade, almost entirely motivated by a desire to blow my science teacher’s mind. He was so rad and strange and enthusiastic, and I remember so clearly my assumption that succeeding in building a motor would convey my appreciation for him. He was thrilled. I was pleased.
That was almost 20 years ago, and I ran into him at a woodworking booth at the state fair this past summer. We crinkled our faces at each other, and he said, “You were my student.” He fished my name out of his memory, we had a beautiful conversation, and he gave me a yellow carved flower before I went on my way.
I think it is dusty in here <sniff>.
This entire thread is making my office very, very dusty.
Yep. Dust all over the place. When’s the last time someone cleaned in here? <sniff>
My English teachers/professors were all my favorite tops #1s, but I will also make a strong case for environmental science teachers. They are earth loving and granola-y but also fierce with their convictions about fixing climate change. And they usually have strange stories. My high school AP envi sci teacher was this gentle hippie type and he was super nice and had a weird sense of humor and I loved him. Then, an environmental science professor in college was an equally sweet older man who remembered me for all four years, even though I only took one class with him freshman year. The last day of class, he read us a picture book about a toy figurine (?) taking a canoe around the world.
I also had a math teacher in high school who was an amazing teacher/super brilliant, and despite the fact that I was doing terribly in her class, she wanted to know what I needed to do better. She tried to help and she did eventually get me to stop failing the word problem tests. She was also a badass who studied math in college before it was “allowed” for women to do so.
Due to the way our weird magnet school worked, I had the same teacher for all my high school math classes from pre-calc up through calc AB. Her name was Mrs. Shawver and she was legitimately the best teacher I’ve ever had. She knew her shit front to back and she taught it really well. She had a pretty good, dry sense of humor and was always slightly exasperated with all of us, and she never even really liked me all that much but that’s fair because I was a pretty shitty kid and I loved her anyway.
My favorite teacher was one of my band directors. The music program at my school was huge so he was very busy and it would have been easy for him to teach the ensembles without really getting to know individual students. Somehow, even in bands of 60ish people he managed to know and encourage every student. I picked up a new instrument to play in the jazz band and even though he didn’t conduct that band he still quietly watched part of my first rehearsal to see how I was doing. The look of pride on his face still makes me tear up a decade and a half later.
There has got to be something about Band Directors–I know so many of them who have been awesome mentors. My ma still talks about her old Band Director from 1976!
I have to credit my band director for encouraging me to try things I had somehow decided I just wasn’t able to do, without actually trying. He taught me it was OK to go, “I am good at this,” and try to get a better chair. He taught me it was OK to try out for drum major even if I thought “surely I won’t get this.” Better to try out and see what happens than to not try at all. He also saw fit to put me in charge of a full section of clarinets (15-20 people!?) and taught me a lot about leading and people skills that I think were supremely valuable experiences for me in the long run. Great guy.
My jazz band director made a hugely boy-dominated space (I was the only girl my freshman year) into a safe space for girls. He wasn’t touchy-feely or chummy with students, and he was sharp and sarcastic, but I realize years later that he was deeply kind and just. He came in to the music program, which was still very boy-dominated generally, and stamped out all kinds of negative herd behavior, from the drumline hazing new members to the trumpet section subtly trying to oust girls. He had an excellent sense of when teenaged hijinks were just hijinks and when they were unfair or exclusionary. He almost never lectured or made a big thing about it, he just didn’t tolerate it. The thing I do remember him saying directly was, when a boy would start saying girls couldn’t play trumpet or that he could drink 24 beers and girls loved it or similar sorts of teenaged boy proto-misogynist stupidity, he’d laugh and say, “Oh, yeah, that’ll impress the girls. You’re RIGHT on track for a date for homecoming!” and then to the other boys, “Definitely keep following his example, it’ll work out really well.”
By the time I was a senior, 1/3 of the jazz band was female, half the section leaders in the marching band were female, and girls had quit dropping brass instruments when they arrived in high school. And he never SAID anything, he just created an environment of fairness and welcoming.
I didn’t realize all of that until years later. At the time I just had a fierce affection for him because he gave me a chance to play jazz even though I was a girl, and treated me like all the other students, and acted like my love of jazz was completely normal and understandable, and I was really hungry for that.
My junior high science teacher was named Mrs. Zoladz, which is just a great name. Not only did she teach me about science (which rules), she later got fired for mouthing off to the nuns running the school. Team Zoladz!
That is just a fabulous name, and she sounds like an amazing person.
Team Zoladz indeed! She sounds awesome!
Did you grow up in New Jersey? I know a Zoladz from there! Can’t be that common, right?
Mrs Lindley, my 7th grade history teacher, lent me her 4″ thick volume of the complete works of Poe. And ignored the fact that I spent her entire class period reading it under the desk.
I also won the t-shirt design contest in her class.
There is no doubt that she was the best ever (non-English edition.)
My German/European History/Philosophy teacher was a retired tobacco salesman who yelled at my philosophy class REAL HARD after 9/11 because some of the kids were against a war in Afghanistan. That perhaps does not sound so inspirational 12 years and two not-so-successful wars later, but it was a wake-up call to us as high school students that the stuff we were discussing was real and meaningful and not just an academic exercise. He apologized later, anyway.
But he was great because he’d traveled the world and had ridiculous stories and once told us a tale in German about a Turkish acquaintance puking on an elevator. He later sprung his retirement on the school in a way designed to inflict maximum inconvenience in order to get revenge on the principal for forcing out his wife, a math teacher, because a bunch of cheerleaders said her class was “too hard.”
I’m making him sound like an asshole, and he sorta was, but he also had the talent of teaching so that things were interesting, but never dumbing it down. He treated us like adults, basically.
Creative writing (not English!) teacher told me I was the best D student he ever had. I felt really good about that.
And my French professor from college who called me “notre feministe” all the time because I said ONE THING ONCE and I don’t even remember what it was, and it was in French anyway, and then would be like, oh, so you are against the patriarchy, but what about the Virgin Mary? HMMMM? and someone would timidly request to hear more about grammar and less about the Catholic Church and he would ignore them and then would tell us sad tales of his religious conversion and his youth in Nigeria and his student days in France. boy I liked that guy.
But I wish this was a call for noninspirational English teachers. like the one who, in an effort to relate to me, told me she thought The Mists of Avalon was much better than The Once and Future King and then I never trusted or respected an adult or a teacher ever again for as long as I lived.
oh my GOD
how could one person be so wrong
for a while I was mad because I thought she must think “empowerment” was about preferring shitty books by women to genius books by men, as if the quality of women’s writing did not matter at all and could not be that good anyway so why care, and then I thought, oh, I am overanalyzing her motives, she just has terrible taste. but I did not stop hating her and everything associated with her, such as dangly earrings and artfully bespattered harem pants and well-meaning efforts to engage with adolescents.
Can we have a non-inspirational teacher thread next? I feel like the rage would be a good balance.
