Tell us about your favorite teacher (more)

[Sue]

I'm think about inspirational classroom teachers because of Trey's post. But it can be any type of teacher (except your kids -- maybe we could do that somewhere else., ;-))

[Sue]

Mr. Douglas my 4th grade teacher was my most favorite teacher. He drove a forest green VW bug with a huge dent in the roof (looked like an ashtray) he was creative an dhad a great sense of humor. He told ghost stroies and played April fools jokes! On April 1st when I was in 4th grade, so 1980, when we came to school Mr. Douglas played and April Fools joke on us right away. He told us we needed to get it out of our system because he had a very important day ahead. He proceeded to tell us about this MAJOR ttest we had to take. You had to pass to get out of fourth grade. It was super important, etc... But it was NOT an April fools joke. So he spent all day teaching/reviewing to this test. Up until lunch noone believe it was real. But whe he kept teaching us like we were going to have this test we started to believe him. At the end of the day we were ready for this test! LOL! Then he said "April fools!" :rofl:

I also remember the worls longest long divison problem. He kept adding number sto the end of the division problem! It went off the cauk board, down the aisle and up that back wall! And I can't remeber how long it took to do, but most of our math period I am sure!

[hamamelis]

My 5th grade teacher, Mr Nightingale. He was a tall, thin redhead with a matching beard. He brought his guitar in and we sang songs. He was as cool and gentle and sweet as his name. He arranged for our class to go to a week-long conservation school/camp during the school year- through his work and that camp, I learned that if the pilgrims had plastic when they were here, the plastic would still be littering our lands. We painted a life-sized blue whale on our school playground when we were studying marine life. I learned how chickens reproduced :-P He was the first guy teacher I ever had and just loved him and his fun and gentle way of teaching. As a matter of fact, he reminds me a lot of the teacher who DD will be having this coming year.

A few years ago I got nosy and googled his name. It turns out he's working kind of nearby here and a former co-worker of mine was at the same company. He and I exchanged a few emails and I learned that when he had children of his own, he and his wife homeschooled :loveit:.

When I was in his class I wanted to be in 5th grade forever. I think I still do.

[gfrach]

My high school art teacher. (Ms Easley who got married later and became Mrs Brown.)

She was great--she became very close to my best friend and I and we would go camping with her and white water canoeing and all sorts of stuff. She was just a wonderful person.

Then my best friend died in our junior year and I didn't take art my senior year and I lost touch with her. I wish I hadn't. :-(

[Sue]

(((((Rach)))) sorry about your friend. I lost my cousin (who I was very close to) in high school as well (well the summer before HS started, she was in HS). It's a particularly HARD loss.

But maybe you could google your teacher and reconnect?

Sue

[Sue]

Cool!! I love the whale painting idea! ~nt

[gfrach]

I've tried and I can't find her. She's not still teaching at the same school and Brown is such a popular last name.

And it is a hard loss--I'm sorry about your cousin.

[darcy]

Mrs. Ftorek (though I call her Tessa now :-)). She was my teacher for 3rd and 4th grade. We had a tiny school with 2 grades in each classroom. I had skipped 2nd grade, so was the littlest and youngest in a class with kids I didn't really know, and she made sure that I got enough attention. She really and truly cared about *every* kid she taught, she found strengths and talents and encouraged them. She did a play and music program every year, which was the only "arts" experience we had in such a tiny school.

I really could go on and on about her, I loved her so much, and she really changed my life. We're still friends now, 25 years later.

[Bickery]

I had many good ones!

I think it's a tie between an English teacher in HS and my 3rd grade teacher, who wrote and had us perform many plays. I can still remember snippets of them -- I had the entire things memorized for years!

But really only a couple of stinkers in the whole 15 years of preschool-highschool.

[Hobbes]

I'm think about inspirational classroom teachers because of Trey's post. But it can be any type of teacher (except your kids -- maybe we could do that somewhere else., ;-))
Either Mrs. Dewey, Ms. Wallace or Brother Bradshaw

Mrs. Dewey was my 3rd grade teacher (Robert E. Lee Elementary). She was a strict taskmaster and very "German" (she told me how she married her husband after the war.. he was an American soldier, etc). She was the one that taught me to read after my 2nd grade teacher told my mother I was "retarded" and would have to go to special schools my entire life. Mrs. Dewey BELIEVED in me and kept me after school every day for an hour teaching me to read. By the end of 3rd grade I was reading 7-8th grade books. I owe her a huge debt of gratitude.. HUGE HUGE HUGE.

Ms. Wallace was my High School English teacher (Rocky Mountain High School). She was free-wheeling, liberal, bohemian who had a pet donkey and a beehive in her house (well, the entrance was on the outside, the hive was glass on the inside of the house). She inspired me to love poetry and to find art in everything, including science. She really inspired me to believe I could do what I strove for. She inspired me to love learning.

