Favorite teacher(s)?

The school system gets blamed for so much these days—like that recent report showing that a lot of teens make it to college without a grasp of basic reading and math skills—that I think it's easy to forget that teaching is a difficult job, and most teachers are doing the best they can. In light of that, let's give a shout-out to our favorite teacher(s). I'll start.

I had many wonderful teachers, starting with Miss Newberry in kindergarten (she taught us to skip; how cool is that?) through Mr. Nutt, the crazy Algebra II instructor I had senior year, who used to call us up to work problems at the board by telling us 'opporknockity was tuning at our doors.' I've had some excellent instructors and professors in college, too.

But above all, I remember the teacher I had for Poetry & Short Story and Honors English my sophomore year, Mrs. Carolyn Brown. She did help me improve my writing skills, yes, but the best thing she gave was her humanity. She treated me like a person when I didn't really feel like one, and she was the first teacher who seemed like a real person to me. She had this magical way of engaging every student, even the ones who took Poetry & Short Story because they thought it'd be an easy A. She made us laugh (we were asked to pipe down by neighboring classes a few times), and she made us cry, and I'm a better person for having known her.

So, Mrs. Brown, wherever you are, I honor and salute you, and I fervently hope that you are still teaching.

My favorite teacher of all time...gosh, I've had a lot of good ones too. But I think my shout-out will be to Dr. Busby, my Biomedical Genetics professor, because thanks to him, I'm in grad school today. He was an amazing teacher - I was always always always interested in what he had to say in class. No PowerPoint lectures or slides for him, everything was chalk talk and from his own personal experience. He made genetics exciting and interesting, and even though his class was hard as nothing else, he made me want to work hard and get an A!

After I finished his course, I realized that I didn't want to do clinical veterinary medicine anymore, I wanted to do research. So shortly afterwards I got a minor in Genetics, and a minor in Psychology. I thought about switching to Genetics, but I only had 5 classes left to graduate with my BS in Biomedical Science, and I thought about double majoring in Genetics, but that would have added 8 classes, so I chose to add 6 instead with the double minor. But I'm so happy where I am right now, and its all thanks to him, so thanks Dr. Busbee!

My favorite teaher's name was Mr. Butz...Yep, Butz. He was my Horror Mystery and Suspense class teacher, (English) and he was really eccentric, I mean he really got into the stories and acted really spooky. I got an A+ in that class.
A lot of the other kids made fun of him for being that way, but I loved him for it. It made it much more interesting. (not that that class could GET more interesting, it was my favorite class)