I once had an English teacher who plagiarized an ENTIRE OBSCURE GRADUATION SPEECH (that I happened to have read two days before the ceremony), but I still think I would have found your teacher more disillusioning.
two:
One was Mr. J, who taught science at my weirdo elementary/junior high school. Mr J. was just the epitome of kindness in the gentle giant guise, tall, lumberjacky, giant beard, dark. He let us learn how we wanted to (I came up with a really rad rap about Glaciers that will haunt me to this day) and was endlessly patient. He also was a big fan of camping and assisting us in building things, hiking on outdoor ed, and generally just being awesome. I miss that guy.
Two is a copout but its something I’ve thought about for the past few years with the emergence of BEFRIENDING TEACHERS ON FACEBOOK (which, you know, still weirds me out a little? yay immigrant-parent respect rules). Anyway, this teacher, Mr. D, was in fact a social studies AND english teacher and I found him to be my “foil” in my adolescent years. This, I realize in hindsight, was bullshit. And now that I have done work with adolescents and understand teaching and life and things? Well, I dunno, I just have a lot of respect for a dude who put up with my stupid junior high rebellion (and my many rewrites of Star Wars with my BFF at the time where he held our version’s position as Darth Vader, duh–well, except when we rewrote Episode 1 which had only JUST come out at the time and he was Qui Gon). And anyway, I’ve never really known how to iterate that, but I just wanted to say it.
High school teachers, on the other hand, were mostly generically kind lady science teachers and awesome English teachers, and fuck you Coaches/History teachers who gave no fucks.
Mrs. U, my high school journalism teacher who inspired me to become a journalist.
Shout out to Mr Cope my 8th grade biology teacher who was so super nice but in that charming gruff-old-man way. He would help me open my locker when it stuck (which happened like all the time) and didn’t care that I spent most his class reading Jane Austen novels because he knew I was listening and did all the assignments. He also gave me special, harder assignments to keep me interested which was nice and he gave really good feedback on written assignments.
Ms. A was the IB (kind of like AP but..more so?) program coordinator at our school, which meant that she organized tests, supplied information, and made sure we were all on deadlines. She also acted as an emotional sounding board/surrogate mother to all of the overworked, neurotic, shithead teens who thought that IB was a good idea. She was so dedicated to her students succeeding and being happy, and I have so many fond memories of loitering in her office during lunch with friends. She finally retired last year, and I have no idea what our high school’ll do without her.
And my calculus teacher!! God, what a wonderful person. He was always doing evening and after-school tutoring sessions, and also always got distracted and started talking about Life. I’ve never seen a teacher so invested in HOW his students learn- apparently he’s now doing the thing where they he posts video lessons online and then they do the homework in class. And he also has the CUTEST children.
Teachers sharing their families with their students! I had a physics professor in college who came to class all bouncy one day and said he had to show us something and then pulled up a video–they’d caught their daughter’s first steps on camera.
My french teacher in high school had two babies in the three years I had her, and we’re still in contact and I actually tutored her daughter for a while and she is just the best child. We credit much of this to in-utero exposure to our class.
My AP cordinator was the best. He was an English teacher but he only taught one class a day (which all of his AP students were in) so he left his room open for us to use all the time. It was a quiet space during lunch, a group meeting space after school, and a place to leave books when our lockers were too far away. He wrote beautiful college recommendation letters for all of us and went to bat for us when the school wanted keep us out of the classes we wanted to take. He was also my mom’s English teacher back in the day and when we blew up pictures of him from her yearbook to post in his room for his birthday he left them up all year.
My middle school history teacher, Ms. Reilly, who was also the academic team coach. Academic team taught me that it was okay to be smart instead of pretty or popular (ah, tiny awkward middle school me, let me love you), and Ms. Reilly was just fantastic with all that. I have seen her several times since middle school and give her a big hug every time. She was amazing.
Reading all of these comments has reminded me just how many amazing teachers I had in high school and college. While I am still good friends with my English teacher, my Latin teacher was so great. She was brilliant and feisty and had the best Halloween costumes. My bio teacher was the first to honestly explain how birth control works while also acting like a huge goofball. Geometry made sense with a guy who also taught me there is such a thing as oyster stuffing and that some people like it.
Man, teachers. Give them all the money.
OMG. I almost forgot Mrs. Parker–AP American History. She was the best. She acted out the history (literally-she knew everything by heart. Her version of Nixon’s Checker’s speech is hilarious) and made it really fun. I also really appreciate how she made the effort to include a lot of poli-sci philosophy and the often-overlooked voices of women and minorities (especially in a Texas public school…). Because we had so much material to get through for the AP test she would meet with our class early so we had 75 extra minutes once a week for her history lessons–and everybody showed up super-early and stayed awake because she was awesome. I got a 5 on that AP test. Thanks, Mrs. P.
Funnily enough, I never cared much for any of my English teachers. I was an avid reader and I loved writing papers and always did well in their classes, however I always felt like I was stuck with the one English teacher who was bored with their job and disappointed with my generation. My favorite teachers were my various art and music teachers and my senior year technical theatre teacher, Mrs. James (who evidently influenced my life course the most out of them all since I am working in that field now, ten years post-high school). I did have a favorite teacher who I never got to take a class from, Mr. Gillespie, who was the advanced history teacher in my first high school. He was also the leader of History Club, which I was an enthusiastic member of, and was so full of fascinating information, stories and ideas.
My 11th-grade history teacher, Ms. Paxton! She was also my 10th-grade directed studies teacher, where “directed studies” means basically “make up a project and do it,” which for me became “read a bunch of Supreme Court decisions and totally nerd out.” Ms. Paxton was unfailingly supportive of my chosen form of nerdery and was extremely good at explaining U.S. history as a clash of interests rather a March of Progress or whatever nonsense you’ll see in some textbooks. And we were fortunate to be her last class before she retired.
In high school, the answer is probably Miss Jacky, my ballet teacher. (Extracurriculars count, right?) She happened to come into my life at a time when various events had reduced me to a flaccid and nonreactive jelly, and she managed to galvanize me, Frankenstein-style, back to life. I learned to fake being confident and graceful, to make her happy, and as a result I actually became more confident (though probably still not graceful). Even now, when I find myself in a stressful situation where I need to come across as poised and authoritative, I hear her voice in my head shouting, “Shoulders BACK! Chin UP! GO!”
In college, while I was blessed with many wonderful professors, the answer is definitely Dr. Haag, History professor. I had him for two back-to-back classes when I was studying abroad: Western Civ, and the Rise and Fall of Hitler in Europe. Western Civ was first. He would come into the room, which was dominated by a huge table covered with a green cloth. The rest of us would be waiting. He would sit down, interlace his fingers, and set his hands on the table in front of himself. With no notes, he would say, in his deep voice with the Continental accent, “Now I believe last time we were discussing…” and pick up his lecture at the exact point he had left off a few days before. I would take notes like a fiend. Class would end, and I would cram my notes into my backpack, leap up, and tear down the castle stairs like a madwoman. The man must have known about some service staircase I didn’t, because 9 times out of 10 I would meet him at the entrance to the great hall, where the WWII class was held. I would hurry halfway down the room, to where I was sure to be able to hear, and begin frantically digging my notebook and pen out from under my Western Civ stuff. Usually, I would still be flipping to a blank page by the time Dr. Haag, with measured tread, had mounted the podium, folded his hands, and, again without notes, said, “Now I believe last time, we left off when…” At which point he would give his second highly-detailed lecture, complete with dates and colorful anecdotes, and again entirely without notes. We all secretly thought he was superhuman, but I think in a mostly affectionate way. And, while it drove him crazy that I never stopped taking notes no matter what, I think I owe a lot of what I know about European culture to him.
