Beautiful story Joan!! I really feel teachers collectively nurture our inner soul… the moment you step into a teacher’s realm (whether it be their classroom or in the community) it truly is life altering. They share with us the gift to freely express ourselves on our journey through life. They prepare us as best as they can to access tools for whatever we encounter in our future xo Little Fefe

That was so nice,the writer speaks,I am always interested in mysteries you.

What a wonderful testament to a great teacher. There is a quote, which i think is very appropriate here…. “A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence ends “

A beautiful tribute.

Wow!

Joan, wonderful story. I would like to share a story of my favorite teacher but I liked all of them. I really did….except for one. So instead of the really wonderful and caring teachers I’ve been privileged to know, I will tell a story about the terrible teacher who must have loved teaching so much that through her disillusions she came to hate it. She was a typical Mrs. Grundy. Elderly lady with grey hair kept in a tight bun at the back of her neck. She wore those granny shoes that were like oxfords except her shoes were solid black. Her stockings were grey. She must have only been in her late 50s or early 60s but she was stooped and appeared much older. By the time I came into her high school history class, she forgot what is was like to enjoy children, especially teenagers. Rock & Roll was the rage and she would have been the first to say it was the cause for the wildness expressed by teenagers of the early 1960s….what she thought about the students of the late 1960s I never knew. Her style of teaching was repetition. Classwork was comprised of worksheets consisting of usually 30 or 40 questions about the history chapters we should have read the night before. The problem is that along with the reading of the chapter there were about 50 questions relating to the chapters that had to be answered and turned in the next day. So, the student read a chapter, answered 50 questions about the topic and then the next day in class found a worksheet consisting of another 30 questions about the same chapter. No lectures, no stories, no interaction with the students. Absolutely boring. I love American history and I knew most of what was being taught from my 8th grade class. However, in order to graduate, a student needed credit for taking American History….again. She liked me. But I never got close to her or stayed after class to visit or talk about the lesson. I was still a child in so many ways and any child knows when a grown-up doesn’t like children. She might like me but I knew she would not like my older rock & roll brothers. I’ve often wondered why she became such a poor teacher….so uninterested in her class. I am just pleased that I had so many excellent teachers and one of whom I spoke with about Mrs. Grundy. He told me to just do the work and not be concerned. I followed that advice; but I did wonder.

Great story J J, I was lucky, had a bunch of fabulous teachers, most of them Sisters - Charity & Mercy Nuns, intermingled with a few “laity” ones. The one who “woke me up to life” was young Sister Marie Peter, Sr of Charity, grade 6. I was left back in her class, today I’d be classified as Dyslexic (which I was in college - still can’t spell without spell check!) In the first place, she welcomed all 7 of us “second timers,” encouraging us and loving us through the “trauma” of it all. She had us do a lot of poetry, and reading a multitude of books outside the class - not for the boring book reports either! She had us do debates, rather than the doldrums of spelling bees, and other stuff, more fun, more creative. Looking back, twice I may have caused her to think I needed Psychological help! First, we had to memorize (gag!) a poem, more than 8 lines long. I couldn’t memorize to save my life! Fortunately, visiting over the summer, my Aunt read a poem to me that I fell in love with. The poem? Annabel Lee, Edgar Allen Poe. Before Sr M P got to us to memorize a poem, I could recite Annabel Lee in my sleep. Then came Art classes - no artist she, that I know of. We had to draw a tree. While everyone drew their green circles and brown stick trunks, some with apples, or the triangular pine trees, I drew a barren, leafless trunk and branches in a grey sky. Sr Marie Peter’s reaction? She LoVeD the poem I choose (way more than 8 lines) AND the way I recited it - with feeling, just like my Aunt had read it to me. With the tree, she leaned over me, gently asked why I drew it like that. Says I, “Because that’s the one I see out the window.” She looked outside, smiled, and praised me for being so “Observant.” What a neat compliment to me (who often felt like the school dummy!) Her favorite phrase to us was that we should be aware of all around us. “Observe, observe, observe” was her mantra. It couldn’t get better than that! But, lucky for me, it did. I had begun my trek out of childhood, to find MY way into the world from Sr. M P. Thanks to her & others like her, I just choose to forget those few grumpy, raspy old - before their time - codgers who thought children were meant to stand there & spout back their “wisdoms”!

I congradulate you on your freemartinhood! - that needs more of you! But would do you need to know why someone is in a wheelchair? Know that they only need it. Obviously, you had no trouble learning from him.

Mr. Spence, a highschool art teacher. He gave me color. He showed me that there are many colors in the thing I thought had only one. Look at that window, he told me. What color is the sky? Gray, I answered. No, look again, but put your hand up beside it and compare. Now tell me what color. Gray, oh and green and there’s purple … And on and on. He saw something in me. And I still am grateful to him.