Billie tagged me with this very interesting meme, and I've been thinking about it all day. I have tried to stick to naming people who were teachers, at least for the top nine, because, well, just because. After I finished the list, I realized that learning, maternal approval and writing were so mixed together (none of my faves were math teachers, though I can't say that I was abused at their hands). The downshot is that I've been in therapy for years to get centered in my life and to learn for the sake of my love for it, not to please anyone. Maybe that's an upshot, though! The other upshot is that I do love to write, and I am so glad that so many teachers recognized my small gift, especially during my high school years.
And to whom would I like to pass this meme along?
On the writing side of the aisle: Leslee and Bob
On the academic side of the aisle: Middlebrow and desert democrat
And. . . . . .Now .. . . . . . .My List:
1. Mrs. Stutler: My first grade teacher at Campo Alegre, who, when she showed us a poster of Dick, Jane and Sally with the word "Look!" on it, and announced that we were going to learn to read, must have seen the Look! on my face. Despite my having been a reader since I was four, I believed that a real teacher in school was going to give us the real deal on reading--the magical incantation, the key to encylopedia bookcase, not just a "Look!". Within the week, she had me reading third-grade readers "just for fun," and it was. She didn't make a big deal out of it, but she did encourage my reading and writing.
2. Miss Donnocker was my fourth grade teacher during the year we lived in Berlin, Germany, and I am so glad of that. She was a good, enthusiastic teacher who took us on field trips all over West Berlin--to the Wall, to Peacock Island, to the museum to see the bust of Nefertiti and to the Grunewald to sit on a sunny day and draw pictures. Although I was class president and experienced my first bout of plagiarism (another student plagiarized Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle because she was jealous of me), I don't remember much about my academic progress except that my mother disliked her. She said Miss Donnacker wasn't a good teacher at all.
3. Sister Mary Ann was the English teacher for the seventh and eighth graders at St. Michael's School ("SMS is the Best" was our chant). These were the years when my mother was dying, and I was fairly spaced-out. I earned D's for three quarters and then burst into creativity during the last quarter when all we did was write. Sister Mary Ann would ask the best writers to read their works out loud to the class. My classmates would cheer me before I began. I guess this would be the moment when I knew that grammar and good writing were related, but not closely. Anyhow, getting that genuine affirmation from her at the time of my life went a long way towards keeping me alive when I was a teenager and young adult.
4. Sister Barbara was the prinicpal of my high school, and in my senior year, she was my academic advisor, which was a kind of homeroom teacher. She was so good to me during my junior and senior year--during my junior year I was so depressed that I gradually flunked out, and when I went to see her in May of that year, I fully expected to be yelled at. She didn't yell. Instead, she got me to sign up for a double load of classes during my senior year and never, ever, wavered in her confidence in me.
5. Sister Ann taught me journalism and creative writing during my sophomore year in high school. She was kind to me and respectful, and one day she said, as I was writing a paper, that if I wanted to, I could be very successful as a writer when I got through college. Because the comment was so out of the blue and so genuine, I was struck by it enough to remember it when times were hard. And she was my sociology teacher, who assigned Alvin Toffler to read and write about.
6. Sister Patricia was a theology teacher who moved to Japan for awhile, who got a Ph.D and now works at Georgetown. She was a smart, warm person, and my strongest memory is of being in the theology resource room with her and saying that I knew that although I was grieving my mother's passing, that one day I would wake up and it would all be over. She touched my arm and said "No, that's not how it works. What you are going through takes time." Then, I thought "oh, shit, not more time like this," but as I look back, it was an incredibly honest thing to say in 1973, long before anyone studied the effects of a parent's death on a teenager's life.
7. Sue Liggett taught me English Lit at MC, and as I recall, she was wonderful. So wonderful that her example lead me, years later, to consider becoming a community college professor. Why? Because she was smart, funny, intellectual and enthusiastic about her students. Also, she seemed genuine, not taking on the lofty tones of condescension that the stereotype encouraged.
8. My Abnormal Psych Professor Whose Name I Can't Remember. He was great--and the most affirming person I've ever had teach me. An Army psychologist, he was teaching at UMUC that semester, and kept us happy and active throughout the whole semester. And yes, he was extremely intelligent, using humor to help us over the hurdle of diagnosing ourselves with every malady we studied.
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