My favourite teacher was a biology/environmental sci professer I had in university. She was one of the only female science teachers I had, but she was young and pretty with a young family but just did not give a shit about “fitting in” with the rest of the faculty. Her classes were unusual and challenging and she was so so passionate about it. I worked for her for a summer and when us lab rats would have to pull long days and stay after dinner processing time-sensitive samples she’d come by with her toddler and homemade dinner for us. She was a fantastic reference for both my grad school applications and for other job applications. She also didn’t act like I was failing at something when I said I didn’t want to go into academia and was enthusiastic and helpful when most of my other professors tried to convince me to stay in the academic rat-race.
Oh, man. Even as a lit nerd, my favorite teacher was my US history teacher in high school. Hardly the Dead Poet’s Society type, he instead was a big of a curmudgeon, which is probably why I naturally gravitated towards him. He had a dry, grumpy sense of humor and would always greet the class clown’s trolling with an eyeroll and defeated, “Shut up, Ryan” — which I loved. He was willing to entertain jokes and debates, but he was also unafraid to inject a little cynicism into the conversation, which as a cynical teenager, was wholly refreshing.
Personality aside, he was a fantastic teacher with a wide knowledge and passion for history. But most importantly, he taught me that teaching can be an art and a science– at any given point in time, he knew where he was in his semester’s lesson plan down to the minute, often pointing out if he was falling behind or was already ahead of what was to be discussed for the day. He taught us about the civil war and our founding fathers, but he also had us choose our own reporting topics for big projects and watch the film AND THE BAND PLAYED ON. He taught me how to properly take notes, and I still have that comprehensive notebook to this day.
I had a science teacher, Mr. Case, my junior year of high school, who was possibly certifiably insane, but also let us build a huge garden in the school pastures for our final project, all while teaching us about nitrogen cycles and atomic structure and shit. He also constructed a vacuum-forming machine to show us what happens when you remove all the air from a marshmallow.
He also let us watch The Magic Schoolbus during downtime, and set a lab table on fire to prove a point.
I never had a Mr. Case in high school, but my friends who took AP Chemistry did! I don’t remember my school having pastures, though, so probably we did not go to the same school after all. 🙁
…what point was he proving??
….. you can’t leave us hanging like that. What DOES happen when you remove all the air from a marshmallow?
My dance teacher was incredible. She also choreographed all of the spring musicals, so I spent lots of extra time with her. She was the teacher that all the students called by her first name (as long as the administration wasn’t around) by the time they were seniors because they had been with her for four years.
I also loved my French teacher, but she was also my 11th grade English teacher, so I think she still doesn’t count.
My middle school math teacher taught me both reduced row echelon form AND that maybe not every moment of every day is the appropriate time to sing a RENT song. Both of these lessons have been deeply valuable.
Runner up goes to the American history teacher who let my friends and I hang out in her classroom at lunch and quietly gave me a copy of “A Separate Peace” after like, two days of observing us. Nailed it, Mrs. Spivak.
NO CRYING IN THE TEACHERS THREAD
TOO LATE
My Spanish teacher of three years was everybody’s favourite, because he had the enthusiasm and curiosity of a vastly oversized toddler, but I loved him because at least 50% of our classes were spent with him telling us amazing stories about his extensive travels. He had a handful of solid restaurant and activity recommendations for every major city in the Spanish-speaking world, and would often tailor his recommendations directly to the particular students’ interests (he and I talked a lot about the 24-hour bookstores in Buenos Aires). When his wife was pregnant with their first child, a girl, he told me that he hoped that his daughter would grow up to be exactly like me, which is still the greatest compliment anyone has ever given me. He and I have kept in touch loosely, and last year when I moved back to my hometown after graduating university, he invited me to his house to drink tea and meet his four year-old daughter. She’s super cool, though not, I think, very much like me yet. TOTALLY like him though.
Also my 7th grade art teacher. That had to be the hardest job in the school- it was a required class so kids with no interest and/or talent for art still had to take it and it had to be graded. How do you grade that kind of class while trying to get kids interested in art?? He introduced a new medium every week ( which looking back he probably bought a lot supplies himself because I know the school didn’t supply all that) which meant over the semester everyone found something they enjoyed. More importantly, when projects didn’t go well he had a really reassuring way of saying “Hey, maybe this isn’t your thing and that’s okay. I know that you tried hard and I hope you had fun doing it.” I remember being so excited about the claymation week that when we could present our work to the class at the end (never a requirement, he was the best!) I told this long, goofy story about my character. For anyone else that wasn’t a big deal but I was terribly shy and afraid of sounding dumb so that was the most class participation I racked up probably ever.
Two – my grade 10 French Language Arts teacher, Mme Hajee, for being simultaneously the most compassionate, sharpest and most take-no-bullshit teacher I ever had, who had a real talent and passion for teaching and who was immensely relatable as she too was a (former) Immersion student, and not a Francophone; and Mr. Waters, my concert choir, vocal jazz and choral music director for all three years of high school, who could get a room full of rambunctious high schoolers, most of whom were just taking the classes as extra credit, to sincerely care about music and the sound we could produce working together.
I just went for drinks and dinner with Mme Hajee the other day, and am friends with both of them on Facebook – they were the teachers that really connected. I find that very inspirational.
My AP physics teacher was so great, and we loved that class so much, that we made our own yearbook just for that class, complete with photos, “most likely to . . .”, etc. Such a fun class, tied with English for my favorite in high school.
I graduated 13 years ago and I’m still in touch with my high school psych teacher. I was a freshman thrown into a class full of seniors and he immediately noticed that I looked like I was in shark-infested waters. He made sure to give me the encouragement I needed to believe I had equal footing with everyone else. I ended up taking one class with him every year after that and I still see him at the weddings of my classmates, because we all love him.
I actually never had a good English teacher until college — all through middle and high school I thought I hated English because the teachers were all so impressively terrible. One of them tried to kick me out of her class for “harassing the other students” because she overheard me joking with one of my friends and decided I was a bully, or something (???). (I have an English degree now, naturally, but it was a long road.)
My best teacher ever ever ever taught all the non-American history classes. I had her for World and Euro and then worked as her student assistant because grading her tests and listening to the same lectures over again was better than literally every other available high school class. She was an unabashedly left-wing feminist badass who once got arrested in France for jumping a barrier because she wanted to have a picnic by the Seine. She used to mock Reagan by shaking her fist and sarcastically yelling “Tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachev!” and liked to talk about how she had a bad knee because in a past life she got run over by a cart while storming the Bastille. She was the terror of budding libertarian douchebros everywhere and probably (definitely) a witch. She once scolded me with genuine disappointment for not getting a perfect score on the AP Euro exam and it was GREAT.
Here’s hoping no one I went to high school with is reading the Toast..!
