Teachers

I think that the teacher that had the longest impact on my would have been my 6th grade music class teacher, Mr. Barnes. The fact that this was back in '75-'76 and I still remember his name speaks plenty as it is. I think he was only at the school for another year or so before he left. No one knew why or where he went.

My parents never really listened to music. They had a few Beatles, Sinatra and Streisand albums, but they never played them. At least not when I was home. In the car, the radio was always tuned to the news/weather/traffic AM station. I think the car only had an AM radio. (If I remember correctly, FM was just starting to get popular then and AM/FM radios were an option.)

During that school year, Mr Barnes introduced the class to just about every music genre there is. We listened to The Beatles, Queen, Zepplin, Etta James, BB King, Howling Wolf, Dave Brubeck, Beethoven, Mozart and even comedic music like Zappa and Shel Silverstein. I remember we spent one day dissecting the lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody". The class blew my 12 year old mind and started a lifelong love affair with music.

There were a handful of other teachers that had an influence on me as well, but this one has always stuck out for me.

Who had the biggest impact on you?

 

Mr. Smolin, my English teacher 10th and 12th grades. He was awesome. Plastered his classroom with Grateful Dead posters and pictures of (in)famous authors. Creative assignments, great classroom discussion, always encouraged me, really validated my writing and my love of reading. Funky, totally cool, dug poetry and rock and movies and humor and literature, and he looked like every third scruffy young Jewish uncle or cousin you've ever known anyone to have.

If not him, than Greg, my first studio director in Meisner method acting. Little guy, maybe five-two, but his presence was around six-eight. Taught me unbelievably valuable lessons about how to find things within myself I didn't know I had, how to be totally honest, how to throw myself into a moment. God, he kicked so much ass.

 

Mr. Eric Kinkopf. he wrote a sports column and authored a book. oh yeah and he got the top gun trophy in 1977 or sometime thereabouts

 

My class teacher in 8th grade
That was his last year
I was growing up a lot that year
No one convinced me that I shall not lie, work hard, or have ambitions but he did. He said cowards lie. Only the weak quit. The point is that approach worked for me. I did not lie for 16yrs after that. Never quit on anything. Took goals way bigger for where I come from.

And then there was couple of my class mates in 9th and 11th grade, if not for their teaching I wouldn't be where I am today.

I had many great teachers in my life. But these are the most life changing

 

I read an article many years ago, and dearly wish I could find it again. It was about "The Big Game", a lecture given to an English or History class as the first lesson to each class by this very memorable teacher. He taught at an inner-city school in a large metropolitan area (I don't remember which). The article was about 5 very successful black professionals from that school, all who'd had that teacher.

His lecture on "The Big Game" was about the game of life, and how to win at it. He told the kids that winning at life was an individual thing... only the individual knew when they had won. And then he told them that even once they won, they could change the rules and pick a different winning strategy.

All 5 of these professionals credited that teacher, and his inspirational lecture on winning at life as the driving force in their going on to college and successful careers, from a school with a better than 50% drop-out rate. Teachers can make such a difference.

My favourite was my grade 11/12 math teacher.

 

10th grade english... Mrs. Tomlinson. She literally taught me how to pick apart literature, adn find the underlying messages. i remember reading the Mariner, Julius Ceaser and RMS Titanic in her class. I remember those peices, because i didnt really like the stories themselves, but i enjoyed finding the signifigance of each line and discovering that a well written story says much more than the sum of its words. the following year under a different teacher, we read the Odyssey and Beowulf. Those were stories i liked, and they were made better by my new found ability to really interpret the writing.

My favorite movie to this day is Oh brother, where art thou?... part of the reason i like it so much, is because i can see the odyssey laced into that movie, and it makes each line of dialogue that much more special... and im southern.. LOL

 

I have trouble with this question.
I had an English teacher, who I wont name, that was without a doubt my favorite teacher. He managed to get me to enjoy a book I had previously hated through the discussions he brought, was one of those teachers who had been everywhere and done so many things in his youth that he was easy to listen to talk about life, the universe, and everything and it usually had something to do with the book we were reading.

Then a few years later it was found out that he was taking pictures of his (female) students faces and pasting them onto porn pics.
It kind of skews my perceptions just a tad.