My high school has an alumni page on FB and from time to time I wander over to that page. The subject matter is usually interesting and the comments sometimes a lot more interesting than the original question. Today one of the more popular topics is your favorite teacher, your worst teacher and the year you graduated. In my mind's eye I could visualize my favorite teacher but had to go to the yearbook to find her name. Mrs. Long, English. I had her my senior year and our English class was advanced for back in the day. It was an experiment in using new methods along with the literature requirement. After years of loving English classes but struggling with the way we learned, the light came on my senior year and I never looked back. I made an A both semesters. At the end of the school year and since we were seniors, we took our final exam early in our regular classes. English was first period and we were given five various topics. We picked one and wrote a paper in our 50 minutes of class time. Throughout the day several asked me if I had written a paper on the topic, 'If I had the word_________, I could change the world. Because Mrs. Long had read it every class period as an example in developing the topic and writing cohesively. Each one that asked me that day said, every time she read the paper, she had to wipe tears from her eyes. The word I picked was love and I wrote about how God's love changes us, how we think and act. Another teacher that prepared me for college was my civic/economics teacher, Miss Dennison. Her class was hard and multi-leveled. At any given time we could have three assignments going and we covered unrelated topics that had nothing to do with our three assignments in class. Then there are those teachers who I will forever love because they truly helped me by having compassion on me in math. Miss Berotte, my Algebra teacher who helped me after school and tutored me in just being able to know enough to pass or come close to passing. I was in school before the no pass no play era but the volleyball coach looked at your report card every semester and if you failed a course, she wouldn't let you play. This coach was also my homeroom teacher, so I couldn't have sneaked anything by her. To this day I don't know if I really passed Algebra or not. Miss Berotte happened to be in her classroom when I came by to check the grades posted outside her door. I went into the room thanked her profusely and hugged her what seemed like an eternity. In the 90's I happened to see an English teacher at church that I would have to label, one of the worst teachers I had in high school. I only know it was the teacher because something was said about her in class. Afterwards, I came up to her and talked to her about her career being a high school English teacher. She had accused me of cheating on a test way back when in 1969. She thought she saw me looking on my neighbor's paper. For real I wasn't and my grade on that test bore me out. She accused me in front of the class and requested I stay afterwards to talk with her. She quoted the proverb, 'a good name should be treasured, higher than riches' and told me I had sullied my good name to her. I was finished with the test when she accused me, so I asked her to look at the test, grade it and decide if I cheated then. Of course my grade was horrible but she never recanted the accusation. I didn't say anything to her that would reveal that she had been my sophomore English teacher. There is no reason for her to remember me because she probably accused and actually had many cheaters in her career. So there it is in a nutshell, teachers in high school. There are a few more, but I don't want to bore you to death.
I am so excited about my next trip to the Biltmore. Roy and I were planning to go but he has a work presentation that is keeping him home. I thought through several scenarios and had just about decided to go by myself when I remembered the nieces. Megan can't go but Erin can and she wants to stay the whole week! I am super happy about that. We are going to have a blast. For years Erin and I have had the moment, memory, hmmmm.... thing going. It's a lot of fun for us but annoys everyone else. We will be making a lot of moment, memory, hmmms and you know we will have to share them with everyone! Cause that's how we roll. And then, gosh darn it, since Megan can't make it, we are going to go back in May or early June and take her. I know, it is a hard thing to do but I am willing to make that sacrifice.
No comments:
Post a Comment