Your favorite high school teacher?

[Night Elf]

My high school was 8th grade through 12th. I had the same homeroom teacher all 5 years and she was also my English teacher for several years. She knew my mom, which totally freaked me out on my first day of high school orientation. Mom and I walked into my homeroom and Mrs. Champion said "Brenda!" and my mom said "Linda!" And I nearly fell over. Haha! Mrs. Champion supported me through all 5 years. She believed in me. She lifted me up when things weren't going well, and celebrated with me when things were up. I wish I hadn't lost touch with her. I'd love for her to know that her belief in me really did help me get through high school and also helped me believe I could be a good college student. She was a great role model.

[Elizabeth86]

I has a couple,b ut I guess my favorite I had for 8th grade science, oddly enough 9th grade earth science (she typically didnt teach this class) and 11th grade chemistry. I was bummed there wasnt enough kids for forb12 th grade organic chemistry. She is the reason I love science. She was also the teacher other kids warned you about. I guess those kids were wrong, she was great. She didnt take any crap from students thats true, but if you were respectful she was too. Her discussions were fun and she was so smart. She really wanted us to learn, she didnt try to keep us busy for a class period. She never assigned busy work, we just learned. The tests were tough. If you got and A you earned it and were proud. Our chemistry class was small and we all had such fun together. She encouraged me to work hard in school.

[Guest]

Two of my English teachers, and one advanced math teacher. They were all very smart and kind, and each really listened to me when I spoke up. They validated my thoughts, opinions, and intelligence at a time when I felt emotionally destroyed and rejected because of a terrible home life and problems with friends.

[Lizzie in Ma]

Alice Williams.  She instilled a love of Shakespeare in all of us.  She was gifted, funny, eccentric and an utter delight.

[ktgrok]

I have three answers. 
 

On the one hand there was the fantastic writing/english teacher my junior year, who taught me to write concisely. I owe everything I know abut writing to her. I'd love to find her and tell her that, and send her a copy of one of my books. She was no nonsense, and fabulous. 

 

Then there was the English teacher my freshman year who taught me how to really read - to look for symbolism and depth in books. 

 

And then...there was the super hot history teacher freshman year, who also was the baseball coach and had the CUTEST Boston accent. To this day when I hear The Police song "Don't stand so close to me" I think of him and get all tingly, lol. I had SUCH a crush on him. The way he said "Charles the Hammer"....sigh. What's funny is I don't remember his name, but remember the name of the two English teachers, lol. 

[Lanny]

U.S. Government teacher.  I do not remember his name. He made that course so interesting... He had  enthusiasm for his subject, that many educators do not have for their subject.  That makes an incredible difference for the students.  

[SparklyUnicorn]

None of them stand out to me.  I have several that stand out to me from elementary and junior high, but not high school.

 

 

[elegantlion]

Two history teachers, one was wild and everyone loved him because he made history fun and had a great sense of humor - my first exposure to history being fun. The other was more laid back and by the book. I was his TA for one semester. I never thought about this before, but my current advisor is sort of cross between the two. Those two are still the reason I opted to major in history x number of years after finishing high school. 

[AnnE-girl]

Mr. Nelson was the reason I majored in history in college. He taught my freshman year world history class and junior year AP European history. His love for history was evident every day of class. I remember him saying how my high school was the first place he taught that cared more about his masters in history than his coaching credentials. I think everyone who took his class passed the AP exam.

[Rachel]

None of them stand out to me. I have several that stand out to me from elementary and junior high, but not high school.

Same here.

 

I did love my Spanish teacher, she was my aunt. 😊 She wasn't a particularly great teacher, but she did love her students. I also met my husband in her class.

[Guest]

My math teacher. A normal school grad; knew her material cold. One room schohouse atmosphere, everyone learned. Did the guidance counselor job by callng parents and helping them match their dc to colleges as most would be first gen students.

[Janeway]

My favorite is on my FB page. Maybe you can look for her on FB? I had a lot of high school teachers I loved though.

[MaeFlowers]

I went to a private school for 9th and 10th and a public school for 11th and 12th.

 

At my private school, my favorite teacher was my freshman english teacher. He was actually a sub and didn't teach English but he was the most interesting person. I also liked one a the priests that was retired. He hall a little craft room across the hall from our art class. He was just the sweetest man.

