Keeping on our Back-to-School Nostalgia theme, here is a list of some memorable educators from my formative years (at Park View School in Morton Grove...)
Mrs. Miller - my kindergarten teacher. She is also my next door neighbor, so I learned from an early age not to believe all those stories about teachers living at school (I believe the story was that they lived in coffins in the basement, or something). Because I knew. They live in houses, just like you and me. A very important lesson.
Mr. (Richard) Johnson - sixth grade teacher. Sixth grade was a year frought with much drama and in-fighting and pre-teenaged angst. I am not sure what we learned at all, but I AM sure that we drove this man into early retirement. So for that, Mr. "Good-now-go-sit-down" Johnson, I immortalize you in the blogosphere.
Mr. East - taught shop class. Now think about that for a minute - shop for junior high students. What a good idea. Here, children, go play with power tools for 40 minutes. So safe. So useful. When have I had to use a jig-saw in my every day life? That would be NEVER. Also, we used to sit in class and count the number of times the man said "uh" because literally, it was every other word. Kids can be so cruel.
Mr. Paulos - junior high English teacher. Taught me the importance of proper grammar AND how to diagram a sentence. Tried to give me a reading assignment the year I was not actually in his class. Was known for falling asleep in class. Tried to get us to shut up on the bus on field trips by telling us to "listen for sirens." I am still trying to figure that one out. But after being a chaperone on a jr high field trip, I can understand why he would have wanted us to be quiet. Damn, those kids are LOUD.
Mrs. Clancy - music teacher. I had her for many years, as we had music class every day in most grade levels. Not a year went by that this woman did not threaten to retire. On a more serious note, she taught us about the composers, and started annual field trips to the CSO and Lyric, so she is probably partly responsible for my early classical music appreciation.
Miss Sfickas - gym teacher. My god, did this woman hate me. I'm not athletic, and naturally, all of her little pets were the jocks (or jockettes?). All of her favorites could pick whoever they wanted to be on their teams, including their friends, but when I was team captain (once) and I picked my friends, she pulled me aside and yelled at me. Scarred me for life. Really. That and those god awful yellow shirts we were forced to wear. YUCK.
Mr. Daiberl - my favorite teacher of all time. Made me, for a few brief moments between 1997 and 2001, want to become a teacher myself. I had him for History in 7th and 8th grade, and he made it actually interesting. All he did was lecture - he didn't show movies, we didn't do group work, but some how, he made it fun. We also played the News Game every week, which I totally always rocked, since I have a good memory for useless trivia and have, ever since I was a kid. I also student taught with him.
Mr. Cole - science teacher in Jr High. Also gets the distinction of making a subject actually fun. He was the classic Mad Scientist, but everybody loved him. I guess they shuffled things around and he was teaching english or something and all of us cried because he made so many kids like science. (Well, okay, we didn't actually cry. But we had many heated conversations about it. For like, whole seconds.) And (you'd better sit down for this one) I was on the Science Olympiad team in maybe 8th grade. We did horribly, but you know, whatever.
So there ya go. We'll talk about high school later. Surprisingly, the list there is much shorter. I had to actually think about it. Not as many colorful characters, that's for sure...
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