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  • January 13, 2016 at 3:49 am #92339
    Joe
    Participant

    What were your teachers like at school? Did you enjoy being taught by them? Did they inspire you? Did they bring out the best in you? Or do you think they were inadequate as teachers? Did your teachers shape your view and outlook on life after you left school? Is there still something about what they have taught you that still sticks with you? Did you ever meet your old teachers again later on in life? Are you a teacher and do you try and model yourself on a favourite teacher?

    My favourite teachers were my English teachers and Art teachers (especially as those were the subjects I enjoyed more). I loved English – my teacher was a wonderful human being who encouraged critical thinking and told us to challenge and question everything and form our own opinions (all my English teachers were in all fairness, I’m just using my last English teacher at school as an example). One of those subjects where I could get away with being as sarcastic and sardonic as much as I damn well pleased in my written work (it’s partially my English teachers fault I’m this way and I’m not even saying this is a bad thing!) My English teacher had many wonderful stories to tell from her own life and reading all these great books and poems. My art teacher Mrs C was another fantastic woman who really brought out the best in her students work – she encouraged creativity in anybody and had many great ideas. Some of us didn’t even bother going to the dinner hall or outside at lunchtime, we would just go to the art room to carry on working – it was very difficult to prise us away from the art room! I discovered I really loved to use watercolours and my art teacher really helped nurture my work with this medium.

    I guess the point I’m trying to make here is these wonderful people really helped guide me and pointing me in the direction my 16 year old self wanted to go in life.

    This motivates me a little – wondering what they might say or think if I were to meet them now. I guess now I am going to try harder with my work because I want to do their teaching justice and I want to do them proud. I learned these past few years to not care what other people think, but I guess with these teachers I wouldn’t want them to be disappointed with where I am now.

    I guess I would want to try and take their encouragement and teaching methods in my own teaching (I’m qualified to teach adults so that would be a different ballgame altogether)…

    How about you? 😀

    • This topic was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by Joe.
    January 13, 2016 at 4:45 am #92341
    Inky
    Participant

    Hi J,

    When I was in elementary school I had an art teacher who I practically worshipped. He saw that I would be an artist, and put as much attention to me as time would allow. He smoked a pipe (back in the days when you could do that in/outside the classroom). He would turn tragedies into triumphs (water spattered on my dinosaur painting and he said it was now advanced art!). Aaahhh, Mr. F, you were an inspiration!! I know I can contact him on social media, but I am stymied and shy about it. I am not the quality/quantity/relatively famed artist I wanted to be and it wouldn’t be the same, you know?

    Then there was Mr. C, my HS teacher who filled many, many hats: My basketball coach, my advisor, my Econ. teacher AND my Oceanography teacher! He was fun yet flash-point unforgiving of the world, yet profoundly caring of his students who would become part of the world. I asked him after my grandmother died, “How come you’re being so nice to me all the time?” (months and months after the death) and he said, “That’s why we’re all here.” Still carry THAT with me and live it!!

    Best,

    Inky

    January 13, 2016 at 5:00 am #92343
    Joe
    Participant

    Thankyou for sharing Inky 😀 Your art teacher sounds wonderful 🙂

    January 13, 2016 at 8:12 am #92354
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear J:

    None of my teachers were an inspiration to me. No personal relationship was formed with any of my teachers. None that I remember and none that I benefited from. None noticed I was such a troubled child, none asked me why I was so troubled, so miserable.

    There was one teacher, in Elementary, I do nor remember her name or anything at all about her looks, none. The only thing I remember is that she was the strictest of all: we, students, had to sit with our back straight on the chair at all times. Arms had to be around the back of the chair at old times, not in front. If we dropped a pencil to the floor and had to move our arms so to pick it up, we had to ask for permission. Any movement beyond breathing had to be permitted. Her rules were very extreme and very clear, no areas of not knowing what was expected, what the rules were. No ambiguity.

    And I LOVED that. Ah… the safety in it. I cherished her rules and forever wished every single teacher would conduct the class as strictly as she did.

    My childhood otherwise, was me being lost in ambiguity, confusion… conflicting instructions, ever changing rules,nothing stays the same, nothing solid to hold on to.

    anita

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