The Teacher/Professor That Most Inspired You- Page 2

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:13pm

Ms. Weller, my 12th grade AP English teacher and academic team coach, as well as one of the most brilliant and witty people I think I've ever met. She was famously tough and had been teaching since my mother was in high school... her English classes were thing to be feared, and you did NOT take AP English unless you were prepared for it to bring your GPA down a bit. Her class was by far the most frustrating and rewarding I had in all of high school. I would get 60s and 70s on so many papers in that class, and I had always been praised as an exceptionally good writer. She challenged every student in the class to be as good as they could be, and despite the utter frustration at seeing "-10" or "-20" throughout the papers for content, we all improved. When you got an A on a paper, you knew that it really meant something. She was also creative and SO passionate about the material in the class, and that sort of excitement is contagious. I had such a greater appreciation for British literature after that class.

The thing that made her an even more remarkable person is that, when she taught our class, she was in her fifth year of a battle with cancer and was going through chemotherapy. It was hell on her, and sometimes she'd have to miss class because she was two sick, but she'd always grade and comment on our papers, and when she was there she never let what she was going through get in the way of her class. She passed away the winter after I graduated, and she had been teaching all the way up to winter break that year. It was terribly sad, but you could tell from the outpouring of sympathy how much of an effect she had had on so many people. I'll never forget that class or what I learned from her, both academically and personally.

[DracoMalfoy]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:38pm

Mine would have to be that hot blonde teacher in Florida who kept sleeping with her students.

Seriously, I'd say Loren Amanda Maxwell.. doesn't her name sound like a poem? I still swoon at the thought of her. 10th grade Geometry. God, she was beautiful. I scored perfect on the Geometry section of the ACT.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 7:44am

Thank you, twelvy, for keeping this thread alive.

Maybe I just fit better with adults becuase almost every teacher I've ever had has some either profoundly positive or profoundly negative effect on me. But there are so many good eachers that I don't know if I could really name themm all.