It's Teacher Appreciation Week. Tell Me About A Favorite Teacher Of Yours

[Dinger]

For me, it was my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Laubenstein. She encouraged me in so many ways, especially in reading. I learned to love reading from her, and from my mom. I also liked that she was a talented musician. That was where I developed an interest in classical piano, and music in general. Thank you Mrs. Laubenstein!

[uppityperson]

1. High school Latin Teacher who treated us like people, not schizoid hormonal ridden teens

Thanks for being that way Ms. Forrest.

[Auggie]

2. My high school art teacher

In an Ohio town where high school sports reigned supreme, his classes on the humanities were an oasis of sanity and reason.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. My Elementary Science professor in college

It was an all female class and none of us were scientists. And Mr Mummy was awesome.

One day as we walked into class, he handed each of us a battery, a piece of copper wire, and a light bulb. And he said "Make the light come on".

I was pissed. I didn't have any idea how to do that. How dare this teacher ask us to do something he had never taught us?

Then I got it. As I fiddled with that wire and watched my classmates try to figure this out, I understood. I didn't get how to make the bulb light but I got what he was doing. I remember telling him "There's a method to your madness, isn't there?" And Mr Mummy smiled.

Eventually I figured out how to make that light come on and I could do it with my eyes closed today, over 30 years later.

But what I really remember is that was the day I got it. That was the day I first understood what teaching was all about. And I like to think I am a little bit better teacher because of the things Mr Mummy taught me, like how to make students want to learn how to make that light come on.

[frazzled]

4. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Eliot

She let a group of us read those little blue or orange covered biography books about famous Americans--Dolly Madison, Betsy Ross, Thomas Jefferson, etc.--and had us discuss them in our little wooden chairs in a circle. She had us build papier mâché models of each of the nine planets and their suns, paint them, and then suspend them in a perfectly scaled version of the solar system on wires from the ceiling.

This was around 1957-8. After that year, a new school was built in our area, and so I never saw Mrs. Eliot again. But a dozen years or so later, when I was home from college during the summer, at age 19 or 20, the phone rang one night and I was called to answer it. It was Mrs. Eliot. She was just wondering (after all those years!) what I was doing and how my education was going. I was absolutely stunned someone would take an interest in a student from so long ago.

I'll never forget her.

[nevergiveup]

5. My fourth grade teacher

She was also a Great Aunt and ultimately became one of my favorite people in life. There were maybe 10 in my classroom......rural America 1950's. She was born with one leg much shorter than the other but she never missed a step in life and she had a great laugh that I can still hear to this day. She was also an incredible teacher that kept all of her students on the edge of their seats laughing and learning for 9 months.

[Loki]

6. Her name was Grace Davidson

and she was my third grade teacher. She made learning magical. I have one more to honor and remember and he was my college history professor David Stockmeyer. He made history come alive and there were waiting lists to get into his classes. He wore the same suit, tie and shoes the entire year, but my love for history comes from this extraordinary man. Thank you Mrs. Davidson and Mr. Stockmeyer, you gave me one the the greatest gifts you can give, a love of learning. If you're not learning, you're not living.

[Arctic Dave]

7. Mrs. Liechliter fifth grade, she gave me the love poetry.

Mr. Fant, sixth grade, he gave me the love of reading. I didn't care for him as a kid but when I got older I was able to appreciate him. I was able to tell him thank you at my grandmothers memorial.
All my teachers my senior year of high school. They were down to earth treated you as a young adult.

I thank them all.

I

[prairierose]

8. Dr. Wolfe, my linguistics and lit professor and...

a member of my committee. She always made classes interesting even when I was still terrified about being in grad school. She convinced me to take a linguistics class for one of my first grad school summer classes. The very first day of class, I felt that I was at least 2 years behind everyone else in class. When I told her this, she said, " I told you this was an intro class. Give it a little time." She was right, by the end of the class, I knew the language and understood what the class was about. She gave me confidence in my abilities and encouraged my love of learning. And never stopped giving me a hard time as long as I was there. She always made me laugh and kept asking hard questions that made me think.

