I've had many wonderful teachers but the first to really alter my lifelong self-image was Mrs. A, my senior year honors English teacher. She challenged us to read really advanced literature--Ellison! Dostoevsky! Bronte! Faulkner!--but I also did a creative writing assignment for her, a historical fiction piece about my grandmother as a teenager during the Belfast Blitz. She gave me 100 on the assignment and added a note to come talk to her about it. So I did, and we talked, and she was so encouraging of my writing. Years later, she called my parents to ask if I'd become a teacher (I had considered it, but didn't; I was working for a newspaper). She wanted to offer me a job.
I love the tidbit joke. A woman substitute teacher I once had for high school French, leading up to Thanksgiving, told a joke that I still tell:
Do you know how to catch a turkey? First you have to dig a deep hole, deep enough that he can't flap out. This is important: you have to dump a bucket of fireplace ashes down in the hole. Then you get a bag of green peas and line them up around the entire perimeter of the hole; turkeys love peas, you see. Then, when the turkey comes to take a pea you kick him in the ash hole.
Fellow Minnesotan here! I've been fortunate to have not just one, but several English literature teachers who have inspired me throughout my life, beginning with Mr. Hoemke in 6th grade, to Mr. E and Mrs. D in 11th and 12th grade. Mr. E and Mrs. D were actually married, and taught in classrooms right next to each other. They had no children and used their summers off to travel the world together, and that in itself was a lesson, similar to how your teacher chose the less prestigious path to maximize time wiith her children. Instead, they choose to maximize time they could see and experience new cultures. Mrs. D in particular would talk about how much pressure she received from her family, society, and random strangers that she just met to have kids. But for her it was a choice about how to arrange your life for what you wanted it to be, even if it didn't fit others definitions. I've always wanted kids and recently welcomed my first baby girl, but I still remember that lesson.
Mr. E was quite different, but he taught me that it was okay to love literature and have fun with it - that it wasn't all stuffy and self-serious. I was a bit of a class clown, but still read all the books and had a lot to say in class discussions. He could have chosen to be annoyed with my mannerisms and teenage humor that I inserted into the discussions, but he encouraged it because he understood that wrapped up inside was my desire to understand what these authors were trying to tell us about being human. Mr. E also held us to higher expectations. He wrote as a film critic for an online publication on the side, and taught an Art of Film class which I took as well. I remember as we were all going around the room and announcing the movies we wanted to review, and I announced some big blockbuster comedy movie for my choice. He stopped and said, in a lighthearted way, that no he wouldn't allow me to pick that film. I gave a few other ideas of movies I knew, all of which were similarly one-dimensional. He dismissed all of them and when I asked why he said, "because you are too smart to spend your time with those kinds of movies, when there are so many better ones!" Finally we compromised on Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and that movie is still one of my favorites to this day.
Thanks for giving me the chance to relive these memories, and remember how awesome my teachers have been. Your stories brightened my morning.
Hands down my most inspiring teacher was Bobby Joe Bilyeu, my speech and debate coach. He always introduced himself the first day by saying his name was Bobby Joe: “Not ‘Robert Joseph.’” He taught me humility and the joy of taking pride in one’s abilities. He coached me to 7th in the nation two years in a row. I think about him all the time.
“I met many interesting people—most of whom belonged to a self-selected group of people interested in piranha necklaces, but still.”
Haha love it! How sad that she died so young.
Some teachers who changed my life:
The hippies who ran my Head Start program. I was four, but I still remember them. I had a grand time in Head Start.
Fourth grade teacher who was very kind, knew by intuition (or maybe it was a convo with my mother) there was something really wrong at home, and gave me a lot of confidence / positive attention. Mrs. Gaines stayed in touch with me over the summer too.
Eighth grade English teacher who encouraged me to apply to a fancy boarding school even though the people who were coming to recruit at our crappy middle school were specifically looking for ethnic minority students. (The teacher was part of an ethnic minority too-- but she wanted everyone to have a chance.) She thought I could get in anyway. (My mother’s first response, on the other hand, was “You’ll NEVER get in!”) Mrs. May was right.
Without the influence of school and teachers, I’d’a prolly been a mess.
While I've certainly had many good teachers, I've never had that one quintessential "teacher that changed my life" or acted as a real mentor for me. Many had talent, good advice, patience, and inspiration, but for me just here and there, spread out over many years.
The one incident I can say I do remember clearly did change my life. My senior year of college I was one credit short on my English requirements, so I took a class in phoenetics. The English majors nearly scared me off of it because it had a reputation for being very hard, and the professor, Dr. Dummer (she wasn't!!) to be a bit of a hard-ass (she was!) She warned us early on that it didn't matter how hard you worked, it mattered to get the answers right. That some of us would find the material easy to understand, and we'd get A's with little effort, while others would struggle and work hard, but still be lucky to pass with a C. Harsh. She'd say things like "I'm happy to answer any question you ask. But really, most of it is in the book, read ahead, figure it out for yourselves. It will serve you better in the long run, I assure you." I took that with me to grad school, and it made all the difference.
