What a great story!  You must have had a lot more fun learning from him after that!  

I just don't remember having any of those insights into my teachers as real, human people.  

On the other hand, I was too busy enjoying myself in high school (I specifically remember my attitude - life gets too serious after this, better enjoy it while it's here!) - so I guess I'm lucky that I remember that I had a 9th through 12th grades.  

Laurie

I have lots of great teachers that were memorable but my fondest memories are of all of the English teachers at Concord High School.

We had our choice of writing courses with such great subjects as Satan and Supernatural Powers, song lyrics of Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Beach Boys Surf's Up album and one teacher who was a Kurt Vonnegut fan.

The guys at our school had a gym teacher named Mr. Widdoes who was an ex-Marine and tough as they come.  When he discovered kids went out to the woods to get high during our free periods he would climb up in the trees, drop down on them as they entered the woods and march them off to detention.

What a hot steamy story Marc!! Reminds me of one my favorite books in High School, Summer of 42.

We were maroon and grey Mt Vernon and the class of 76. Really special to be the bicentenial class at that school.

I am a teacher so my teacher story is a bit different. We had a really cute young man, in his first year, teaching 5th grade. He had a baby face and the girls loved him. Several of us were standing out on hall  duty talking when Peggy, our blind student born without eyes came barraling into the cute new teacher, accidently grabbing him in the crotch. Her response was "So Sorry Mr Lingo" and she continued walking down the hall. He was beat red and we all stood trying to figure how she knew who's crotch she had grabbed. He hadn't said a word. Who knows!

Charlotte

She new him by his fragrance.

Both Brew and I are honored to call Lee Jacobi our favorite teacher of all time.  He was our High School choir director.  He was no lightweight, "every-sound-is-music" kind of teacher.  He was demanding, loud, funny, and we discovered later, absolutely revered by every vocal musician in our state.  We just happened to study with the best of the best.

He told hysterical stories, screamed and berated when we screwed up, hugged long and hard when we were devastated, and demanded our best at ALL times.  He is a huge influence on the way Brew and I turned out.

He once stopped our choir during rehearsal because the alto section was being timid and unsure about our parts.  He said "If you drive through the country and stop to ask directions from a woman working in the fields, a soprano will point the direction you should go.  If however, you happen to ask an ALTO for directions, she will PICK UP THE PLOW and point your directions with the plow.  So PICK UP THE PLOW altos!"

We are very lucky to still keep in touch with him (after 30 years!) and were very fortunate to sing for him again this past June.  And damned if he didn't yell "Pick up the plow, Altos!!" once more!

mr. miller and mr. dunham. mr.miller was our middle school shop teacher. he was very smart, planely dressed, his classes were advanced, he smoked a pipe in his office and he didn't put up with any shit. i always thought of him as a silver toung devil. not matter what smart assed you could say to him he could reduce you to a studdering idiot in seconds. one day i decided to challange him and i pissed him off. he grabbed me opened the door and as he was kicking me in the ass he said  "EVERYBODY WANTS TO KNOW WHATS WRONG WITH JOHNNY. WELL MAYBE HE JUST NEEDS THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF HIM" then he slammed the door. needless to say i didn't mess with him after that. and later in highschool  would come to bat for me.
mr. dunham was a study hall monator. one say he jerked this kid up out of his seat, got in his face and with vains popping out of his he screamed "YOUR EYES ARE BROWN YOUR NOSE IS RUNNY IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOUR FUCKIN WITH  YOU BETTER ASK SOMEBODY". then he pulled him by his ear down  to the office. when he returned he appoligized to the class.
both of these teachers were saturday school monators. they didn't  let you sleep but they didn't care if you went outside to smoke during break. i don't know what happend to mr. miller  but mr.dunham works bartender down at the local bar. and his face still lights up when i stop by.

I've had three teachers who changed everything for me.

When I was ten (our schools and years sysytem is different so I'll just mention ages) I had a teacher called Mr Steven's. He would just walk into the classroom and hold up his hand and we'd all just be quiet - in thrilled anticipation waiting for what he had to say - he was THAT good. He had a way of taking things completely outside their normal context and making you look at it from another angle. I've seen him in playground disputes literally swap two antagonists around and MAKE them look at each other's positions in the feud. He's responsible for more understanding and less bigotry in those taught by him and if we all follwed his example the world would be a whole lot nicer of a place.

Next up was My Biology teacher when I was 13. Mrs Jobson. Raddled from drink and stank of cigarette smoke but instilled a love of biology all the same with her enthusiasm. I got a A- on my homework once in her class and she wrote across it "Laziness personified"  Most people would have thought that was a good mark! She didn't though, she knew I could do better than I had done and she was disappointed in me and didn't hold back telling me. She upset me alot... but because I knew she WAS right and I was ashamed. I never again gave her homework less than every ounce of effort I had in me. She taught me, very simply, that if a job's worth doing its worth doing to the best of your abilities.

