Who was the best teach you ever had and why?

clearly an english teacher wasn't your best teacher.

irun wrote:

I am a teacher, so I started this thread to try to recognize what mattered most to people when they were students and had teachers. This for self-improvement in my teaching. Thanks.

The fact of the matter is that as long as you are a decent teacher, you will be remembered mostly (either liked or disliked by both poor and good students) by how you relate to the kids and how interesting you are. My favorite high school teachers were a Spanish teacher who was gregarious and seemingly always upbeat and a microbiology teacher who referred to students as either "Micro Heroes" or "Micro Fools".

Then, beyond being interesting in the classroom, you should acknowledge them in the hallway.

In the classroom, if there's a regular more fun thing you can do with them once a week, they will greatly anticipate that day and thus love your class. It can be anything from reading News of the Weird to talking briefly about current events of the day or week. Actually give this period of time a name, and always do it. Kids, even the most independent among them, crave the appropriate attention that teachers show them...interest in how they're doing academically, how their lives are going, etc. Parents are the best at this, but kids benefit tremendously from a teacher who gives a damn. Just give a damn.

Until you asked the question, I hadn't thought about this guy in many years, but for two years in middle school, I had a English teacher who taught me the logic of an English sentence through the use of modern linguistics and transformational grammar analysis. This was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s -- not really that long after Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle began publishing groundbreaking work on syntactic structures. I have no idea whether this approach to teaching English in grade school has ever become common or not. The guy was very polished, knowledgeable about his subject, sharply dressed in suit and tie, punctual, precise, and prepared. He never tried to be anyone's buddy. He gave us homework every day, and at the beginning of each class, he went around the room, from student to student, checking to see if we had completed our homework assignments and recording every time any student had failed to do so. He had a quiet charisma born of rigorous professionalism.

Now we know why you're so damn boring.

The best teacher I ever had was my history teacher in 11th grade. Why was she the best teacher? Because she was hot as balls and dressed to show her self off.

I had sex with my senior year math teacher when I was a junior in college. She wasn't my favorite teacher when I had her in class, but became my favorite teacher after I had "had" her. Thank you Ms. Mundt!

oh i see it all now wrote:

Now we know why you're so damn boring.

But with impeccable syntax.