I had absolutely no inspirational teachers grades K-12, other than inspiring me to GTFO of my hometown and do something with my life and my intelligence.
(Bad teacher sidenote: in 5th grade we had a (MALE) student teacher, who came up to me one day in class and said, “You got 100% on your math test!” like it was some kind of amazing feat of brainpower, and I was like “Yea, of course I did” and thus started the misandry.)
In undergrad, I had a badass chemistry professor, Dr. Barstis. She was an ultramarathoner and Ironman triathlete who had conquered ovarian cancer a few years before I met her. She was the chair of the chemistry department and coordinated the engineering dual-degree program. She had so much life and love in her, and dedicated all her energy to convincing freshmen that they should be chemistry majors. I kind of want to be her when I grow up.
I’m glad I’m not alone, all my K – 12 teachers were unremarkable people being pretty unremarkable. My uni teachers were almost all fantastic and inspiring and fun and passionate about their work! But K – 12 stunk.
My AP European History teacher was the only person in the room who laughed at the jokes in my group’s sock puppet presentation of Louis XIV’s Wars. (William of Orange was a smiling orange impaled on a chopstick! The Duke of Marlborough had a cigarette permanently affixed to his little sock mouth! The Earlier Churchill made the later Churchill’s famous “we will fight them on the beaches!” speech!) Since it was otherwise an unmitigated disaster, culminating in the set falling on our heads and a deeply confused class, her moral support was reassuring. And in addition to putting up with/genuinely enjoying our over-enthusiastic class presentations, she was also unashamedly feminist and made powerpoint presentations more fun with snarky commentary.
Gary Edmonson, my AP Euro and AP Goverment teacher. Let us have what we called “socialist tests” where the 7 of us in my Euro class scootched our desks together and worked out the answers together.
Also, Vicki Thorpe, who taught Latin 1 through AP Latin in a Kentucky public school. Her classes were always full, despite there being no fun “cultural immersion” field trips or activities like the Spanish, French and German classes. She taught way past retirement age, hoping one of her former students would take over the Latin mantle. She also looked just like a witch and was hilarious.
Oh, shout out to my AP Latin teacher Ms. McGlennon as well. I genuinely looked forward to that class every. Single. Day.
I really liked almost all my teachers in high school! Just lucky I guess. Also nerdy. Very, very nerdy. Upon reflection, these two really stood out:
1. Ms. Schulman, high school chemistry, was tough as nails, probably a 2nd-wave feminist (though I never asked) and had actually worked as a chemist! She held a patent for something tampon-related. I idolized her.
2. Ms. Stockinger, high school Spanish, was a good teacher but more importantly for a lovelorn 16-year-old, she had a REALLY hot husband despite being small & mousy like me, which showed me I might eventually be considered dateable.
My AP Eurpoean history teacher was also the football coach and such a history nerd. He’d get SO excited about battles and kings and shipwrecks (especially Mel Fisher and the Atocha. I think we talked about it once a week). When we’d go over said battles, he’d draw them on the board like football play diagrams
with little Xs and everything.
Everybody, geeks and jocks alike, loved him and he really encouraged us all of us. He loved it when we were interested and would do just about anything to engage a student. My group and I (mostly a bunch of Trekkies) would pass notes a lot: the majority of them would be us (as stick figures) in amusing historical context or something like Captain Janeway talking to Elizabeth I. He’d confiscate them he’d just laugh and sometimes he’d stick them on the board and keep them there for the rest of the time we were on that lesson. He’d always admonish us about paying attention, but he was so pleased that we were really engaged with something that you could see him almost twinkling.
He didn’t tolerate meanness or any kind of intolerance: I saw him throw somebody out of class more than once for being disrespectful to one of their peers or another teacher. He was the most unlikely of football coaches, but he loved the game, too. He was well traveled, loved the UK, and wore a tartan tie almost every day. We adored him and he’s the sole reason I entered college as a history major (though I totally did not end up as one).
aw, this gives me hope for the jocks of my youth who maybe became history teachers? because man, it was not like that at my HS.
I had a world history teacher who had been in the military before becoming a teacher; his hallmarks were “dewimpification points” (which you earned, basically, by showing any kind of creativity, foresight, or personal strength; I remember one girl got a bunch for bringing her own little pencil sharpener AND a bag to keep the shavings in so she didn’t have to get up during lecture) and the one day of the year he’d hold classes in our school’s lecture hall, where he would set up a WWII battle on the floor with little green army men.
On paper, he was Teacher I Was Most Likely To Hate; fortunately, he was significantly more excellent than that and the beginning of my long journey into studying history.
My AP Euro teacher was a lot like this — jock, ex-military, football coach, totally ridiculous and YET AMAZING. AP Euro was “the hard class” that nerds took and it was like a little club of uber competitive weirdos (who are now the only people from high school I like and still know), and he was our leader, the laid-back jock. It was the most awesome class ever, and I got a 5 on the exam. Fuck yeah, awesome AP Euro teachers!
Mr. Woods! So I don’t really know how good he was at teaching, as such, because he taught math and it was all pretty easy for me, at the time, to be honest. But he had a hilariously dry sense of humor, and was near the end of his teaching career and resigned to the realities of the high-school-math-teaching situation in a way that I think was healthy for both him and his students. He knew math was not the only class we were taking, and that our needs to pay attention and/or do our homework in order to succeed varied, and he had pretty good systems in place for dealing with that, which is why his classes were the first math classes I’d paid attention to for years.
And I went back to visit him when I was in grad school, and he told me that he was pleased I’d stuck with math until it got hard, and that he thought being in a PhD program with no idea whether I would finish it or not was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Which, for me, was true.
Oh, Coach Braaten, responsible for civics/history/wrestling and student council. He was patient, witty, enthusiastic about his subjects and very, very tolerant of my general adolescent swerves between juvenile arrogance and overdramatic responses to normal friend psychodramas. We did mock-trials in his freshman civics course and I prosecuted somebody for selling Quaaludes.
I fucking hated my English teachers. My freshman honors english teacher (also my junior honors english teacher) was an old asshole that made me read horribly boring drivel like “A Tale of Two Cities” and “The Scarlet Letter”, and he wasn’t very fond of me after I told him I wanted to punch Nathaniel Hawthorne in the fucking face.
But I loved my math/science/agriculture teachers! Every one of them. My biology teacher let us do “projects” to demonstrate our understanding of material as final exams/ midterms so I once built a kinetic lego model of a cell demonstrating the mitochondrial process, while one of my best friends wrote a song about your immune system to the tune of the Beatles “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”.
It might be kind of relevant that the main reason I got a degree in math was that I didn’t want to write papers. Ever. I remember having to write one and I got so flustered about turning it in that I just threw it in the trash, went outside, puked, and fainted on the sidewalk. Getting through general ed requirements was fucking torture. I was continually pissed that people could take dumbed down science classes to skirt that requirement but I was required to take the same fucking 6 course humanities classes as everyone else. Because math is hard, wah.
Oh god, I got my degree 12 years ago and I’m still so fucking bitter. I need a drink. It’s 11 am, bars around the office are open, right?
