A Teacher’s Influence

Someone recently asked me an interesting question about teachers in my life. I liked it because it is slightly different than the one I normally get, which is, “why did you become a teacher.” They asked about teachers that had affected my life. Here are a few.

I remember my third grade teacher keeping me in from recess every day because I couldn’t identify the nouns and verbs in those stupid sentences fast enough. I probably stayed inside at least half the year doing those stupid exercises. That convinced me that I stunk at English, particularly grammar. I frequently tell people that the grammar I do know I learned through Mad Libs. Luckily I was very good at reading, so I was always in the honors and advanced placement English classes where the focus was not on diagramming sentences. I can’t diagram a sentence. But I got As in high school. My senior English teacher, Mr. Helm, finally convinced me I was good at English, and almost made me want to be an English teacher.

My fifth grade teacher was from Canada. He made my life miserable. We would run for PE, and I was very good and would finish before most of the boys. To try to encourage the boys, he would ask if they were going to let a girl beat them. All it did was make the boys hate me.

My sixth grade teacher put up with a lot from me before I was even in her class. I did math with her when I was in fourth grade. When I was in sixth grade we did projects for social studies and art and we wrote journals and stories and I absolutely loved that year. I wanted to be a teacher like her.

My seventh grade math teacher took a real interest in me. A lot of kids made fun of her because of her name. I thought she was a great teacher. I still have the blank book and card she gave me at the end of that year.

My history teachers all through junior high and high school were amazing, all of them. I loved history. I thought about being a history teacher because of them.

My computer science teacher believed in me and got me on the computer science team. I ended up lettering in it in high school, decided to keep going and get a minor in it at college, and now have the job I have teaching computers.

When I’m back in El Paso I still try to stop and visit my senior English teacher and my computer science teacher.

More recently, I had a professor last semester who treated me such that I know I can make it in a doctorate program. She inspired me to keep going with my education and really made me love the subject.

Not all of my teachers have been wonderful and great, but I’ve tried to use those that weren’t as examples of the type of teacher I didn’t want to be.