Question of the Day | 10/06/2008 12:00 am

Yesterday was World Teachers' Day. Who was your favorite teacher and why?

Liz Smith | 10/06/2008 12:00 am

The Woman Who Changed Liz Smith's Life

My favorite teacher was a woman named Mary Sweet and in the Robert Lee Paschal High School of Fort Worth, TX, she taught me all about the theater, showed me the greats from Lunt & Fontaine to the Barrymores and Helen Hayes and set me on a path of learning about drama, literature and the magic that is theater. It has never left me. She was a truly inspiring woman — what she was doing trapped in "Cowtown" I have never found out, but she changed my life and gave me aspirations and ambition.

Click here on this text to read my New York Post column.

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Judith Martin | 10/06/2008 12:00 am

Judith Martin: The Landlady, 'The Frogs' and the Pool

Barbara McCarthy at Wellesley, who played the landlady in "The Frogs" in Greek with an Irish accent — in the swimming pool.

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Joan Ganz Cooney | 10/06/2008 12:00 am

Joan Ganz Cooney's Fighting Words

Bud Brown, my social studies teacher when I was a freshman in high school. He opened up the world for me … talking about the evils of racism, anti-Semitism (in Hitler’s Germany) as well as many other injustices. Oddly enough he wasn’t really liberal in the political sense but was a man who knew injustice when he saw it. Several national education groups hold a huge convention in Atlanta annually and present a gold key to someone who has influenced education and that person identifies the teacher who most influenced his or her life. The teacher is presented a gold key and, in those days, $1,000. I was selected for the gold key award in the early ’70s and didn’t even know if Bud was still alive since I hadn’t seen him since 1943. He was very much alive and he and his wife came to Atlantic City where we had a wonderful reunion. He expressed surprise that I had selected him; he said, "You were always arguing with me," and I said, "Because you were changing my life."

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Joan Juliet Buck | 10/06/2008 12:00 am

Joan Juliet Buck: Tearing off the Veil of Childhood

Mr. Ford taught English at the French Lycée in London.

He had a long brown beard, he was probably in his 30s and he rode a wheelchair.

I never knew his first name. I never knew why he was in a wheelchair.

He started teaching me in the French section, where English was an accessory, through to the English section for University entrance, when it was the core of everything. He brought me from 13 to 17.

He was a secret Jungian, I think. He made us read Laurens Van Der Post’s Venture to the Interior.

He made us read Christopher Isherwood’s Mr. Norris Changes Trains. As it was a French school, we got the bit about communism, but were a little baffled by the masochism.

He made us read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia,, Down and Out in Paris and London and 1984. We were sobered.

He made us read Huxley’s Brave New World. I decided I’d be a Freemartin when I grew up, and never reproduce.

He made us read Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust. I’ve been depressed since the day I finished it.

For fun, he assigned Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It opens with them flipping a coin; Rosencrantz bets "heads," and the coin comes up "heads" 92 times. This opened me to the possibility that impossible things could happen — not fabulous fairytale happy impossible things, but ominously illogical sequences of events.

Mr. Ford tore off the veils of childhood for me.

He made us write poems. I spun an ode that began "rolling hillocks of grey grass followed each other like waves in a limestone sea."

In the margin, Mr. Ford wrote, "There is a poem somewhere in this."

Because I trusted him, this seemed a compliment.

Which means he gave me examples of sublime darkness, but also gave me hope.

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Hey Gulliver and Step Away…i attended USF, University of South Florida, or do you mean University of San Francisco. I majored in Fine Arts and the most wonderful teacher was my first drawing teacher, Wesley Houk, now deceased. He was able to unleash the creativity I pent up for years in my former restrictive enviornment. His drawing classes gave me a strong foundation for the other arts I was to pursue. Mr. Houk was a true southern gentleman and wore a coat and tie to class…always perfectly groomed, gentle spoken and kind. Years after graduating when I won a NEA Grant I telephoned to tell him and again thank him for his influence, but his wife told me he had passed away. I was saddened to not be able to share my happiness with him. I will never forget him.