Mr. D, my h.s. Latin Teacher.
I've had many wonderful teachers but the first to really alter my lifelong self-image was Mrs. A, my senior year honors English teacher. She challenged us to read really advanced literature--Ellison! Dostoevsky! Bronte! Faulkner!--but I also did a creative writing assignment for her, a historical fiction piece about my grandmother as a teenager during the Belfast Blitz. She gave me 100 on the assignment and added a note to come talk to her about it. So I did, and we talked, and she was so encouraging of my writing. Years later, she called my parents to ask if I'd become a teacher (I had considered it, but didn't; I was working for a newspaper). She wanted to offer me a job.
I love the tidbit joke. A woman substitute teacher I once had for high school French, leading up to Thanksgiving, told a joke that I still tell:
Do you know how to catch a turkey? First you have to dig a deep hole, deep enough that he can't flap out. This is important: you have to dump a bucket of fireplace ashes down in the hole. Then you get a bag of green peas and line them up around the entire perimeter of the hole; turkeys love peas, you see. Then, when the turkey comes to take a pea you kick him in the ash hole.
Fellow Minnesotan here! I've been fortunate to have not just one, but several English literature teachers who have inspired me throughout my life, beginning with Mr. Hoemke in 6th grade, to Mr. E and Mrs. D in 11th and 12th grade. Mr. E and Mrs. D were actually married, and taught in classrooms right next to each other. They had no children and used their summers off to travel the world together, and that in itself was a lesson, similar to how your teacher chose the less prestigious path to maximize time wiith her children. Instead, they choose to maximize time they could see and experience new cultures. Mrs. D in particular would talk about how much pressure she received from her family, society, and random strangers that she just met to have kids. But for her it was a choice about how to arrange your life for what you wanted it to be, even if it didn't fit others definitions. I've always wanted kids and recently welcomed my first baby girl, but I still remember that lesson.
Mr. E was quite different, but he taught me that it was okay to love literature and have fun with it - that it wasn't all stuffy and self-serious. I was a bit of a class clown, but still read all the books and had a lot to say in class discussions. He could have chosen to be annoyed with my mannerisms and teenage humor that I inserted into the discussions, but he encouraged it because he understood that wrapped up inside was my desire to understand what these authors were trying to tell us about being human. Mr. E also held us to higher expectations. He wrote as a film critic for an online publication on the side, and taught an Art of Film class which I took as well. I remember as we were all going around the room and announcing the movies we wanted to review, and I announced some big blockbuster comedy movie for my choice. He stopped and said, in a lighthearted way, that no he wouldn't allow me to pick that film. I gave a few other ideas of movies I knew, all of which were similarly one-dimensional. He dismissed all of them and when I asked why he said, "because you are too smart to spend your time with those kinds of movies, when there are so many better ones!" Finally we compromised on Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and that movie is still one of my favorites to this day.
Thanks for giving me the chance to relive these memories, and remember how awesome my teachers have been. Your stories brightened my morning.
Hands down my most inspiring teacher was Bobby Joe Bilyeu, my speech and debate coach. He always introduced himself the first day by saying his name was Bobby Joe: “Not ‘Robert Joseph.’” He taught me humility and the joy of taking pride in one’s abilities. He coached me to 7th in the nation two years in a row. I think about him all the time.
“I met many interesting people—most of whom belonged to a self-selected group of people interested in piranha necklaces, but still.”
Haha love it! How sad that she died so young.
Some teachers who changed my life:
The hippies who ran my Head Start program. I was four, but I still remember them. I had a grand time in Head Start.
Fourth grade teacher who was very kind, knew by intuition (or maybe it was a convo with my mother) there was something really wrong at home, and gave me a lot of confidence / positive attention. Mrs. Gaines stayed in touch with me over the summer too.
Eighth grade English teacher who encouraged me to apply to a fancy boarding school even though the people who were coming to recruit at our crappy middle school were specifically looking for ethnic minority students. (The teacher was part of an ethnic minority too-- but she wanted everyone to have a chance.) She thought I could get in anyway. (My mother’s first response, on the other hand, was “You’ll NEVER get in!”) Mrs. May was right.
Without the influence of school and teachers, I’d’a prolly been a mess.
While I've certainly had many good teachers, I've never had that one quintessential "teacher that changed my life" or acted as a real mentor for me. Many had talent, good advice, patience, and inspiration, but for me just here and there, spread out over many years.
The one incident I can say I do remember clearly did change my life. My senior year of college I was one credit short on my English requirements, so I took a class in phoenetics. The English majors nearly scared me off of it because it had a reputation for being very hard, and the professor, Dr. Dummer (she wasn't!!) to be a bit of a hard-ass (she was!) She warned us early on that it didn't matter how hard you worked, it mattered to get the answers right. That some of us would find the material easy to understand, and we'd get A's with little effort, while others would struggle and work hard, but still be lucky to pass with a C. Harsh. She'd say things like "I'm happy to answer any question you ask. But really, most of it is in the book, read ahead, figure it out for yourselves. It will serve you better in the long run, I assure you." I took that with me to grad school, and it made all the difference.