Admittedly there are a lot of inspirational English teachers in my past. But there was a bio-anthro professor who was just stellar in every way–excited about his subject, an exciting teacher, an involved advisor, the whole caboodle. Freshman me did not look at the available social science course offerings and think, Oh yeah I’ll be so into and actually kind of good at human evolution, but that was how it turned out. I took all of his classes even though that wasn’t my major, and definitely never thanked him properly for being a great educator, making me use my brain, and putting up with my white-girl bullshit comments.
There is also my best friend’s mother, who is a language teacher, and who I never learned from in the classroom, but who has continually shaped and affected my education since I was wee. <3
My high school Latin/Ancient Greek teacher! We were all weirdly obsessed with his personal life (he lives on a goat farm with his husband and they had an albino turkey named Humphrey! they fought a lawsuit to have their marriage recognized in our state and were in the paper!) but he was also an awesome teacher. Our Ancient Greek class (there were only nine of us, SHOCKER) brought in a bundt cake (because of My Big Fat Greek Wedding) on his birthday. I gave him a picture of all of us on the last day of class and I hear he still has it on his desk. He basically turned me into a meganerd my senior year of high school, and I thank him for that!
Also, on the subject of English teachers, I once had an English professor tell me I should major in English, when I was already in the nursing program? I didn’t know how to react because all I could think of making were snide jokes about prospective salaries and that just seemed like a low blow.
My Latin professor was one of the best professors I had in college. We’d have one-on-one conferences where she tore apart my papers (written in English!!! my first language!! my best language!!). Like, “sit down, read this back to me, and tell me if you hear all the ways that doesn’t work.” She didn’t accept my laziness and she called me out on everything, even the time my laptop overheated and died because I had pulled an all-nighter working on her paper and LOST IT. I dropped her Latin class in the middle of the second year, but the best thing I took from college was the ability to stop making excuses and get shit done to appease the tiny Javert-like classicist that lives on my shoulder forever.
the tiny Javert-like classicist that lives on my shoulder forever.
That is just an adorable image.
tiny javert-like classicist
Mr. Planitz taught a bunch of math and science classes at my school (it was a small school) (yes that really was his name) and would happily tell us that, in his experience, girls were just plain smarter than boys. This may or may not have contributed to the predominance of female winners of the Nerd Award, a joke award turned semi-serious for any student who, by the end of their senior year, had taken at least nine credits combined of math and science classes in their high school career.
John Brown, my 9th grade earth sciences teacher. He had a mnemonic for *everything* and was such a kind-hearted and gentle person. He created a science club that only freshman and sophomores could join because he was tired of seeing juniors and seniors have all the fun in high school. We went on amazing spring break trips (cross-country skiing! digging for fossils!), and felt awesome in our nerdiness. This last August, he was recognized for FIFTY YEARS of service. You go, John Brown.
My 6th grade all-arounder Ms. Mohan-Ram. Yes, she taught English, as well; but, almost 15 years after leaving her class, I’m still using things I learned from her about world (particularly non-western) history, languages, and cultures. I mean, she taught a bunch of rowdy 10-11 year olds how to draw a not-too-inaccurate world map; and almost more importantly, she taught us something about almost every country on that map. I think of her literally every time I hear a story on the news and am able to bring a bit of background to it.
Plus, she was responsible for my first encounter with and subsequent obsession with Indian food.
Mr. Smith was my Latin teacher for 7th and 8th grade and for both years of AP Latin and is responsible for me majoring in it. He was delightful – incredibly patient with even the worst students and dedicated to making a dead language as interesting as possible. We all chose Latin names, played vocabulary jeopardy and pictionary, and came up with all kinds of cartoons for mnemonics (I think I still have my drawing of WIBA the Ablative Animal somewhere). One friend drew a full-length comic book of Aeneas’ journey to the underworld and Mr. Smith thought it was the coolest thing ever. THANKS, DUDE.
And possibly even more important was Mr. Murray, the chorus teacher for my freshman and sophmore years. I’d taken like six years of orchestra and was super nervous about joining chorus (they wouldn’t let me do both) and he was just the warmest and most welcoming presence. Firm, but fair, and always believing that this group of punkass kids could make gorgeous sounds if they set their minds to it. He would give us stuff from Disney songs to classical choruses to German art songs and expect that we could handle it. And he also did the music for the school musical, with a full orchestra made up entirely of students as well, and they were always great. I miss him a lot, still.
cheers for latin mnemonics! We had SID SPACE the ablative astronaut! (Do not try to get me to remember what SId was supposed to remind me of because it is long gone to the recesses of my gin-addled brain).
My AP Calculus teacher was AMAZING. He was just so passionate and excited about math – he would bring us printouts of Sudoku squares and logic problems (which we could do for extra credit) that the timestamp would reveal were printed at 3am, because he was so excited about math that he couldn’t sleep. He would be kind of bouncing at the board at times, gleefully explaining calculus. He taught both the AP and the kind of remedial math courses and everyone learned and understood him so well – his enthusiasm really went at all levels.
I was very awkward, very shy and barely talked in school, but at parents’ night he told my parents that I was smart and talented and would be something, where all the other teachers would just say, every year, “she needs to participate more.” It really meant a lot to me and I think my parents as well.
He also had a really good friendship and rapport with the very strict, very feminist English teacher that most students outright hated and the teachers seemed to dislike (but also had a tiny sort of fan club, and who I would be talking about if this was about Engilsh teachers) and would occasionally pop (invited! and welcome!) into her classroom during her class to add to discussions; she was one of the younger and I think newer teachers at the time and though I didn’t really notice it so much then, looking back I think he was supporting her in a huge way.
He was also very handsome and had two small, adorable children and a wife he loved very much, and it seemed like every single straight teenage girl who took one of his classes developed a huge crush on him. He handed it very well, unlike the other universally-crushed-on teacher who was very creepy and predatory about it (and taught middle school). We had no idea he (the math teacher) was aware of it (though looking back I think he must have been – like, one girl who lived by him would report back whenever she saw him mowing the lawn or walking his dog), but he would very graciously accept our senior photos signed “XOXO” and place them in the huge collage on his classroom wall of other adoring, now-math-loving girls from years past.
My favorite teacher is my K/1 teacher — so, yes, English teacher in some sense (she taught me to read!) but also math, science and everything but foreign languages and chess. In fact, 27 years later, we’re friends and she’s my fiancee’s mentor (calling HER my favorite teacher would be accurate but not in the spirit of the question).
My history teacher in grade 12 was the bomb. He wrote his own textbook which he then let me edit (my nerdy future-English-major dream job) over the summer. Now he has a PhD in teaching history! Such a sweet little man.
Also, I love this thread.
Oh, I forgot about my theater/art history professor! He was a crotchety bastard with a string of ex-wives who hated 80% of his classes, which was justified because intro drama was filled with stoners and AP art history was filled with lazy nerds looking for a gut.
I had a part (both on stage and behind) in every single one of the school plays, which was not that much of achievement because our theater department was sad and underfunded and everyone with real talent did show choir. Since no one cared about them, though, he got away with some pretty hilarious things (switch the genders of everyone in the play! switch only one character’s gender, and create a lesbian subplot!). Apparently he’s supposed to retire in Italy soon!