By carol wilson on 10/06/2008 3:16 pm

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Hi Carol, Love the gorgeous kitty avatar. Yes, I meant University of San Francisco, the Jesuit school. Wanted my son to go to Georgetown but he insisted on USF and it was a great place for him. I also took design, not fine arts, but in retrospective would have enjoyed that, too, loved all my rendering, drawing classes. You are so right. Learn to reign in creativity until a teacher sets that free.

By Step away from the BLOG! on 10/06/2008 11:27 pm

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well San Fran may be our greatest city—-wish i had never left—-and its University is fabulous—-but yeah, U of S. Fla. is where i ended up—-in ‘63 termed ‘drive-thru-U’—-no dorms, etc.—-odd you should mention an art teacher, i can’t recall mine—-your name rings a bell—-and he taught us to draw w/o looking, and i went from ‘bad-stick-figures’ to an ‘experten’ on anatomical drawing—-my major was Lit, minor Russian, and there’s my beef—-the dpt. head had fled the Soviet Revolution, a ‘Bello-Russe’, he knew zip of the proper Muskovite/Leningrad ‘dialect’—-the English staff? miles behind my H.S. teacher—-it was a new entity, so what to expect? and Hey—-now we’ve ‘The Bulls’—-

By gulliver fourmyle on 10/07/2008 1:24 am

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Liz Smith, I have been researching to find why, in deed, your favorite teacher, Mary Sweet, was trapped in Cowtown the year you had the good fortune to absorb her profound knowledge of culture and to imbibe the sweet nectar of adventure that sent you on to glory. No openings were available in Mexia that year, and sweet Mary Sweet was holding out for the Lone Star State’s diamond in the rough. I know you are strictly uptown elite now, but do you know the story about the two farmers sitting in the Dairy Queen in Mexia, waiting for their burgers? They commenced to argue about the pronunciation of the town, the ‘verbiage’ and order of sounds as Governor Palin would say. One said, “Well it’s pronounced Mexia, like Mexico except drop the’co’ and add an ‘a’. His buddy said, “No, you make the ‘x’ sound like an ‘h’, ‘Ma-hay-a.” They went back and forth, louder and lounder, finally deciding to call over the waitress. One of the farmers explained the argument and asked, “Miss, how do you pronounce the name of this place?” She looked at them strangely and said, ” Dai-ry Queen..” Peace and grace from a fellow Panther

By beth willis on 10/06/2008 4:50 pm

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my 6th grade teacher—-who saved me from another year of my 5th grade teacher who was sexually abusing me and never got caught until 6 years ago………………….HHmmmm and no one ever knew? amazing

By Lynn Marie on 10/06/2008 6:20 pm

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I had two favorites: My 11th grade Trig. teacher, Mr. James Baskin (who was also my mom and dad’s high school teacher before me!) and my college freshman Political Science professor Dr. Robert Andress. Both took me seriously and opened my mind to accept and enjoy courses (math and politics) that I wasn’t necessarily considering as a profession. Having a broad point of reference in anything you do is a good thing…and I’ll always appreciate those two in particular for making me realize that there was room for all types of knowledge in our brains. As the great Roz Russell as Auntie Mame said, “Knowledge is Power!”

By Jackie Sanders on 10/06/2008 7:53 pm

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Ms. Leta Wimpey was a gift to the public school system. She was my high school sophomore and junior English teacher. She covered so many of the literary interests I still have today and introduced me to the career field that I should have entered. Ms. Wimpey opened the world of literature to me, my favorites subjects with her were Shakespeare, the Greek Tragedies (including an examination of the Greek gods), The Canterbury Tales, Beowulf and The Bible as Literature. In my junior year she exposed us to possible career fields and took me and another student on an exclusive field trip to a local hospital’s rehabilitation center. There I developed the dream to become a Physical Therapist. I’m glad you asked about inspirational educators like Ms. Wimpey. She was a formidable woman who commanded respect even among the rowdiest students. She retired before I graduated from school. The last day I saw her; she gave me great encouragement and presented me a cutting from the plant on her desk. She was a teacher who loved teaching especially when she discovered a student with great potential. I’m thankful for what she imparted into my lifelong love of learning.