Brother Bradshaw was my biology teacher in college (Brigham Young University). He really inspired me to LOVE biology and evolution and showed me how to teach and why teaching was such a fun thing. It was because of him I was inspired to continue on to get my Ph.D., to teach. He also taught me that teaching biology (or any subject) was more than just passing on information (a computer can do that), it was caring about the student and their lives and caring about inspiration and finding out what it was that made them love learning.

I owe these three teachers a hell of a lot.

[Hobbes]

Mrs. Ftorek (though I call her Tessa now :-)). She was my teacher for 3rd and 4th grade. We had a tiny school with 2 grades in each classroom. I had skipped 2nd grade, so was the littlest and youngest in a class with kids I didn't really know, and she made sure that I got enough attention. She really and truly cared about *every* kid she taught, she found strengths and talents and encouraged them. She did a play and music program every year, which was the only "arts" experience we had in such a tiny school.

I really could go on and on about her, I loved her so much, and she really changed my life. We're still friends now, 25 years later.
That's cool that you are friends now, 25 years later.

I love reading these stories, it really reminds me how much teachers touch our lives.

[Hobbes]

oh... that could be another thread.. the stinkers :(.. I had two, but I won't go into it here.. it'd spoil the thread...

[gfrach]

Oh, I wasn't even thinking about college. I have to add in Bob Boenig, too. He was a great professor and we became friends, too. He really opened my eyes a lot about thinking about literature.

[Sue]

That's awesome! ~nt

[Sue]

I had many good ones!

I think it's a tie between an English teacher in HS and my 3rd grade teacher, who wrote and had us perform many plays. I can still remember snippets of them -- I had the entire things memorized for years!

But really only a couple of stinkers in the whole 15 years of preschool-highschool.

Glad to here the good outweighed the bad. ;-)

[Sue]

Cool one for each phase in your life. :-) And they all seem so different! :-)

[Hawthorne]

I had really bad school experiences overall, especially in middle school, so the ones that stood out to me were really, truly special.
The first is Ms. Doriot, who was just the most kind, caring individual. She taught my 6th grade P.E. & Health and set aside time after class to work with me one on one to learn to swim. I was terrified of it and still don't know how, but she wanted to make me feel comfortable (I had stopped bringing my swimsuit and refused to get in the pool at one point). She always checked up on me and had an intuitive ability to know what I was feeling, even in the following years when she was no longer my teacher.
Unfortunately, she was murdered around 1995 by some random guy, who was caught within a few hours with the knife on the seat to his pickup. I still think about her a lot.

Another was someone who I saw struggle and I think I appreciated that in a way because she was so human. She was my 8th grade science teacher who no one in the class could follow. I never knew what she was asking for in her assignments, and neither did the rest of the class. I was already failing that year in every subject and she ended up not returning the following year. I always saw her as a really cool, eccentric person who wasn't meant to be in the public school system. She stuck a bathtub full of goldfish in the middle of the room, and told us about living in a teepee with her family for a year. She never judged me for my struggle and tried very hard to connect with me. I was pretty much broken at that point because of the way other teachers were treating me, but I knew that Mrs. V really cared. I was not just another student to be pulled down in the undertow.

Then in my very short lived 9th grade year, there was Mr. Sorrel, who was, again, a health teacher. He was amazed at the work that I put into simple assignments and loved my detailed nature. I laughed at his jokes when the rest of the class rolled their eyes. When I dropped out he called my mom to check on me and was very concerned. He wanted to talk to me, but I refused, and he also offered to come by the house (I was horrified at the time).

I don't know if I could even talk about the pain caused to me by the stinkers. They ARE what prevented me from finishing school, which is screwed up.

[Sue]

:-( :sob: How sad! ~nt

[MmMelody]

Do College profs count? http://www.ozarker.org/bob/ Thats him. Seriously, click the link, and you'll see how he's obviously either a love him or hate him professor. He was my organic chem professor (and toxicology, environmental chem and others), and the sponsor for my campus environmental coalition. He's a feisty old guy, and would sometimes rant about politics in class. Not only did he teach the subject well, but graded on a realistic bell curve, which I loved. I has his organic TA for 2 years, and worked on the construction of his conversion system for bio-diesel (from used cooking oil to fuel for his car). He drives an old diesel Mercedes and when I transferred out, he hadn't bought gas from a station in over a year. Even cooler, he was into photography and understood my drive to switch majors and schools after studying chemistry for 3 years.

The other was Mrs. Wang. She was also a chemistry teacher, but in hs, not college. I took her chem class, then ap chem, and then did a private class with her my senior year (i was a year ahead in science because I transferred in 8th grade from FL). We had a blast, and most people hate her class but loved her. She would make you write answers on the board, and if you wrote, say '8.423254' as the answer as opposed to '8.423254 moles' she would loudly say '8 what? Shoelaces? as she peered over her bifocals. She really saw potential in me and nominated me for the gifted program and governors school, and we had a great relationship. We made fireworks and played with chemiluminescence (in essence I made the solutions that are in glow sticks and tinkered w/ it) in the private class with her.
Oh, and she called the large group of much older women that had been teaching in the school the 'old bitty committy' (which, heh, they totally were).