 

In public school, I liked my art teacher. I think she was the only teacher who ever bothered to learn my name. She was completely nuts but so much fun. And inspiring.

[Cinder]

I has a couple,b ut I guess my favorite I had for 8th grade science, oddly enough 9th grade earth science (she typically didnt teach this class) and 11th grade chemistry. I was bummed there wasnt enough kids for forb12 th grade organic chemistry. She is the reason I love science. She was also the teacher other kids warned you about. I guess those kids were wrong, she was great. She didnt take any crap from students thats true, but if you were respectful she was too. Her discussions were fun and she was so smart. She really wanted us to learn, she didnt try to keep us busy for a class period. She never assigned busy work, we just learned. The tests were tough. If you got and A you earned it and were proud. Our chemistry class was small and we all had such fun together. She encouraged me to work hard in school.

 

This is how I'd describe Ms P--Honors English 12 (I'm so old we didn't have AP English back in the day. lol). She wasn't my favorite teacher but by the end of the year we all realized how much we'd learned from her and how great a teacher she really was.

 

My favorite was Mrs N, math. She led Math Club so a few of us got to know her well as we spent so much time together. She even made me a birthday cake one year because we had a math meet at a faraway school, so she had us stay over at her house and the next day was my b-day.

 

Mr M, 10th grade English was also a favorite. His class was just fun and the reason The Phantom Tollbooth remains a favorite book after all these years.

 

English wasn't my favorite subject at all, but I have the most fond memories of high school from all the stuff we did in English classes. Possibly because it's the only subject--Honors English--where we had pretty much the same core group of kids over the 4 years.

[MrsMommy]

I actually wrote about mine last year. He was tough, but he was kind, and I learned so much from him.

[JFSinIL]

My Advanced Composition 1 and 2 teacher, Mrs. Chinn.  Our high school did not have AP courses in the mid-70s, I suspect  Advance Comp. morphed into AP English after I graduated. Anyway, Mrs. Chinn let me research and write all my papers on various aspects of silent film history (my eventual college major at several universities).   She also had tons of magazines with decent writing in her classroom, free for anyone to borrow, read and return and I loved the New Yorker and the food writing in Gourmet.  Mrs. Chinn also taught music composition and had a piano in her room - if a student brought in an orange she would play the piano with it (you had to be there).  I hated high school and was a mediocre student until college - except her classes.  A+ only in Advanced Comp.

 

There was a great history teacher, too, and I really loved and got a lot out of his class for Honors students, but then someone realized that a "mediocre student" was there, and I was moved against my will to the  class "taught" by the football coach. I remember more from the few weeks I had with Honors History than the rest of the year with the coach who spent a great deal of class time joking with the jocks in class.   Grrr - I HATE that schools do that - assign coaches to teach -  my kid brother was hired by a school in California to be their coach for track and field.  Since he also had a degree in Sports Medicine (he had hoped to work for a professional sports team) he is assigned to travel with any school team that goes to tournaments.  He was given tenure (school wanted to keep him) and  has had to teach history and biology - he never wanted to be a teacher, but has to do some classroom time to justify tenure.  Imagine taking a class taught by him vs one taught by a person who knows and loves his or her subject and/or trained to be a teacher.  My kid's high school here did it differently - they hired the teacher for the subject, and got good ones - then offered a stipend to any interested in ALSO coaching.  So the excellent AP History teacher here also coaches volleyball.  Not the volleyball coach having to teach history.

 

 

Not high school, but have to give a shoutout to the teacher who moonlighted from the local State U at my community college once a week for a night class in Shakespeare.  This was back ages ago when PBS was running a different play each week from the BBC  - Derek Jacobi as Hamlet!  John Cleese as Petruchio! - and we read the play, watched the play on our own at home - and talked and talked and talked about it in class.  One night our 6 - 9pm class was still going strong when the night janitor kicked us out - it was almost 11pm.  The instructor was dynamic and knew and loved his topic, and got us all just as interested in it. 

Edited October 7, 2017 by JFSinIL

[Annie G]

The head of our English department and the history department were a married couple who were much loved and also much feared because they set really high standards. Both said and did things that still make my heart swell...even though it's been almost 40 years since I graduated from high school. 