By Lena B on 10/06/2008 8:07 pm

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Oh, this is too hard. I loved almost all of my teachers, and almost all of them seemed to like me. I loved learning, so I lapped up everything they put in front of me. Some were more patient than others, but there was always a chance, from about the 6th grad on, to take myself to the library and really dig into something, and come back to school with a fabulous project or report. I loved it! My father probably taught me the best thing. We took a family vacation to Mexico City when I was in the fourth grade, and we visited the University Campus there. The building were all decorated with huge mosaics, and one of them had these six religious figures…a buddha, a monk, a pharoah, a totem, a turbaned Islam, Qtzocoatl…all riding on the back of a snake, gazing upward with their arms outstretched. My dad was a bit of a rennaiscance man disguised as a hillbilly. He was a civil engineer in real life, but he painted and sculpted and played the guitar and knew fourteen-thousand songs. And as we stood there looking at this huge image, with my hand gripping his rough index finger, he said: “Lookee there, little kid. Wisest men ever lived all floatin’ along in the same boat askin’ the same goddam question.” With that statement, he opened the whole world of icon and symbolism and metaphor to my little 8-year-old mind. I hadn’t yet learned what you called that “thing” your mind could do, expand a word or a picture into a huge, universal idea, but I “got” it, and it was exciting to me. And served me well throughout my education.

By Ms. Dee on 10/06/2008 9:01 pm

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Terrific story, Ms. Dee. I was there! What a fabulous trip, and great Dad. Lucky, lucky you.

By Step away from the BLOG! on 10/06/2008 11:31 pm

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I went to university laboratory schools, so was privileged to have a high school education that many admissions departments rate as equivalent to a college degree. But the great teacher I had was Anne Massey, who was my fifth grade teacher. She frightened many kids, and was thought to be “very hard.” Indeed. She’d heard I could be a disruptive influence, so the first day was difficult for us both. Then she hit upon asking me to write one essay each day, in addition to my other school work. If I repeated myself, she would wad my work up and throw it at me. (She also asked me to come in early and help grade the other students’ papers, a early habit many of you will recognize.) Many years after her death, I took roses to her grave, and the grave digger told me, “She was the finest teacher any of us ever had, and you are the first to put roses on her grave.” My friend Barbie Swanson is also a wonderful writer, and she also places credit at Mrs. Massey’s feet. My mother told me I would thank her my entire life, and I do.

By Mugsy Peabody on 10/06/2008 9:21 pm

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Ah, no wonder, Mugsy. Tremendous story.

By Step away from the BLOG! on 10/06/2008 11:34 pm

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Oh such a fine question. I have to think hard. There are several but I can’t remember their names. They are most likely long gone from this worldl. But I remember. For example in kindergarten. A vivid memory of a very pretty teacher playing the piano. I was maybe 4? This memory has been with me these many years. And when I concentrate hard I can remember the school that is no longer there. I wonder what long life life effect she had on me?

By Andromeda Jakes on 10/06/2008 9:38 pm

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your Love of Music and Beauty

By Wake Up and Hear The Fear In your Childs Voice on 10/11/2008 10:34 pm

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There are many memorable ones, but none I can pin down as specific favorites. One of my high school English teachers was the first to introduce me to the word cathartic. Made me write a paper on it… and so began a journey.

By Buh- Bye on 10/06/2008 9:42 pm

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I had 3 favorite Teachers Miss Burkett she was my kindergarten teacher she use to read us stories and I always got to sit on her lap in the rocking chair! Then 5th grade Mrs. White she let me clean erasers and then paid me a quarter each day so I could buy my chocolate milk! Miss Wyatt High School Art teacher she always had me to her and her mothers house and I got to swim in her pool and She helped me with my pen and ink projects My Jewelry Designs and Pottery She was the one to show me I had Artistic Talents but boy she had a bad temper!! ..lol.. she would throw chairs and such!! one time she threw a Medal relief Piece at a guy named Mike and it about hit me so I threw it back at her!…lol..thats when we became Very good friends she was my friend and mentor after that I think she saw some of herself in me and She wanted me to succeed! I still think of her often she moved from a small town in Indiana and went to Texas as a University Professor haven’t seen her sense I miss her! Thank you for allowing me to reminisce!

By Wake Up and Hear The Fear In your Childs Voice on 10/11/2008 10:29 pm