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So tell us about one of your more memorable teachers


Ralphie

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My high school chemistry one was also the very successful footsball coach. He was very stern and taciturn, and I always thought he sort of tried to beat chemistry into us. But he stressed the factor label method of working problems, ie make the units work oot and the rest should follow and I think that worked oot pretty well.  

But the best lesson that would have been the most useful to me over the decades if I had chosen to follow it was “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”  KISS. :D

 

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Not exactly one of my teachers, but I learned a valuable set of lessons and procedures from my boss at the laser research company I worked for after getting laid off from Pratt and Whitney.  He taught me a bit of chemistry, a bit of thermodynamics, a bit of planning and preparation science, a lot of mechanical measuring techniques.  He was the President of the company and we often worked on the same lab table side by side.  He gave me just enough guidance and the freedom to experiment and learn some of my own techniques.

He's the one who said that while people often learned things at work that they took home to use in their hobbies I was the only one he know who brought what I learned from my hobbies to work and used the skills there.  For a long time I was worth more for my hands than my head.

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Linda McDonough. She was one of my boarding school teachers and my most influential. She taught English. Diagramming sentences and appreciating Shakespeare. More importantly she taught me how to organize my thoughts onto paper. How to properly organize an outline. How to approach an essay. And most importantly how to take good notes.  
 

She’s still working. She went on to found her own school and is the director. https://hopecreekacademy.org/teachers-and-staff/
 

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My fifth grade teacher saw things in me that my parents never saw.  She was a constant source of support, caring and encouragement.  She arranged for me to take private classes in drawing and painting.  She took a special interest in me for some reason and I'll never forget her.  I never had another teacher like her. 

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11 minutes ago, Philander Seabury said:

My fifth grade teacher was an asshole. :(

 

I don't have too many good memories of school. Going to school in the 60 and 70s and with a tuch of dyslexia and dysgraphia (yes I had to look it up for proper spelling) I was labeled as stupid and never going to amount to anything. 

I had one teacher tell me that if I didn't go to college I was going to work meaningless jobs the rest of my life......I wanted to punch him in the face 

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I had a lot of great teachers along the way, but my favorite was my fifth & sixth grade science teacher.  He made learning fun, and joked around. He sometimes put himself at our level :D This guy definitely new what being a teacher was all aboot.

Also, in grades 5 & 6, was my worst teacher ever. Math teacher. He too was an a-hole, like @Philander Seabury's teacher.

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My high school Latin teacher.

This red haired active teacher was so popular how he taught for first 2 years of Latin over 90 students registered for his classes. 

What I appreciated most was:

Gr. 8 history teacher who made local history so interesting....since it was Mennonite-German Canadian history.  It made me realize the unique cultural history of my area.

At university, lst year ...Third World history...which of course it's hard to cram a ton of history about colonized countries of the world.. still it got me hooked. Later one of my lst employers, who became a mentor and good friend to me, she knew that instructor and others.

And a few others for different reasons.

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Mr. Hazelwood, 9th grade history and then 11th English.  He was our HS football coach.  Growing up he was good friends with Johnny Unitas.  He played HS football with him.  He was the backup QB to Unitas and the field goal kicker.  Johnny Unitas was his holder.

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I'm trying to be positive, so I will talk about a good teacher....

A couple of years ago, I looked him up and he was still teaching at the high school I went to.  I sat down and wrote him a letter.  I told him how much he helped me not just as an English student, but also as an incredibly awkward young man.  He introduced me to American literature. He encouraged me to read Kurt Vonnegut.  My senior paper was based on a Nine Inch Nails song and he encouraged it. He also treated me like a person. I wasn't the best kid in high school, but he was always kind to me.

I got a letter back from him.  He freaking remembered me almost 25 years later. He said that he was always surprised when he got these letters because he thought he was a terrible teacher the first couple years of his career.  

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Mr. Fabio. 10th grade chemistry. Taught about 15 minutes a day then the rest of the class we could do our homework. He could only go half an hour without taking a cigarette break. He’d wander over to the lab for a smoke.  He had the looks, physique and charisma of a toad. 
 

But he didn’t have the ignominy of his colleague who deposited his lit cigarette butt into a trash can in the lab that had some kind of flash paper which smoked up and caused the school to be evacuated. 
 

The joys of the tenure system. 

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Mr. Ginsburg (12th grade math)was bipolar (my diagnosis).  He could go from pleasant to psychotic rage in 10 seconds. One day he picked on a homely young girl who was a model student for some minor error. She melted in shame. He was vicious. 
 

The two popular girls decided to get some revenge. On Valentine’s Day they bought him a black bouquet. He had an epic meltdown, left the classroom and came back screaming at us, telling us we were the worst kids in the world. 
 