I was actually homeschooled, but I did have one out-of-the-house teacher who was really inspirational. My youth choir conductor, John, was an amazing guy. He was fairly young and terrible at choreography, but he drove us to greatness fairly relentlessly. He could and did bawl us out when we were being little shits, but he also introduced to wonderful, beautiful music, both old (he was very picky about German vs. Italian Church Latin) and new (he thrived on shoving atonal, intensely rhythmic Australian choral arrangements at us while we screamed and flailed).
He was getting his doctorate in choral conducting in the years I was in choir, so we were part of some of his projects, like Carmina Burana and Mozart’s Requiem. I sang the latter with a 100 degree fever, because I wasn’t giving up the chance to do it. Eventually, he led us to take second against two adult choirs in the Mixed Choir category at the Llangollen Eisteddfod in (where else?) Wales.
I’ve mostly moved past my dreams of being an opera singer or musical theatre star, but I’ve kept my love of acapella choral music and classical music in general, thanks to him.
Mr. Suppon my photography teacher. I told him once that he prepared me for college more than any of my AP teachers did and he didn’t believe me but it was true. He gave us the freedom to roam around and take pictures and it was exactly enough freedom to hang ourselves if we didn’t keep up with the work. (Everything was due at the end of every quarter, cue made rush to finish everything in a week.) We would go back to visit him when we were in college until he retired and every once and a while my parents will still see him around town and he knows who they are and asks about me and the two friends I took the class with, almost ten years later.
In college there was Eric and Stew, my professor and TA, respectively, for a 16 mm film class. Stellar guys who were basically ready to be available at any time, night or day, for any filmmaking emergency. Stew was also my TA for … two, three? … other classes and he was great.
Ooh. It would have to be a toss up between my 9th grade world history teacher, who ended up going into his personal history about what it was like growing up in the internment camps during WW2 and what it was like being Japanese while fighting in the Vietnam War (the point: neither were good things, and racism is bad, kids) and had us do reports and presentations on different non-western civs and countries as finals or the teacher I had for bio in 9th grade and horticulture in 10th because Mr Appleman was awesome, shut down that one kid who insisted that evolution is a lie, taught me how to graft apple trees and prune roses (WHICH I WILL CLEARLY FIND USEFUL AT SOME POINT!), and ended up sending me home with like 5 aloe plants one day.
And I don’t care, and I’m gonna tell you about my favorite English teacher anyway. That was Mrs Iraheta, who ran around with The Merry Pranksters in the 60s. She had many, many stories.
Aw man, this thread is the best! TEACHERS ARE THE BEST. But seriously, the best human beings. Thanks, teachers.
One of the best teachers I’ve had was Mr. S for 7th and 8th grade biology. He was a seriously quirky and intense dude, but worked extremely hard to make sure everyone could engage with the material on their own terms and in their own way. We could do whatever we wanted for our major semester projects, as long as we demonstrated scientific research went into it. One semester I wrote the script for a play we ended up producing as a class, about a girl who became obsessed with climate change, and ended up having a nervous breakdown while trying to convince everyone around her to change their lifestyles. (Looking back, I think his lectures about the dangers of climate change might have been a little TOO effective.) It was terrifying for me, as a shy girl, to have what I’d written read out loud, critiqued, and then actually performed by the class, but he created such a supportive environment that it was an extremely positive experience.
He taught me you didn’t have to be a “science person” to love science (which, of course, turned me into a science person and biology major) and that you’re never too young to start engaging with big issues in the world. I’ve been incredibly lucky with the great teachers I’ve had over the years, but he was the one that made learning seem like a fundamentally creative act instead of a disposable part of “achieving,” which was the biggest lesson a teacher ever taught me, I think.
I thought of another one! Mr. Craig, my Biology 30 (grade 12) teacher, who taught me that even though I wasn’t a “science person”, there could still be things in science to love and to love to learn more about. (Punnett squares ftw).
I love all these inspiring teacher comments! My most inspiring high school teacher was my AP European History teacher, Mary (yes, I went to a hippie-dippy alternative public school where we called all our teachers by their first names). She had knack for bringing history to life, for showing us the connections between seemingly unrelated people and events, how actions in England affected life in Russia, etc. She encouraged us to question, to discuss, to really understand history, as opposed to just learning names and dates.
Mary’s enthusiasm and guidance was aligned with a hardass grading system – I worked my butt off, and still averaged a B in her class for the year. But she gave us a preview of college-level work, and prepared us really well for the AP exam – not by doing lots of practice tests, but by getting us to think analytically and holistically.
She also got me started on my initial career path. Her teaching and her class got me really interested in International Relations, and I studied that in college and grad school, and planned to be a diplomat. Health problems sidelined that dream, but I still use those analytical skills in my career as a corporate drone, and still think fondly of Mary to this day.
(We got her a She-Ra Princess of Power doll as a class gift at graduation, which should indicate how amazing (and intimidating) we all thought she was.
Mr. Kessler is an AP US History teacher at my alma mater who also teaches a class called The American Experience. It was all discussion and debate of current events, movies, culture, politics, you name it. There was no homework and no tests. You were graded on participation; if you were too shy or intimidated to participate, you could write a short paper. It was a life-changing, perspective-altering class that changed my life.
Vicki Artimovich, legendary art history professor at Bellevue Community College. Would tell stories about sneaking feels on the ass of the David, being too stoned at the pyramids, growing up Catholic, and generally railing against the patriarchy. Every quarter after the final, she’d ostenatiously drop hints that she’d be at the Red Robin a mile away having a margarita if we just happened to drop by. She made me want to throw away all my English books and study art history forever. I compromised with a minor.
My favourite teacher was a Mr Halem. He was an ex-cop who taught social sciences, history and occassionally subbed for PE. He started the school dodgeball team, and took very little shit, and dispensed incredible amounts of justice with just a few words. Later in life, the reason he became an EX-cop caught up with him and he had a psychotic break and I never heard from him again. 🙁
Physics! I took AP physics 1 and 2 in high school. The classes were so hard, we all stressed out so bad about the AP tests but then it turned out that she was a total badass and we all waltzed to 5’s on both tests with no problem.
I even started college as a physics major, and realized about a semester and a half in that I liked her class way more than I actually liked physics (and the physics I did like, mechanical physics, doesn’t get you far in college–everything’s about molecules and space and shit).
My high school had a weird kind of affection arms race between an English teacher and a history teacher, both of whom were also significant in my life. But I always thought our junior/senior math teacher got short shrift. Ms. C. was hated by many because she was strict–she’d take away homework from other classes if you so much as had it on your desk; she wouldn’t let you use calculators on tests (just in case yours died during the AP test and you had to do the work by hand); she graded like she meant it.