[SheilaT]

9. So many good teachers.

In a way I'm fortunate that I went to elementary, junior, and senior high school in a time when women had few career options, and so many of the best and brightest went into teaching. But none of them behaved as if they thought they should have been doing something better.

There's Mrs. Green, my 6th grade teacher who had a reputation for being the toughest sixth grade teacher in the school, and she was, but boy, did I learn a lot. Mrs. Goodrow, 7th grade social studies who taught me how to figure out chronological order, and how to find things. Mr. Cuneo, 9th grade social studies teacher whose contempt for those who couldn't think for themselves made me realize I was supposed to think for myself. Mr. Haugh, high school math teacher for two years whose teaching was so amazing that thirty years after his math class I tested into Algebra II in my local community college, and discovered in that class that I remembered a great deal of the content of what I'd learned three decades earlier. Mr. Sterrett, who I had for both junior and senior English, whose love of language and literature was palpable, and who also taught grammar well. Any mistakes I make these days are because I've forgotten what he tried to teach me. M. LoMaglio, my French teacher for three years. I'll be going to my 45th high school reunion in the fall and I still can speak, read, and understand French pretty decently.

[TexasProgresive]

10. My junior and senior English teacher

At the time I thought he was the worst. He was a strict disciplinarian who evoked a sense of physical as well as mental power. We didn't like that much. But he was the best teacher ever. He took such care that we learned how to express ourselves in the spoken and written word. They don't make them like Fr. Wick anymore, maybe they never did. He and my sophomore English teacher are both gone now, may they rest in peace.

There were many other great teachers at all levels of my education, a very few were bad. Teachers rock!

[Zen_fighter]

11. my father!

Teacher, coach, my dad! I followed his footsteps!

[Starry Messenger]

12. Mrs. Oakes in Eighth grade

She was the only teacher at my Catholic school who really took me under her wing. She noticed I was struggling in the wake of my parents nasty divorce and getting bullied by classmates for it. She worked with me a lot to figure out what lit me up and encouraged me to strengthen my skills in those areas. She was very tactful and had a gift for getting a student to feel that they were following their own volition.

My other favorite is Mr. Haynes from high school. I changed to a public school after a really bad 9th grade year at Catholic high school and he really helped me a lot. He was the Art teacher. He went the extra mile for me, helping me with my portfolio for colleges and breaking it to my parents that I was going to be an artist and they'd better get used to the idea. :D Nicely of course, but it really made a difference.

[Mojorabbit]

13. Marie Mozer

She was a retired nurse and taught a health care class in 11th grade in 1973. She took me under her wing and is the reason I went on to become an RN. I owe so much to her. She mentored me in a thousand ways. I will never forget her.

[LWolf]

14. I had many of them. Here are a few:

The kindergarten teacher who used to let me read to the rest of the class during "nap" time.

My 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson. We hatched chicks, we grew a garden, we raised silkworms and spun silk from their cocoons...and she kept track of how much we read with "bookworms" on the walls: a circle with a face and antennae for the head, and every book read was a circle added, so that they grew around the room. Mine was the longest; probably why I remember my "bookwork" with such affection, lol.

My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Koenders, who read "My Side of the Mountain" and "Gone Away Lake" to the class, and kept us well-supplied with book orders so that I could grow my home library in a cost-effective way.

My 9th grade English teacher, who recognized my adolescent self-esteem issues and reached out to make sure I recognized my own value.

My 11th and 12th grade World and American Lit teacher, who challenged me and moved me beyond getting the easy As I was used to, into actually improving my ability to think critically about reading.

My undergrad philosophy prof, who FORCED us to think critically about everything.

My undergrad social science prof who both made class fun and challenging. I had a geography class and a class on native american history with him. Twenty years later, my younger son did archeology classes with him, which included spending several weeks on digs out near Death Valley every spring and summer.

The cultural geography prof who assigned a personal history project that connected me to family I'd never met nor heard of.

David Loertscher at SJSU, who introduced me to the world of distance learning.