This post is going to be long because it's about my favorite teachers and why they were my favorites.
Many of you who follow my blog know the story of Mrs. Moore, my 2nd grade teacher, and why she was my favorite. For those of you new to my blog, let me give you a brief overview. Shortly after beginning 2nd grade, my dad's plane went down in Vietnam, just 3 miles short of the runway. In my 7 year-old brain, my dad died while I was at school, so if I went back to school, my mom would die, too. Mrs. Moore went above and beyond to get me back into school and into the classroom, allowing me to come in before the rest of the class and "help" her prepare for the day. We even stayed in touch with each other after I left her classroom and after my mom remarried. When I moved back to that city for college, I went to her home to study, talk about all things education, or just get away from dorm life for awhile. She is the reason I became a teacher! I dedicated the book I wrote to her.
Our house was the hangout for teachers after football and basketball games. The teachers and their significant others would bring their snacks and guitars, snack, sing, and talk every Friday night. Every Spring Break we went snow skiing....with the teachers. One year, in particular, my parent had pulled us from school a couple of hours early to start the drive to Wyoming. At 1 a.m. there is a knock on our hotel door. It was a van-load of teachers! They had figured how far we would have made it, that we would be staying in a hotel with an indoor pool, and wanted to being in their sleeping bags and crash on our floor! Of course we let them! What fun!
Mr. Fletcher. (He and his wife just happen to be at my parent's house as I'm writing this blog post) Mr. Fletcher and his wife were hired together to teach in my small home town. He, as high school English teacher and a coach and she, as an elementary teacher. He made learning so much fun! We played games with vocabulary words and he would write silly comments in the margins when we were asked to use those words in sentences.
Our section of English was all of the band kids, since the other kids in our class of 26 had English while we were in band. We loved playing Password with our vocabulary words. We always played boys vs, girls. The uber-competitive boys could never figure out how the girls ALWAYS won. Well, my mom was a speech pathologist. She had a student who was deaf. When she taught him sign language, I learned it, too. Then I taught it to all of my friends. It was our "secret language." We'd just spell out the vocabulary word under the desk and get the word on the first try! Now you know!
Mr. Fletcher also made sure I was always one point form and A at the end of each quarter. Then he would say, "Hmm? Some chocolate chip cookies would sure be good." or "I'd like some brownies." My senior year, I was feeling full of myself, with a dose of senioritis and refused to bake anything. To this day, on my high school transcripts, the is an A with FOUR minus signs beside it.
Also, my senior year, my boyfriend of 2 1/2 years and I broke up. (He didn't want me to go to a four-year college) Mr. Fletcher drove out to my parents' farm to make sure I was oaky. Because he cared.
High school band. Mrs. Knutson. We were her first school after she graduated from college, too. We LOVED her! Her talent is indescribable! While my family is incredibly musical, I don't hold a candle to most of them. Mrs. K, however, was able to pull talent from me that even I didn't know existed, through her excellent tutelage at my weekly private lesson. By my Sophomore year I was playing clarinet solos and in woodwind small groups. That lasted all the way through my senior year. In addition to playing in concert band, marching band, small groups, and solos, I also played piano in the high school jazz band. Mrs. K and her husband, were also mainstays at our house on Friday evenings. I am blessed to know her and to have benefited from her amazing knowledge and musicianship! She made me a better musician....because she cared!
High school choir. Mrs. Norvell (now Sipich). What a sweet, sweet woman! Mrs. Norvell was our high school choir director, however I also saw her for private voice lessons. Under Mrs. Norvell's amazing direction, I sang in mass choir, girl's sextet, swing choir, small groups, and solos. I loved singing in high school! I still love to sing, though I am WAY out of practice. When I graduated from high school and left for college, I took choir as a music elective. I learned that, on city campus, I was way undertrained against those kids from much larger schools who had opportunities that I was not able to have in small-town, rural Nebraska. I found an amazing choir on East campus that was much more suited to my level of training. I remember talking to my advisor when I was signing up for classes and she said, "You don't need and more music credits." I told her my mental health needed to be in choir. So I stayed in choir throughout the rest of college and even became the director's librarian! All because Mrs. Norvell cared!
Mrs. Connealy. High school government. Ugh. Mandatory class to graduate. Who wants to study government? No one! Mrs. Connealy truly made it come alive for us, though! She made us think! She challenged us! She is the ONLY teacher I had in high school that made us write a research paper, complete with an outline, notecards, rough draft, edits, bibliography, citations, etc. And thank heavens she did! That knowledge came in so handy in college. I can't imagine going to college and not knowing how to write a research paper. I credit Mrs. Connealy for that!
Mrs. Connealy was also the Queen of Handouts! She would find current events and also ask us to find and present current events of our own (Hello? Public speaking) and have class discussions. I would venture to guess that so much of what we learned in American Government did not come from the curriculum, or was very loosely based on a curriculum guide. That being said, we learned so much form her, probably more than we would have ever learned from the boxed curriculum. Why? Because she cared enough to teach us what she thought was important for us to know.
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