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Let’s play.

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New year, same deal.

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I was lucky to have some excellent teachers throughout my school years but one in particular does stand out.

Let’s call him Mr. M.

He was my creative writing teacher in my junior year of high school and due to his age… barely 30… he had a wonderful rapport with his students. Easy going, soft spoken and willing to change his curriculum from classic (and boring) to teenagers to hip and thought provoking so we didn’t fall asleep in first period.

For example… one of his poetry lessons included an assignment of choosing a favorite song and breaking down the lyrics. We brought our vinyl albums into class (yes, I’m that old) played the song for the class and gave an oral presentation on the prose. He said rock and roll musicians were modern day poets and it really did make us listen with a different ear.

My choice?

I’m a Jersey girl. It had to be Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.

Another assignment was writing a one act screen play. I waited until Sunday night to complete it which turned out to be fortuitous because on Saturday night my friends and I went to a Grateful Dead concert. There we were, a bunch of inebriated teenagers grooving to the Dead …. I looked to my left and who did I see? Mr. M., also inebriated and grooving to the Dead. He saw me, looked a bit surprised, winked and turned away.

On Monday morning I turned in my screen play assignment. It was about a burnt out English teacher who tripped acid at a Grateful Dead concert, climbed up to the roof and recited Shakespeare to the accompaniment of Sugar Magnolia.

Needless to say, I got an A.

Now you.

Who was your favorite teacher and why ?

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25 thoughts on “Let’s play.”

  1. Well, as a teacher myself, I just have to comment on this one. It was Mr. P, 7th grade English teacher. Why? He was quirky. He rode a bike to school every day, even in the Wisconsin winter, and sported a ZZ Top-style beard. He had a daughter named Polly (I’d never heard of a human named Polly – only a parrot, as in “Polly want a cracker?”). After we read A Tale of Two Cities, we watched the movie in his class and he said he’d give extra credit to anyone who cried at the end. (I was a shoe-in for that extra credit, by the way.) He was fun but also a good teacher.

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  2. Glad to hear that your favorite teacher was me….
    But there are a few things I remember differently.
    For example, I wasn’t inebriated at the concert that night,
    Though my grooving to the Dead must have been quite a sight;
    And, try as I may, I must say I don’t recall giving you an A,
    Though it’s possible I was in a frightfully good mood that day.
    In any case, I’m glad you’ve had a wonderful life….
    As for my favorite teacher, who else but my wife?

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  3. Okay this is going to be a very sad memory, because it was my fourth grade teacher, I will call him Mr. T, and not the famous Mr. T, lol. He was also in his late 20’s or early 30’s and I loved him because he was kind and patient and very soft spoken. He was well dressed, of course it being the 70’s he’d wear those three piece suits to class every day. He taught us how to dance, I remember him showing us how to dance the Hustle. It sounds so corny but he was so good when I was having issues with math, he’s sit there and show me step by step. Then one day he didn’t show up for class, then a week went by and we had a new teacher in the middle of the school year. Two weeks later my mom told me that he had come out in the news. He was murdered in his sleep, a burglary gone wrong in the middle of the night. How my mom could tell me this being in the fourth grade is beyond me, but I suppose that she thought telling me the truth was better than me finding out from someone else. I missed him the entire rest of that year and no one ever came close to his kindness and patience. My fourth grade class picture has him in it, and I always wondered what he might have achieved in this world had he lived.

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    2. That’s awful. May he rest in peace knowing he touched you and was loved by students, because let’s face it many kids don’t like their teachers. Teachers are such important members of society, particularly good ones who inspire and see/help those struggling.

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  4. Teacher in college who taught History courses…he had a way of making history come alive with his energy and passion on full display each day. What could have been drudgery to study became interesting, and created a desire to do well in his classes.

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  6. My sophomore year high school English teacher was my favorite. Besides have a wicked sense of humor, she taught me the most valuable writing advice ever: be specific. That’s it. Do that and you’re a good writer.

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  7. Oh golly. There are many but the one who always stands out in my mind was Herr Azmus, my German teacher for three years. He looked like Ichabod Crane and had a zany, bawdy sense of humor. He always had us in stitches with his antics.

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  8. As much as I loved librarians, I was never really keen on teachers (too many rules and assignments) and they were never really keen on me (too much talking, too much not paying attention). That being said, I was a straight-A student. It’s a miracle.

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  10. I’m not sure of fave teacher. I have minir PTSD over a similar lyrics assignment. Our teacher picked the song… Aqualung… and played it for all of class, for multiple days (felt like a month), for all his classes. I have a visual ear and ‘snot dripping down his nose, shabby fingers smearing shabby clothes’ grossed me out. I heard it over & over & over.. not only during my class but 2 others, as I had classes in the next row of buildings. BARF!!

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  11. Had to be Mrs. Clark. First off, she had this great catchphrase (“Be sweet, mister”) that never failed to get the class laughing. Also, she let us watch movies every Friday. Good movies, like “Terminator” and “Beverly Hills Cop.” Not sure how she got away with that, but we all loved her!

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