World-Shaker

My Favourite Teacher: Les

I had never really done very well in school. I ended up having to re-do my year 11 and 12 certificate in a condensed, no fun course. Well, I thought it would be no fun… I ended up in Les’ class. Les was a large, round Indian man who was infectious. He wore his shirt tucked into his high pants and he belly-laughed all the time. His belly would jiggle so much that everyone couldn’t help but join in. When we had tests, he would put bowl of candy on the the front of everyone’s desks and cook hot dogs at the front of the class.

This man was absolutely PASSIONATE about Shakespeare and poetry. He even got me loving it. There was a moment in class when a girl was giving a speech and lost her bookmark for the quote from Hamlet she wanted to read. Les asked her what she was looking for and she explained. He asked to see what edition she had and then he said, “I’m not positive, but I think it’s about page 43, Act II, Scene III”… he was spot on. We were all in awe.

When he retired, we put together about 20 quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, even mixing some up to try to trick him. But he was not tricked on one.

I remember a day when he asked us to read a play out loud. It had an Indian character and he INSISTED that we read it in the heaviest Indian accent we could muster. His belly heaved up and down with uncontrollable shaking as he listened to us attempt to re-create his accent.

Les’ only weakness was his habit of falling asleep. When we were speaking, he would often nod-off - even snoring - yet he seemed to never miss a word we said. He told me that one day, he fell asleep just as he was a few houses away from home. He ended up driving into the front of his neighbour’s house!

Les’ son was an academic genius, but had the common sense of a… ummm… well he had none. He once drove me home and explained to me that he had a cassette tape (this was a long time ago, obviously) stuck in the car player - in fact, it had been stuck there for almost a year. He’d tried pulling it, it tried pressing the eject button, he’d even had a knife in there. I looked at the cassette, gave it a gentle pull whilst pressing the eject button and was surprised that it came out without any force. The boy who rarely got below 100% on any test or essay and who was the son of my idol, was an idiot. Ha! But I loved them both anyway.

Note from World-Shaker: You can read more about the My Favorite Teacher series here.

Mr. M

Submitted by novicephoenix as part of the My Favorite Teacher series. You can read more about this series here.

My favorite teacher from high school was Mr. M. I came from a pretty broken family. My parents were divorcing, my father struggled with alcoholism, mental illness, and there was domestic violence in our home. Worse still, when my sisters, my mother, and I escaped from my father we slept on the couches of family friends and struggled financially. To make matter worse, I was relentless bullied and teased at school. In short, by the time I reached high school, I was a complete and total mess.

But when I sat in Mr. M’s class first thing in the morning I forgot all about that. The reasons I liked him were so simple; he made me feel special; he noticed me; he listened to me, and these were the very things that I was so desperately missing at home. Each class, he would listen to our interpretations of the text, and then he would write those thoughts and they would become our notes or study guide. I felt so acknowledged as a human being like what I said mattered and that my ideas were special to someone. In a time that I needed parents, I came to school seeking them and although he never knew I found one in him. As a teacher now, I know that some students have looked to me to fill that role, and even though they don’t know, that’s one of the reasons as to why I’m in education.

Not the usual cup of tea…

Submitted by slappdash as part of the My Favorite Teacher series. Click here to learn more.

My high school Theatre teacher was and is my favorite teacher to this day. Now normally, we wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from a subject like Theatre in the academic forum but in this case, my teacher’s contribution to me was more than simply intellectual. He gave me the courage and will to strive for and achieve what I wanted, be it whatever it was at the time, with any kind of connotation or risk factor or anything like that. He paid specific attention to myself as well as every single one of his avid and listening students while single-handedly managing entire productions at the school with massive casts and crews, as well as classes and jobs outside school. In addition to this, he retained a cheery and forgiving attitude in the face of a tough commute, low teaching wages, a struggling relationship and what seemed from the outside to be manic depression and anxiety brought on by fighting alcoholism and the typical ADHD that is seen so commonly throughout the performing arts community. Yet the man was a genius, a genius with patience at that, and always helped every student at every level to achieve their greatest success.

Only a year into his course, being thoroughly impressed with him, did I find out that my teacher and hero was an open homosexual in a family of 6 brothers and a father, all heterosexual and most of whom were homophobic.

Note from World-Shaker: I feel like there’s so much more to this story…

My Favorite Teacher: Mr. DiLeo

via stfuminjakid

He’s probably the first adult I’ve ever fully trusted. He broke that barrier that I put between myself and everyone else.

My favorite teacher was my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Chris DiLeo. I was transferred to his class during the second week of school. At first I thought he was a jerk (he looked like a “prep” or “jock”, so I assumed he was a bully). I was 17 years old and had a chip on my shoulder. I was a huge rebel and very angry at the world. My GPA was barely a 2.0 and I was failing all of my classes; my guidance counselor started growing tired of trying to push me.