She also passed every single AP Calculus student just about every year. She noticed when you were absent, or off your usual math game, and made sure to check in. She was so, so proud of all of her graduates, and we were surrounded with their names and future plans and last year’s excellent work. (I didn’t realize how much this had meant to me until I went back to visit the next year and saw my own name on the wall.) When I graduated from high school, I said I had math exhaustion and was never going to take it again. By October, I was hungry for it, and I started in on a math major the next semester. I had always liked math (also thanks to Ms. J., my middle school math teacher and math team coach!), but higher math was beautiful and sensible to me because Ms. C. made us live with it and breathe it and do it all by hand.
I am also still in awe of my high school French teachers. The one I had for 9th and 10th grade taught with enormous love for all of her students, even after her son died very suddenly mid-year; the one I had for 11th and 12th grade came in early every morning my entire senior year to teach me in a one-person French literature class because I had finished all the classes our school actually offered.
(I have more–my English teachers were rarely my favourites–but I’m going to go thumbs-up everyone’s comments instead. If you have a teacher in your house, this is a hard time of year; hug them.)
Despite being a life-long bookworm, I haaaaaated English class, always, but often had a really good relationship with my English teachers, including one that I’m still friends with. I think my 9th grade English teacher said something to the effect of, “yeah, I could tell you didn’t like a single thing about my class, but it was nice talking with you afterwards.” *shrug*
ANYWAY, my 11th grade U.S. history teacher (MR. WOODS!) was probably the most inspirational. He was pretty scary at first, which always made me want to do the best I could and reach for the stars and all that. He was an amazing lecturer and made the theories and concepts behind the founding, as well as the continuing development) of the U.S., really fucking interesting and important for this politically apathetic and not patriotic teenager. He spent one class telling us all about the importance of jury duty and why we should never, ever, ever bail out on this golden opportunity to serve our country and society and do the right thing. (Frankly I am disappointed that I haven’t been called up for jury duty yet.) When we were doing the Civil War, we watched most of the epic Ken Burns documentary, and as the final credits were rolling, including the dramatic music, Mr. Woods came up to the front of the classroom and gave a great lecture on the impact of the war. He was such a good fucking speaker and that music was so dramatic and appropriate that we all gave him a standing ovation after that speech. He’s also the kind of teacher to greet you so warmly after not seeing you for a couple years and is just the best and ahhhh. Mr. Woods! So scary and smart and secretly a huuuuge softie who liked to tell stories about his adorable kiddos when he wasn’t shouting about submarines!
Anyway. Guess he was alright.
OH AND possibly my proudest moment at age 17 was learning that he hadn’t seen the movie Casablanca, lending him my family’s old VHS copy, and then spending a long time absolutely gushing about how great the movie was with him after he finally watched it. The Marseillaise scene! (WATCH IT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM-E2H1ChJM)
…I will see myself out now.
Choir, because I’m a huge geek. I loved my high school choir teacher so much that I sang in all three of her auditioned groups simultaneously (giving up every day after school, every lunch period, and my Thursday evenings), worked for her officially grading theory for the lower levelled choirs and planning tours and concerts and that stuff, and even babysat her kids. I would have done anything for her. She is the best: incredibly high standards, so motivational, amazing rapport with teenagers, a gifted conductor, and so kind. She doesn’t teach for a public school anymore but has started her own community choirs, and every time I run into her at a music gig I am so happy to chat, even ten years later.
Ms. Pallante. First of all, she was Ms. That was big for me, I guess. Secondly, she taught chemistry and was badass. She was just tough, you know? She only lasted at the school a few years because she went back to school herself to be a geneticist (I have no idea in what capacity, or what that even means, really, but it’s what she told us). I had her for honors chemistry and then A.P. chemistry. I just liked that she was so focussed and on point and never flustered and she wasn’t pretty and it didn’t fucking matter because she taught us chemistry and was smart. It was cool. The other science teachers were old dudes or crazy Mrs. Labno, the bio teacher, who weirdly flirted with the football players, especially during the sex ed part of the class. Ugh.
Anyway, I ended up getting a Ph.D. in chemistry, in no small part due to her. Oh, I know! I remember the controversy! I was valedictorian and I had to name my favorite teacher in the program and I said her, and she’d already left, so I tried to raise a fuss about it and came really really close to standing on my desk, but ultimately I caved and named my English teacher, Mrs. Henry. She was pretty excited and that made me happy, but still, I wanted to say Ms. Pallante. Well, now I have. Thanks for this opportunity to reminisce!
Coach Queen, the wrestling coach at my high school, was also the physics teacher; he was funny and smart and sarcastic and underneath all that, exceedingly kind. He inspired learning and took an interest in his students, even shy nerdy ones like me, and made us all feel cool.
After a series of terrible math teachers in high school, I hated math, even though I had loved it in grammar school. Dr. Bosnia, my calculus professor in college, challenged me in the best way after I got a mediocre grade on my first test in his class, telling me I was smarter than that grade. After that, I had to study to prove him right, and his pride in his students – and my pride in myself – was palpable.
First this comment thread made me sappy and teary and then that gave way to pure jealousy. I so wish I’d had these excellent science and math teachers! Why was every history course I took in high school just the Civil War over again? Why wasn’t Latin an option? Seriously, though, if I’d had even one decent history teacher in high school or undergrad, I’m pretty sure the entire course of my academic and professional career would have been different.
I had the best Drama teacher in high school, Ms. Marlowe, who was exactly the flowy-dresses, dreamcatcher-necklaces, guided-meditation, new-age weirdo you’d expect, and then crazy-tough behind that. And one of my “fun” classes my master’s year was with an amazing art history professor whose field was medieval Europe and who loved the obscene liminal figures in manuscripts and hidden up high on cathedrals. I had to trek all the way across campus for that class (the English dept. lived far away from the art museum), and the Art History grad students seemed so disaffected and bored and interested only in getting their dates right, but Prof. Camille and his enthusiasm made me love those crazy naked church demons. (And then he died tragically young of a brain tumor and now I’m also sad whenever I think about that class.)
Ms. Pallante. First of all, she was Ms. That was big for me, I guess. Secondly, she taught chemistry and was badass. She was just tough, you know? She only lasted at the school a few years because she went back to school herself to be a geneticist (I have no idea in what capacity, or what that even means, really, but it’s what she told us). I had her for honors chemistry and then A.P. chemistry. I just liked that she was so focussed and on point and never flustered and she wasn’t pretty and it didn’t fucking matter because she taught us chemistry and was smart. It was cool. The other science teachers were old dudes or crazy Mrs. Labno, the bio teacher, who weirdly flirted with the football players, especially during the sex ed part of the class. Ugh.
Ms Pallante sounds like a complete badass. I wish I had had a chemistry teacher who was that good. Ours was an insipid, wispy Frenchwoman who was obsessed with weight and weird diets.
My dad was my teacher for 5th grade, so I am legally and morally obligated to name him my favorite. (And really, he was a delight. The school didn’t have funds for computers, so he bought used computer parts and built one for each student in the class.)
That is SOLID.
Wait. Your dad BUILT computers for his students??? For each one???
Just… WOW. That’s just so wonderful!