My high school had very few walls. So these meltdowns and dramas were able to be heard for quite a ways. Mr. Ginsburg lived in mortal fear of the Math Department chairwoman. There was also a neighborhood story of him chasing a speeding car with a golf club  

I wonder if he ever got the psychiatric care he needed. 

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Elementary school: Sister Mary Faith, 4th and 6th grades.  I hated it when I learned I had her for the 2nd time because she made me be responsible and work hard. I appreciated her later  She knew I had potential and wouldn't let slide by without working.

High school: Mrs. McLoughlin, 12th Grade English.  This was the main person in high school who, realizing our blue-collar community's kids knew virtually nothing about what to expect in college, told me it would be like jumping from the 12th grade to the 16th grade as a chemistry major (her husband was my Advanced Chemistry teacher) and that I would find myself completely responsible for showing up for class, doing assigned work, looking at unassigned work to help me, etc.  She required our college prep class to do college-level things including a full-blown term paper, etc.  Her advice is probably the reason I got through the first year of college without flunking out.

College: Prof. Victor Vitullo, my College Advisor, on-campus-job Boss, Physical Organic Chemistry class.  Dr. Vitullo was like a kind and knowledgeable older brother to me. I met him during my sophomore year when I was already doing extra lab research for my Organic Chemistry professor. He was impressed enough he hired me at $2/hr (min. wage was $1.25) to work full time in the summers and part time during the school years doing research on organic reaction mechanisms through the summer after my graduation.  An on-campus job where I could set my own hours during the school year saved my grades while working my way through school - no 5 pm to 1 am jobs flipping hamburgers somewhere.  He was also great about personal advice. He lined me up to give a talk about research at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington which helped with grad. school applications. He helped me get the scholarship and graduate teaching assistantship at IIT - where he had gotten his Ph.D.

Dr. Vitullo was in his 30's when I was in college in the 70's but, unfortunately, he died of multiple sclerosis in the 90's. Over the last several years of his life, he had no short term memory, would completely forget our last get together, and would ask me each time I visited, "Have you quit smoking yet?" and would be delightfully surprised when I said, "Yes!"  I couldn't bear to add that was old news.

Three people who pointed in a direction where, as Sister Mary Faith drummed into my ears so much I still remember it 6 decades later -with a little paraphrasing, "You can't expect to succeed unless you expect to work for it."

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17 minutes ago, BuffJim said:

Mr. Ginsburg (12th grade math)was bipolar (my diagnosis).  He could go from pleasant to psychotic rage in 10 seconds. One day he picked on a homely young girl who was a model student for some minor error. She melted in shame. He was vicious. 
 

The two popular girls decided to get some revenge. On Valentine’s Day they bought him a black bouquet. He had an epic meltdown, left the classroom and came back screaming at us, telling us we were the worst kids in the world. 
 

My high school had very few walls. So these meltdowns and dramas were able to be heard for quite a ways. Mr. Ginsburg lived in mortal fear of the Math Department chairwoman. There was also a neighborhood story of him chasing a speeding car with a golf club  

I wonder if he ever got the psychiatric care he needed. 

Well, we had a high school math teacher, who we all suspected he was alcoholic. Often his face was red and sometimes there was alcohol on his breath.   Sure enough, during recess we pulled out top drawer of his desk, there was a rye bottle..

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10 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Well, we had a high school math teacher, who we all suspected he was alcoholic. Often his face was red and sometimes there was alcohol on his breath.   Sure enough, during recess we pulled out top drawer of his desk, there was a rye bottle..

Our six grade math teacher probably did too. He masked it with licorice. 

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My senior Media teacher. I did after school cable tv high school sports broadcasts with him. I went to school lots of days I wouldn’t have otherwise as a result of an after school event we had scheduled. 
 

My high school chemistry teacher was an evil B. If she had been a nun she couldn’t have been any nastier. I had some personal issues my junior year that had me put school way on the back burner. I read the book cover to cover the days before the final and pulled a 94%, allowing me to pass the year. I think she was disappointed.

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Jocelyn taught me how to change all the bedding on a hospital bed with the patient lying in it. She taught me how to stay cheerful and upbeat while doing some of the nastiest things in patient care. Patients who are dying will make some messes that it’s hard to not gag while cleaning up. Stay cheerful and assure the patient that it’s no big deal. Be kind, be gentle, be loving at all times.

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Drill Sergeants Ratliff, Heron & Mendoza taught me more about myself than any teacher ever could.  My Platoon Sgt  SFC Snyder was my mentor, role model, life coach and an example of who I wanted to be both personally & professionally.  I owe much of who I am today to those four men.

I had one good teacher who really stands out, Dr Thames.  She convinced me I could be an A student in college. Although I wasn’t an A student,I did graduate Cum Laude thanks in part to her making me believe I could be an A student. 

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