Lastly my English teacher at 15, Mrs Bellamy. I loved her. I'd left boarding school and was at a day school. English then was two subjects, lit and lang. I had taken my English language exam (should take at 16) the previous year at 14 and passed well so during everyone else's language lesson's I was allowed to read books from the English dept library. I was reading "To Kill a Mocking Bird" at her suggestion and was deeply engrossed. I'd got to the bit where they had been playing with matches but knew they'd get in a load of trouble so they said they'd been playing poker and I just burst out laughing. Literally hysterical with laughter imagining this.
Mrs Bellamy's face was icy cold, oh God she was livid at me disrupting the class. She asked me in very clipped tones why I was laughing and I couldn't explain. I just held up the book and gradually the giggles subsided and I could tell her. As soon as she realised WHY I was laughing - it was okay. She thought that was a perfectly acceptable reason to disrupt a class and read the offending passage out to everyone else.
That lesson was banjaxed but everyone else was reading TKAMB by the end of the day so she considered it well worth it. She taught me that if the wrong thing happens it can be for a good reason and to stop and see why before getting cross. She was wonderful.

I know Mr Steven's is dead. But he isn't. He's alive in my head and he still is and always will be my teacher, just as Mrs Jobson and Mrs Bellamy will. Inspirational people in your life never do die - they become those still small voices in your head you hear when you really listen.

Thanks Jon, this was a lovely topic and a delightful jaunt down memory lane. It was nice to bring others with me this once too.

Chemistry wasn’t the most important thing I learned from my most memorable teacher….

I went to a large high school so we had two Chemistry teachers. One was a late 30’s male, who’s name escapes me at the moment. Said teacher had a great personality, easy to get along with and a great reputation. The other teacher was Miss Collette, a lady in her early sixties who had been teaching for 40 years, with a reputation that would make the devil envious.

When I got my class schedule at the start of my junior year, I was very relieved to have drawn anyone for Chemistry but Miss Collette.  My 16 year old mind rejoiced that I had landed a spot in the “cool” teacher’s class.  Unfortunately as I was to realize later, the “cool” teacher couldn’t teach ice making to a freezer.  

So, after fumbling through Chemistry my junior year in high school and not really having much of a grasp on the material, I decided to retake the course my senior year.  My thought at the time was that maybe it was me and not the teacher, so once again I hoped that luck would be with me and I would draw the “cool” teacher.  I didn’t.  Miss Collette was in my future and I was scared to death of both her and the fact that I’d be going to college with less knowledge of Chemistry than 6th grader. I dreaded the first day of classes much as I now dread having a cavity filled at the dentist.

As my fellow victims and I filed into what I perceived to be an annex of hell, the devil’s handmaiden greeted us with an emotionless “Welcome to Chemistry, my name is MISS Collette.”  I was screwed, blued, and tattooed as the saying goes. Or so I thought.

It didn’t take me long, perhaps a week to see that Miss Collette knew how to teach. She had taught literally thousands of scruffy teens Chemistry for 40 years so she knew instinctively how to reach any student at their own level and ability. As I now know, there are a million ways to express one thought and she knew them all. She would size up a student to find what explanation of the subject at hand would reach them, what it took to make the light bulb turn on so to speak.

As the school year went by, she loosened up some. I actually saw her smile a time or two when she’d finally gotten through a student’s mental block.  Toward the end of the year, she even cracked a couple of jokes.  I only saw her fangs she was supposedly famous for come out one time when someone almost hurt themselves in the lab after not listening to Miss Collette’s instructions. Totally justified.

The last day of classes my senior year, I walked out of R.J Reynolds High School with working knowledge of Chemistry. I realized I would never hold a Doctorate in Chemistry, it just wasn’t my subject but thanks to Miss Collette, I had knowledge and understanding of the subject.

That knowledge and understanding of Chemistry wasn’t the most important thing Miss Collette taught me. Here was a person who had devoted her whole life to teaching. She loved her job and she was the best at it any one person could be.  Teaching was her life, she wasn’t married and had no children of her own but she influenced countless lives, including mine.  Miss Collette’s most important lesson to me? Never judge people or situations by what others say. Go see for yourself, draw your own conclusions. If you rely on others, you’ll miss some of the best things life has to offer.

It’s been almost 32 years since I walked from her classroom for the final time. I’ll never forget her most important lesson.

Thank you Miss Collette.

Well, I do have 3 teachers I remember, but mostly I remember this "motivational speaker" that came to speak to us one day when I was in homeroom class one day.  

So she walks in and introduces herself - Very business-looking tall black lady in her late 30's I think.

So she starts out by asking some of us what we'd like to be in life, if college was in he horizon for us.  The more questions she asked the more pissed off the students got because she would say something like: "You're not even worth minimum wage",  "What college will accept you"...soon the guys especially were raw - cursing her out - saying "who the f-ck are you coming in here talking shit about us, you don't know us, blah, blah.  She stayed calm sipping some tea.  But she always had a comeback for it all.  Like "ok, tell me you're no loser, what college are you going to, have you even applied to one?  
And so on.  After about an hour, she started telling us about life in the real world, life beyond the gutters of Harlem, a world to travel and see, beautiful homes to buy, but that all costs money and unless you're selling drugs, you won't see anything.   And a life in drugs will end you up in one of two places the morgue or jail. Anyway she "motivated us" her way and the last thing she said before she left was: "Young Ladies and Gentlemen, it's been a true honor to have met you today - it takes perserverence, grit, courage, commitment under very tough circumstances to stick it out in school, especially this school - I was where you are now and with hard work and vision you can do anything you want to do.   I'm proud of all of you. See you at graduation."

We were left speechless, some crying, some really pensive.

My story really doesn't give this lady much justice, but she was incredible.

Langa