Comments on: Who Was Your Favorite Teacher?

By: Jim LeVasseur

Jim LeVasseur — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:19:00 +0000

A few of my best teachers (favorite then or now upon reflective and time).
Mr Hobart, 7th grade math, Roosevelt Jr. High, Glendale,CA. Intro the fun in math, stories, persons ( Archimeties).
Roy Klassen, Glendale High School Choir director. Could be funny but took music and teaching seriously.
Taught me and others the mechanics and the joy of singing.
Others along the way in college but more on that later.

By: Monica

Monica — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:37:00 +0000

I just experienced my favorite teacher in junior college. Dr. Steve Hubbard was the best English teacher you could possibly have. He was certainly the one who encouraged me to stay with my major during the times I wanted to give it up. If I end up with my dream career as a writer, it will definitely be in huge part because of him.

By: MelB

MelB — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Gail Elizabeth Tillary (sp?) Richardson taught HS junior English Lit & Humanities; before that French to 4th graders. Truly related to teenagers especially as she was only around 30 at the time I knew her. She knew how to inspire you and make you think; taught lessons for life not just class. Was tough enough to make you work hard to get an A. You could always bring your troubles to her and she would understand and support you. If you were one of the lucky few you could call her friend.

By: Will S.

Will S. — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:47:00 +0000

I ran a search on Mrs. Janoff, hoping to find something like this. I was also one of her students, many years ago. I am so pleased to find your brief article, which is just one of many testaments to her as a teacher and as a person. She will forever live in my own memory, and I only wish that others could have the same interactions with her that I did. What a wit she had!

Hopefully, more students will post similar memories of her as you have. Thank you for doing so.

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:52:00 +0000

My favorite teacher of all time was my high school Theatre Arts Director Bill Horton at PHS in southern oregon. We weren’t allowed to call him Mr. Horton, it made him feel old, so he was simply Bill. Mr. Horton was a brilliant man who taught me to use the soundboard, focus lights, build sets, and not let my chubby tummy and big boobs make me feel scared to play a belly dancer in front of 500 people a night for three weeks. He was a sarcastic, dry, bad tempered, dirty old man with absolutely zero patience for useless people and that is why him and I connected. We both graduated (he retired, actually) on the same day in June of 2005.

By: Randa Crutcher

Randa Crutcher — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:05:00 +0000

Dr Carter at Blue Springs South High School will forever be my favorite teacher. She taught English, but she really taught me how to be an individual thinker. Her lessons were always full of life, even in English a subject that was not my favorite. Most of all, she was human, if you were having a bad day Dr. Carter would listen, you really felt that she cared about your well being and not just your grade. It is because of this inspirational teacher that I decided to become a teacher myself and I hope that I can inspire students the way she inspired me.

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:13:00 +0000

If you ask my dad, even though he’s not a huge fan of the fact that my siblings and I went to/attend a Catholic elementary school, he would say that the nuns were the best teachers that school ever saw. I would agree, although I couldn’t outright pick one as my favorite, Sister Julia Marie (4th grade) is the one who really sticks out in my mind. My class was extremely obnoxious until the day we graduated the 8th grade, and she’s probably the only nun who ever yelled “Will you please shut up!” in a classroom.
As far as entertainment value goes, my favorite is a tie between Coach Tom Kickham and Mr. Schultz, both high school history teachers. I had Kickham for Hn. American History and AP Psychology. He really made things fun and relevant…I remember taking the AP Psychology test and everybody laughing out loud when we read the essay questions…they were either that absurdly easy or Kickham had really taught us well. Schulz taught AP European History. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever forget as long as I live his trench warfare lecture. He wore a WWI helmet, used a volleyball net antenna as a rifle, and the couch in his classroom as the trench….jumping over it, shooting the enemies in the front row, getting hit by an imaginary bullet, and staggering 3 desks down the middle row to collapse and “die” on my desk. I thought I would die laughing!

By: Jenn

Jenn — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:48:00 +0000

It would have to be Mr. Hobart Cook, my chemistry teacher at Cummings High School in Burlington, NC. Anyone who went to high school there between 1970 and 2004 or so probably had him for chemistry, and even if they didn’t, they probably have “Mr Cook stories.” He also taught my dad.

He made chemistry class FUN. The year I had him, we made rocket fuel and paint that froze if you kept stirring it. My dad says Mr Cook made contact explosives the year he had him (think pop-caps), and had scattered them all over the floor just prior to the class entering the room. If you fell asleep in his class, he would usually just set off a small explosion on your desk, without a word to you when you awoke. The administration learned to ignore any loud noises coming from his classroom unless they were accompanied by the fire alarm.

Dad says Mr Cook once decided to repaint his car, and used latex house paint and rollers to do so. Since it was Mr Cook, no one even thought twice about it!

He claimed to grade papers by tossing them down the stairs next to his classroom (land on the top step, you got an A, and so on).

He really cared about his students, and impressively, even after so many years and so many students, he remembers them. He started teaching at the community college where my dad works, and remembered my dad, remembers me, and even remembers that we are father and daughter. He asks about me every time he sees my dad.

Some years before I had him, he started talking about retiring, but it was always “well, maybe I’ll just teach one more year.” Same thing the year I had him. He finally retired from the public school system 4 or 5 years after I graduated, and dropped to only part time at the community college.

By: JRJ

JRJ — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:48:00 +0000

Mr. Rimbold, who was my 6th grade literature teacher in Lake Orion, MI. He was really something! Tall, lanky, serious, and goofy. He really expected something of us. Right off the bat he told us that the class was not his class, but *our* class and we were just as responsible for how class went as he was. Desks were arranged so that we all faced the center of the class.

There was also a closet FULL of pillows that his wife had made (they were tiger striped) so that when we had free time to read silently we could grab one (usually two) and read wherever we wanted to in the classroom. Sometimes we went outside. Class was relaxed, but he always expected us to be mature and not abuse our liberties.

By: erinbrianne

erinbrianne — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:01:00 +0000

SEMP-DAWG! We loved him so much we made a website (Check it out– my name’s the link!)