favorite teacher

The prompt is to write about your favorite teacher or the one who influenced you most. I had a lot of nuns teaching me when I was in school. Plus a number of lay teachers. None of them really influenced me in a positive way, though there were some negative ones....There was Mrs Szymanski in 5th grade who said I was at fault for letting the boys pick on me, but then punished me if I stood up for myself. There was Mr Stein in the 7th grade who seemed to really dislike me for some reason & I can only assume it was because I was the only girl in class not in love with him. He was a bully & went out of his way to point out my faults when we played sports, mocked me when I got answers wrong in class & in one memorable incident made me sit in a row all by myself, not in the front seat mind you, but in the second seat back, for almost a month. (there were 21 kids in my class & 25 desks). My parents took his side when this stuff began & yes in the beginning my behavior was not stellar, but his became worse when he realized he could get away with it. Years later a classmate & I were reminiscing about it & my mom overheard & said "Why didn't you tell me all this? That is terrible." I told her I did tell & she took his side so I never bothered telling again. She looked so shocked I didn't tell her what happened with another teacher a few years later. There was also Sr Ethelrida, one of my HS math teachers who constantly gave me grief for not trying hard enough, even though I was. As a freshman in college I would be diagnosed with a form of dyslexia & on winter break I stopped by my old HS to show the report to Sr Ethelrida - I *had* been trying very hard. She apologized & said it never occured to her because I did so well on standardized tests....um, ok.

There was one teacher I really like in HS, Mr Volpe, who taught Advanced English for seniors. He didn't think I was goofing off when I questioned things in the books we read & wanted him to explain just how he knew that those flowers in the story were symbolic of a mother's grief & not just simply flowers. He had us write a lot of essays that were based on personal opinion, and he actually graded us on the grammer & style, not whether he agreed with you or not. Once he told the entire class "There was only one A+ this time. I disagreed entirely with her thesis but it was so well argued I had not choice but to give her the top score" and he handed me my essay on "Why TV watching is good for you". :)

My favorite teacher of all was in college. Dr Arnette, who taught Egyptian history and several low level ancient history classes. I got lucky getting into his History 101 class my first semester freshman year. I love history & he loves history & he made it all so interesting & fun. So real. Some of the other 101 teachers were bland or boring or just out of their normal area of expertise, so their classes were not as enjoyable. I took every single class Dr Arnette taught over the years of getting my BS and my MA. I was even one of his proctor students for a semester as a grad student. My favorite lecture of all of his was a slideshow known to everyone as "toilets of the ancient world". It was slides of various ancient historic sites he had visited all over Europe & Egypt and at every site he included shots of the ancient 'facilities' which made the past seem more real. It's all very well to memorize a list of date of pharohs, but learning about how food was prepared, how a bed was made & what sort of bathrooms the people used really makes it all come alive in the imagination.