Ms. McClung, my IB chemistry teacher, was awesome. She was genuinely kind and pleasant and managed to work in fun activities into the IB curriculum (like fudge! and the video where the guy drops a giant chunk of sodium into a lake!). Most importantly for me, she covered a whole bunch of topics that have actually turned out to be useful in my non-chemist life. Like photovoltaics and sewage systems and photovoltaic smog and the word lacrimator. Turns out that if you work in any field that wants to be “green” having a rough understanding of the basic principles behind some of it is pretty useful. She was also a general badass with actual on-the-job chemistry experience (if I remember correctly she worked in dyes or fibers).
In college, basically every Spanish professor I ever had for my minor did a better job of actually making things like writing skills and literature and film into something I actually was interested in than any of my high school teachers. My writing skills class in Spanish basically brought my writing skills up to college level- personal statements, drafts and revisions, all sorts of basic stuff I’d never really had explicit instruction in. I think the instructor wound up getting tenure at a university in Hawaii, which seems like a proper reward for how much she taught me.
Our History of Art teacher who lived and breathed Art with a capital A, and his buddy our Philosophy teacher whose classroom was right next door! We would have four hours of philosophy on a Wednesday morning (vive la France!) and then History of Art after lunch, and they would always be hanging out together shooting the shit before we started on Eisenstein or Schiele or Portrayals of Christ Throughout History or whatever else we were studying that day.
Once, our philosophy teacher said to us, ‘Some people drown their sorrows in drugs and alcohol and sex (and then he told us to read The Sexual Life of Catherine M!) Other people try to understand life through art – like your wonderful History of Art teacher Mr -‘.
It was awesome to have these two inspirational teachers who were so wholly in love with their subjects and life and all its meanings in general, and also have them be buddies, like, a club for awesome, well-read, fun people that made us awkward 17-year-olds feel welcome.
all the warm and fuzzy feeeelinggssss 🙂
My English teacher in 9th-10th grade was actually really great and might be the reason I ended up going to a liberal arts college. (My 11th-12th one was completely boring.)
But this isn’t about English teachers, so I’d have to say my geography teacher, who was also the Kiwiest Kiwi that ever Kiwied. Besides literally expanding my knowledge of the world, he was a great help during the college application process, and he was a good dive buddy (he was head of the school scuba club). Most other students thought he was boring, but I think he had a soft spot for our class, injecting lessons with a sense of humor, and letting us eat in class (which the principal had forbidden), as long as we shared with him. I still get emails from him and his wife on my birthday sometimes, because it’s also her birthday, and they’re always sweet little messages.
I have spent most of my work day slowly reading through all these responses and they have been DELIGHTFUL.
Strangely enough my most influential teacher actually wasn’t the best teacher I had – Mr. M, who took me for year 12 History of Revolutions, was probably a bit too cut and dry to really inspire enthusiasm in anyone who wasn’t a committed history nerd, but where he really excelled was in his film taste. Watching “Battleship Potemkin” for the Russian Revolution, followed by Andrzej Wajda’s “Danton” for French was a double whammy in term of introducing me to the fact that there was a lot more to cinema than what was happening at the multiplex. Combined with my year 12 English teacher who used that year’s film text of “Gattaca” to explode my mind with such things as “Did you know that filmmakers can use colour and lighting for SYMBOLISM?” and it all accumulated into a perfect storm to result in me being the professional film nerd lady that I am today.
I’m so late to this party but I have two: AP European history teacher who was just absolutely badass and my 7th grade gym teacher.
I may have had a massive crush on my 7th grade gym teacher. She was gorgeous and funny and sharp and zero-bullshit, the kind of person who can make 7th grade girls feel okay about gym class. Let me repeat: 7th grade girls liked gym class because of her. Let us all pause and recognize how amazing that made her.
Señora Watson, my high school Spanish teacher. Due to a series of epic fails in the department, I ended up having her for at least one month every year I was in high school. She worked to motivate us, moved around like crazy to get us excited about language, and she was my rock my senior year, when I went through some really rough patches.
One of my favorite teachers I’ve ever had was Perry Alexander, a professor of computer engineering–and I’m and English and Women’s Studies’ Major! I had him by complete chance, because at my school there’s this program called University Scholars where if you get in you take a special seminar class. Every year the topic is different, and the scholars selected all come from varying disciplines and schools, so at least a handful of people are going to end up in a class way out of their element, which, for computer engineering, basically everybody thought they were going to be. But Perry Alexander is not only brilliant (he does security coding for NASA, NASA YOU ALL) he is also one of the kindest, most generous men I’ve ever met. He always talked about how he hated how his field is so “male and pale ” and that he loved having the opportunity to teach our class because we all have such unique perspectives and varying backgrounds.
We never had a single quiz or test, just discussed the material all the time, and the greatest goal he had for the class he said was to “create a community here.” He was a big old brilliant hippie. he once said to me “You are a disruptive influence–and that is the highest compliment I can give someone.” Oh and he also once said to when I asked if I could leave class early “Katherine, I’d just ask myself WWBD–what would Beyonce do? I think she’d let you leave early.”
I’m still in undergrad, and we still chat and get coffee, and he is one of my biggest supporters for grad school, and ugh, he is just the best man.
I was homeschooled, kindergarten through high school. I do not often vocalize this fact because when I do, the other person usually responds by thoroughly giving me a once-over (as if critiquing my outfit would have somehow given them a clue if they had just looked more carefully the first time), and exclaiming, “But you don’t LOOK like a homeschooler!” As annoyed as I was ten seconds ago when they were visually undressing me, I have no choice but to take this as a compliment; the alternative is hearing, “Oh, I see. That makes sense now that you mention it.” I digress. On to the question. My favorite parent is hands-down my dad, because…oh, let’s not get into the reasons why my mother is the worst. However, I am conflicted because my dad is a high school English teacher! Does this mean I am obligated to list my mother by default?!
I went to a Catholic High School that was also a College Prep School so I had a LOTTTTTT of teachers that were absolutely fantastic, many of whom were better teachers who plumbed the depths of their subjects much deeper than professors at the state university I attended. One of my high school teachers was really into sports and when he was in college decided that he would be a gym teacher and just Coach All The Sports so he majored in phys ed. His adviser took him aside and said no, baby, no, you will never get a job. Pick a subject you can teach that’s not gym. Pick two subjects. Make yourself valuable. So he selected History and wound up teaching History and Sociology and coached Tennis at my high school. I had never been a fan of History before that, although I loved biographies and autobiographies and historic fiction, because every single History teacher I’d had previously had used boring text books and focused mainly on dates. This teacher? He was EXCITED about history. he told STORIES about PEOPLE. It was INTERESTING. He was a pretty big game changer for me because he got me interested in something I wasn’t interested in before, and I wound up pursuing a minor in History in college. He was also really good at shutting down harassing behavior in class.
You are correct, madam (or mister)!
As the granddaughter of a beloved and now gone teacher, if you can find his family and tell them, trust me, it will delight them. My family loves hearing about the lives my grandmother touched and the funny memories people have of her.
I suspect this is because a disproportionately large number of English teachers know what it’s like to either A) give up on a dream or B) not have a dream to begin with. That’s how you become an English teacher.
My old middle school Algebra teacher. He was fantastic. I was always a dunce at math and he never once made me feel silly for asking a thousand questions over and over again. Very patient and funny. The perfect combination.