The quote by Nikki Giovanni a couple of weeks ago made me think about the teachers I’ve had over the years. Who was your favorite teacher? Though I’ve had a few really good ones, I think the best would have to be Miss Morelock, my third grade teacher at Mt. Olive Elementary School.
I don’t remember a whole lot about that year, except that Miss Morelock was young and still smiled a lot, compared to the other teachers. She had long red hair and wore green more than any person I’ve ever known, before or since. She loved my handwriting skills and told me I wrote good stories. She also let me draw after I finished my classwork with huge sheets of art paper and a small bucket of Crayola crayons in every form of brokenness. I can still smell those Crayolas and I will forever be grateful to Miss Morelock for her kindness and encouragement.
What about you? Do you have a favorite teacher? I hope you had at least one teacher who made a big impact on you, who connected with you and gave you some powerful support, insight or wisdom. Many of my subscribers and I would love to hear about one of your favorite teacher. Please click the comment button and let us know!
P.S. I’m an ex-shrink who writes award-winning novels. Check out my books here.
My first ever teacher was my favourite!! She was an elderly lady who had a heart the size of the sun, and understanding of a frightened, shy girl that I’ll never forget, myself being the frightened shy one!
One of my alltime favorite teachers was John Hazard. He was an oasis in a desert of old rules, same old unimaginative school humdrum. John was my English teacher, creative writing teacher (the first creative writing course I experienced), and broadened our horizons and minds in so many ways. He had unique and fun ways of getting us out of the boredom of school-as-usual. For example, he had us take parts in a play and taught class in the auditorium so we could get out of ourselves and be more comfortable in our own skins. He took a group of us to NYC and Washington, D.C. For those of us whose families had little money to spend, he paid our ways. John opened up the world to me. Poetry, literature, finding the part inside of me that made me smile, i.e., writing. I love him always.
Bren
As strange as this will sound, my favorite teacher did not teach English or Creative Writing. Her name was Karen Madison and she taught 7th or 8th grade math (back in 1972/73). She had a well-earned reputation of being tough, but I adored her. I understood her sense of humor (subtle and rich) and would laugh at her jokes when no one else got them.
She understood math, but she also understood “different thinkers” like me. She could teach by the book, AND by the brain. She assured me on a number of occasions that certain formulas (formulae?) would ALWAYS work the way they were supposed to, even as I stood there handing her every possible variance my adolescent brain could muster. She taught me how to make math work. Heck, she taught me how to make math sweat!
She showed me that my brain wasn’t wrong, it just looks at things from a different angle. I think hers did too. I would like to know where she went from that school. I hope she continues to teach (although I’m sure she’s retired by now) so other kids like me would learn how to let their brains explore the world.
Different thinking isn’t wrong, and I would never have learned that without her.
My favorite high school teacher was an English teacher–11th grade, high school. Mrs. Selma Dubrow, or Auntie Selma as she liked her favorite students to call her–was the first big influence on how I thought. Funny, talking with ex-classmates now on Facebook, some love her and some say she was “full of herself,” and I notice the students who liked her the most worked hardest and understood school wasn’t always going to be “easy,” for Auntie Sel was *not* an easy teacher.
One of my most influential college teachers was also an English teacher, American Lit. He opened my eyes to many ways of thinking, ways of seeing America and the American “Experience” from the eyes of an outsider (as that’s how many early American writers saw it) and this has helped me grasp de Tocqueville and others from that period better. We were his last class and then he was retiring, so we got about 40 years’ of distilled experience from that man, Dr. Richard Marler.
The other influential college teacher was a film professor, Wade Black. He taught us how to analyze the elements in a film–sound design, editing rhythm, camera angle, repetition, etc. Many of these concepts can be transferred to literature as well.
What’s really sad is how few teachers in my life have been truly great. (Let me not leave out a Junior High Spanish teacher, Mr. Monahan, who was so good he taught me about 90% of the Spanish I still know. When you left his class you were very good in Spanish and I coasted through High School Spanish because of everything he had taught me.) Fewer than one percent were great teachers, and about 50% easily never should have been teachers in the first place.
Wow. There’s some great teachers out there. I hope they realize what an impact they had!
From one of my wonderful email subscribers:
“Both my parents had rather high profile careers and both travelled constantly, so I was always shipped from school to school worldwide. Until my college years, I didn’t spend enough time in one place to either bond with or get close to any teacher. To me, they were just people who did their jobs. As a result, I cherished the precious few times I got to spend as part of a little nuclear family with both my parents, and I was doted upon by both sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles. They were all my favourite teachers and guides.” T.
You know, there isn’t a teacher who sticks out for me. I’ve gotten along with many teachers. Some teachers have taught me a lot, both in the classroom and outside of it, but there’s no “favorite” that comes right to mind.
I suspect part of that has to do with my authority figure issues!
Perhaps we can become our own favorite teachers, Sonja. Or maybe we can become a favorite teacher for someone else. I don’t think teaching has to be in a classroom. It doesn’t have to be learning in a traditional sense. I think it can be in how we live our lives. Perhaps we can be someone’s favorite teacher as moms and writers and friends.
My absolute favorite is my 7th grade reading teacher , Mrs. Heather Bolitho. I had her the year she got married from her maiden name Heather Wolf into her name now (: … This past Aug was 5 years since we met at my open house for her class. She is SUCH an amazing person, mentor, & teacher. I just adore her . She has helped me through alot personally , and is like a second mom or bestfriend to me. She has left such a big impact on my life & I hope she realizes how much she means to me. Cause she really does mean a whole heck of a lot. & I am so glad I get to see her either twice or three times a week now with me volunteering. She is the librarian at the school now & I couldnt be prouder <3
My absolute favorite is my 7th grade reading teacher , Mrs. Heather Bolitho. I had her the year she got married from her maiden name Heather Wolf into her name now (: … This past Aug was 5 years since we met at my open house for her class. She is SUCH an amazing person, mentor, & teacher. I just adore her . She has helped me through alot personally , and is like a second mom or bestfriend to me. She has left such a big impact on my life & I hope she realizes how much she means to me. Cause she really does mean a whole heck of a lot. & I am so glad I get to see her either twice or three times a week now with me volunteering. She is the librarian at the school now & I couldnt be prouder <3
I just came across this post–I guess I didn’t know you in 2011. Perhaps not surprisingly, the teachers who most influenced me were all English teachers! Miss Ryan, my 7th grade English teacher and 7th and 8th grade adviser, was the first. She instilled a love of grammar and punctuation. Then in 11th grade Mrs. Dubrow, who looked, so help me, like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie! (She agreed.) She cultivated my creative side, got me to love writing essays, of which I wrote plenty for her, and taught Shakespeare BRILLIANTLY. I often think about her while watching Shakespeare in Love–hope she was still around when it came out (no reason to believe she wouldn’t have been) because she would have loved it! I also had fine history teachers in 8th and 10th grade, and I hate to admit it, at least one fine math teacher who sadly could not get anything beyond second-year Calc into my teakwood-hard head. But my English teachers were always my favorite! Thanks for bringing back the memories…
Sonja, I miss you. Where did you go? I hope life is treating you well.
I had forgotten about this post. Thanks for reminding me, John. I still love classes, even now in middle age. My last was a poetry class. The teacher was my daughter’s age! A shocking reality.