Somehow, over the school year, Mr. D got through to me. My grades gradually improved and eventually I began getting 80’s and 90’s with ease. In June my class was saying their good-byes, and in his yearbook I proclaimed that he was like a brother to me. I assumed that would be the end of it, a nice gesture given to some teacher. At the time I had no idea that I was barely scratching the surface.

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My Favorite Teacher: Mr. Andersen (Part 2)

via Joules Kilmurray

Quick note from World-Shaker: Mr. Andersen actually had two of his former students submit him as their favorite teacher for this feature. I think it’s exceptional that two different people on a site with millions of users would end up submitting the same person. This is a long read, but absolutely worth it. I think many educators would kill for a student to be so affected by their teaching.

In the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell discusses how students form an impression of their teacher within eight seconds of meeting the teacher, and usually this opinion formed in the first eight seconds of their relationship does not change over the course of the class. This was never more true than with the case of AP Biology teacher. Before I had a chance to find a seat, I was captured by my teacher. Never had I seen a teacher who exuded so much energy and so much passion about teaching biology. He reminded me of a kid with ADD, never staying in one place, constantly moving, but he spoke loudly, excitedly, and in a way that made everyone in the room automatically respect him. His name was Paul Andersen. “Is he on drugs?” My friend Cory turned around to whisper to me.

“I think he just really likes Biology,” I whispered back, and we laughed. I looked up and Mr. Andersen was looking right at me.

“No talking while I’m talking, please.” He said. For the rest of the class I didn’t dare say a word, even when Cory would turn around to whisper to me. I knew within eight seconds of entering Mr. Andersen’s fourth period AP Biology classroom that he would be an incredible teacher. What I didn’t realize in that first eight seconds, and what I didn’t realize until almost a year later, was that Mr. Andersen would change my life forever.

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My Favorite Teacher: Miss Treneman

via amazingsauce

My favorite teacher is Ms. Treneman and she teaches all the science classes at my high school. I’ve had her for biology, physical science, field ecology, AP biology and physics. She’s great because she is really into what she teaches, she always has lots of labs and field trips. Other teachers have maybe one field trip a year but in AP bio and Field Ecology she has at least one a month. She assigns a lot of work but she’ll modify the due dates and take into consideration the needs of the students. She knows everyone by name and if one has an older sibling that went to the same school then she knows them too. She tells hilarious stories about her life and will answer most questions about her opinions on things honestly. She is just a great teacher.

My Favorite Teacher: Miss Turner

via zephyrintheskyatnight

My favourite teacher was Miss Turner, My drama teacher. She was my favourite teacher for tonnes of reasons, one of them being she was laid back most of the time, apart from when we needed her not to be. She said we were her favourite class, and when we had her for last period on a friday, we invented ‘Fizzy Friday’ where she’d bring us sweets in to keep us going! last year of highschool was a rough time for me, and her classes always cheered me up. The message she left in my year book still makes me smile on a bad day, with the advice ‘Remember to breathe’ at the end. She was a brilliant teacher!

My Favorite Teacher: She Opened My Eyes

via allowtheoceantowakeinyou

My favorite teacher would have to be from Contemporary World Issues my senior year. I’ve always been an A+ student, and world-minded, but that class… beginning with an intensive human trafficking unit.. was mind-blowing. It’s part of the reason that I am volunteering in Ecuador this year and this teachers is even more the driving force because her organization (Woodland for Women Worldwide, co-founded just last year with my superly awesome AP psych teacher) gave me a $2000 scholarship to go, aside from donating about $20,000 to Somali Mam and CAMFED. And god, it doesn’t even stop there.. She’s given me about $550 I think just out of her own pocket because she wants me to explore while I’m here and have an amazing time. She sent me a box of cookies from home and I’m still waiting to devour them :) I truly love her so much.

Note from world-shaker: If you feel comfortable sending me her name, I’ll update this post with it :o)

My Favorite Teacher: Card-worthy

via steph-chu-a

She was the first teacher I ever personally drew a card for. She pushed us to our limits and believed in us even when we didn’t ourselves. She asked us guiding questions to reach our own answers rather than spoon feeding them to us. It was very tough but we loved her because she worked harder than us. It motivated us to do better and not slack off because she was working hard herself. She gave us most of her life for the 2 years even though it would not earn her more money. She spent a lot of time and money (big rewards) on us. We did not agree with her sometimes but was always accepting of what she said because, how could we be rebellious kids after all she had done for us. We might have disappointed her a lot of times but she never put us down. She scolded us asked us ridiculously hard questions to toughen us but she never made me feel downright stupid. Even though she never said, I feel that she believed in me because she never gave me up. She may not be the most knowledgeable teacher but she is the best teacher I have ever had.

Note from world-shaker: If you feel comfortable sending me her name, I’ll update this post with it :o)

My Favorite Teacher: Mrs. Martin

via greeneyedpirate

My favorite teacher was my high school English teacher, Mrs. Martin. I liked her so much that I took AP English my senior year just because she was teaching it, despite not needing the credit *and* taking another English class simultaneously. She treated her students like the intelligent, capable young adults we were rather than holding our hands and spoon-feeding us the material. She always picked challenging reading material and expected us to get through all of our reading in a remarkably short time. My parents and colleagues are always impressed when they make a literary reference and I can respond, “Oh yes, the Mahabharata, isn’t it? We read that in high school”. Thanks, Mrs. Martin!