 

The wife had me called into her class when I was a sophomore because she wanted to meet me  because I had received some recommendations from teachers for the English award and she had never had anyone other than a senior receive nominations. She went on to mentor me through the next couple of years and it was just awesome. She could have just tossed my name aside as a silly sophomore and not bothered to go that extra mile. 

 

Her husband talked to me about history without making me feel like a wet behind the ears high school student.  Once I was taking a test in his class and I was called out.  As I walked out, he took the test from me and told me not to worry about finishing it. Another student whined about why I was allowed to skip it and he told the class that I was smart and that he had recommended me for a new program the school was starting.  To hear him tell the class that I was smart....cool. 

 

Honestly, my parents never told me I was smart. They never encouraged me.  Never took any interest in what I did in school. So to have these two take such an interest in me...boy did that make a difference. 

[Vida Winter]

My physics teacher, who invited students to star-gazing events at his house (sitting on the roof), AP English teacher with such enthusiasm for literature and writing, and Geometry teacher who made it so interesting, and finally my chemistry teacher, Mrs. Smith -- a real dynamo! I guess I had some great teachers. :lol:

[freeindeed]

My high school American history teacher, Coach Massey, and my high school English & Literature teacher, Mrs. Garris, were my favorite teachers. They both ignited a love in me for the subjects they taught. I could discuss history or elements of literature for hours on end if someone would discuss them with me. My homeschooled teens know this all too well! I still get excited about history projects and literature activities and papers. In fact, I'm sure that Mrs. Garris was a huge influence on my decision to become a writer. I wish I could tell her now, but she passed away with cancer several years ago. I can still hear her teaching brilliant lessons on Julius Caesar and Oedipus Rex...

[gaillardia]

My favorite high school teacher, Mr. W. He was cool, he had a great moustache, was always enthusiastic, and knew his subjects. I had him for Anthropology, Man and His Environment and other social/humanity type classes. He treated me like my opinion mattered and he always gave me decent grades, which I deserved. His classes were fun. A friend and I would sit and draw little figures of life-like figs with faces, etc., passing them back and forth every class time, while he lectured. We never got in trouble. A neighboring classmate would write insulting/kidding remarks on our papers. I still deserved my decent grades. 

 

My other favorite high school teacher, Mr. G., was my Business English teacher and I think I had him for Math once too. He eventually went into the judicial field. He was professional and business-like in his behavior and took everything seriously. He also gave me decent grades, which I definitely deserved. There were more boys in the Business English class than regular English classes. 

Edited October 7, 2017 by Gaillardia

[Guest]

Myself.  I dropped out after 9th grade in public school.  My mom threw some books at me and that's how I learned to teach myself any gosh darn thing I wanted to learn.

[SKL]

I liked most of my teachers for different reasons.  Hard to pick out one favorite.  Maybe my senior English teacher.  A very mellow guy, intelligent, got to know each student and had high standards.  He gave me a lot of personal encouragement.  But so did several others.  My Spanish teacher was on the strict side but won my respect by holding high standards and being always professional.  Similar with my biology teacher.  My Jr. English teacher would chat after school and encouraged all sorts of intellectual discussions.  My government teacher wanted to be like a mom to everyone, which kind of felt nice at the time, though in retrospect it sounds kind of weird.  :P  Oh and I had a major crush on my Civics / Economics teacher, but he also encouraged intellectualism and high standards.  :)

[BarbecueMom]

I'm not sure I would have made it through college without my AP US Gov teacher. Most of the teachers in my school had grown up in the area and had attended state schools. Nothing wrong with that, just not very diverse. She was from the East Coast. Ivy League education. Passionate about the subject, quick thinking, and drew from a deep base of knowledge that I had never experienced in a classroom.

 

I don't remember how she made it to our neck of the woods, because I was so busy trying to survive that class. We met for lunch once after I graduated, then she took a non-teaching job back home. Honestly, she was a great teacher... for a few of us. But for most of my classmates, she was just so, so out of our league. She would have been a phenomenal teacher in a school that had a student base that had been prepared for her classes. We were not. We were the kind of school where in four years of honors English, the only book ever assigned to read was To Kill a Mockingbird.

 

That reality check of what was actually required to be a *student* got me a 5 on the exam, and eventually a bachelor's degree (even though I'm still not entirely sure I earned it).

Edited October 8, 2017 by BarbecueMom