For some reason or another certain students are drawn to particular teachers while other students are more fond of others. In my life I have studied under three memorable teachers.
Teachers with which I was able to connect, to laugh, to share my misgivings. While I may have been close with each of these teachers, it is very clear, in retrospect, that each was very unique, and represented an entirely different class of teacher. The teacher that stands out most in my head is my eleventh grade English teacher. She had a liberal arts background, and enjoyed the classic American writers; Hemingway, Steinbeck, what have you. She was in the class of teachers who was more impressed by actions and honesty than suck-ups and homebodies.
She was the kind of teacher who was proud when you informed her that you had skipped her class to go fishing at the river and play bluegrass music with your buddies. She was the kind of teacher who preferred that her students wrote what they truly felt, and not what they truly felt she would like to hear. She was in the rare class of teachers who tried to prepare her students for life after school, not life for school. She was a part of a small class of note-worthy teachers. Another important figure from my eleventh grade year was my eccentric psychology teacher. She represented a class of teachers who are interesting enough to be committed to a loony bin.
She fell into what I believe to be the largest class of teachers, those who will snap at a moments notice, storm through the room on some sort of seemingly unprovoked tirade, and then, seconds later, start telling jokes that they had heard the night before on late night television. Her class of teachers take their jobs very seriously, and do not tolerate students who skip or disrupt their classes. These teachers are fun, because once you get them off on some irrelevant tangent, they will keep themselves going on it for entire class segments, trying to get out years of thought and consideration in just a short period of time. This is how I got to know my psychology teacher, because I was the one who kept her talking, so that the class could avoid taking the quiz that none of us had studied for. Teachers like her have the innate gift to educate and entertain, with their comprehensive lessons and subtle quirks.
Finally, I come to my high school horticulture teacher, whom I studied under for so many years that by the time I was a senior, we talked to each other on a first name basis. He belonged to a small class of teachers who are personally important to every young adult. This class of teacher is the buddy, the friend. The teacher with whom you can talk about anything, be it the trouble you have been having with your girlfriend, the high-potency marijuana that you smoked over the weekend, or just the dirty jokes you heard the day before. These are the teachers with whom you simply share interests, and thus, get along really well. Having a teacher like this is almost like having a counselor, someone older and wiser than yourself who knows a lot about you whose advice you will actually take.
A teacher like this only comes along once in a blue moon, but when they do, they will affect your life forever. Despite the fact that each of these teachers belong to very different classes, they all still managed to impact my life in very prominent ways. Each class having some important knowledge to impart, be it textual, spiritual, of just good everyday advice. Needless to say, I am grateful for these distinctions, and consider myself lucky to have such people in my life, and can only hope that teachers will continue to differ greatly in the future as they have in the past.Bibliography: .
