Teachers That Matter

One of my children has a teacher who doesn't seem to like students or teaching. Burn-out case or simply someone who doesn't have the empathy gene (or a poor match for my child--though I've heard from other students and parents so I don't think that's it in entirety), it doesn't much matter, because the end result is a kid turned off from what could be a truly exciting subject. Been there myself. I've blogged here before about a math teacher, immortalized forever in my book, High School Bites, who terrified her class. Who seemed to delight in humiliation.

But that got me thinking about teachers who did matter to me--not in the nightmares they gave, but in a good way. I actually had more of that experience in college . . . professors who were PART of the university community, who really cared and got involved. But I do remember one high school English teacher. And the book that did it.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I came home and told my mother about all the symbolism and foreshadowing (new concepts to me) in the book (to which she said I was likely full of shit because people over-read into books). But I was hooked. While classmates grumbled about how boring it was, I saw the magic in every word, on every page. This was a reason to come to school. Hell, it was a reason for living! It wasn't that I hadn't loved other books--I was a big fan of Dickens. But something about the way the book unfolded made me hold my breath. Who was this Boo Radley?

My teacher made it all come alive for me. And it was my first. A book that changed everything. There was reading before Harper Lee, and reading after it. And English class before my 9th grade teacher and English class after it.

Anyone else? Teachers (and books for that matter) that changed the world?