My Favorite Teacher: Mr. Andersen

via thickney

My favorite teacher? Definitely Paul Andersen, who I had in sophomore year for AP Bio.

Mr. Andersen was a good teacher from the very beginning, because he made class fun. But around the halfway point of the year, he decided to try to do things differently. Our school had recently gotten Moodle (an internet service for schools), and he started to use it more in class. When he did, he was amazed by the fact that the students who worked hard and learned a lot from Moodle weren’t necessarily the ones who did well in a traditional classroom environment.

Thus began “the Moodle experiment” - for one unit, he decided to give us freedom in the way we learned, using Moodle to help. We sat down and planned out the days - he would give a lecture at the beginning, and then another one for review the day before the test, and the rest of the time, we were free to do what we wanted to do in class.

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My Favorite Teacher: Mrs. Phinizy (Help a fellow Tumblr out)

via lol-livinoutloud

Mrs. Phinizy - Wonder Where You Are These Days

My father was killed in action in 1969. At the time we were living in the Philippines. The night we found out, my brother and I were asked if we wanted to participate in a sleep over, about a week after that, we were moved back to the states where we lived on my grandparents on a farm in Iowa until mom got a civil servant position at Eglin AFB. With three kids under the age of 8 my newly widowed mom moved us down to Florida where I was enrolled at Val-P elementary. I was in second grade. When I found out my teacher’s first name was the same as mine, I was hoping she was nice.

I tended to be a teacher’s helper most of my life and I know it started with Mrs. Phinizy allowing me to assist her after school because she knew I was going home to an empty house and would wait with my brother for my mom to get home from work. Mrs. Phinizy as I recall, was kind and understanding to a kid who just lost her dad and was now having to grow up a little faster.

Click through to read more (so I don’t Bogart your Dashboard).

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My Favorite Teacher: The Singer

via victoryship

When I was in sixth grade, we had a science teacher who turned every piece of valuable information that we needed to remember into songs. She made Newton’s laws into a jingle that I still replay in my head in science classes. When I took my high school state standardized tests, I sang some of her songs to myself in order to answer questions. She even made Usher’s song Yeah into a song about acceleration. She had us make up our own songs when we did group projects, and a few old elementary school friends and I were reminiscing about how we still remember all the words to our song about volcanoes. She was a great teacher and truly educated us in a way that very few teachers can: we actually remember what she taught us.

Note from world-shaker: If you are comfortable sending me her name, I’ll update this post with it :o)

My Favorite Teacher…ended up my coworker

via girlwithalessonplan

Andrea was my freshman year literature teacher. She was sassy, but no nonsense. Stern, but loving. And smart. Oh wow, she was smart. It seemed like I could ask her anything, and she had the answer.

At the time, I liked to write for fun. She had a creative assignment in which she had us create a new scene for “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” In mine, Walter dreamed he was on stage playing Hamlet.

She went bonkers for it, and asked if she could keep it to show future students. I look back on that moment in my writing “career” as my First Step.

Andrea was my teacher again for AP British Literature, and it was through her I learned that history was just as important as the text. I had a stack of notecards three inches deep for her final, but a freak blizzard cancelled the test. Andrea’s pushing made me want to shovel out my 83 Honda Accord and go take that test and own it.

When my alma mater hired me as an English teacher, Andrea was next door, and I felt safe. She never looked at me as a Former Student, but she took care of me still by pep talking me, letting me vent, commiserating, and laughing with me.

And we still laughed I never took that AP final, but I could still rattle off word-for-word the definition of an epic poem.

My Favorite Teacher: Mr. Heinitz

via almasdiary

In high school, my English teacher Mr Heinitz was the only one who was paying attention to my voice. My dad lived on the other side of the world, my mom was distracted by their divorce and I spent a lot of time writing short stories. Mr Heinitz actually read them, and that alone was pretty life-changing. He even didn’t think it weird that I wrote a story about a girl who lived underwater. It probably helped that he had long hair and wore tie-dyed socks, which was quite noteworthy in a conservative suburban town.

Instead of questioning how my characters could breathe underwater, he invited me as a guest author to his senior creative writing class (I was a sophomore). Turned out most of them definitely did think it weird that I wrote a story about a girl who lived underwater. Still, to sit there and have people talk about my story was incredible.

With that and many other memories in my heart, I set out to be a high school English teacher, too. I made it one whole semester before quitting. I learned that to be awesome in the classroom, you’ve got to sacrifice a lot of awesome outside of the classroom, because grading and reading and writing takes a whole lot of time and, often, crying.

As an adult, I now empathize better, and I’ve come to realize that Mr Heinitz’ attention to my stories not required by his job, it was on his own time. For that, and for him, I am grateful.