The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)

Subject: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Peter T.
Date: 21 Jul 99 - 10:42 AM

Thinking about teaching, I am one of the lucky people in this world who was rendered only a marginal disgrace to the human race by a number of good teachers (and to be truthful not helped much by some duds). Many people have one such. This is a summer thread, just because. I bet people have best music teachers, or just teachers. A bit of homage, then.
The best teacher I ever had was a funny old coot who tried to teach me mathematics at a private boy's school in Canada. His name was Larry Griffith, and he was in many ways a genius -- he had been involved in the Manhattten Project, and upon his retirement after many years as a physicist/engineer had taken up teaching. He was short and tubby, with a pipe that usually began to set his filthy tweed jacket on fire. He constantly grumbled at our stupidity. He had written the main innovative mathematics textbook for the province, and so we got massive doses of calculus, vectors, and matrices, all of which was generally believed to be way over our heads, but turned out not to be, thanks to his passion. Well, for almost everyone.
Being completely incompetent at mathematics then and now, I was a terrible trial to him. He desperately wanted to me to learn calculus, and he would yell at me every day that I would never amount to anything unless I slept with logarithm tables under my pillow. After endless effort, and his endless variations on new methods of explaining things to me, I finally learned calculus and passed the final exam. I have never looked at a math book since, but I revere all mathematicians and believe stupidly that I could, maybe, with work get what they are doing. A friend and I once collected a pamphlet of his sayings -- "What one fool can do, another can", was his main maxim for us. At one time he had been in a dance band in the 1930's, and in the evenings, while tutoring students, he would occasionally bring out his ukelele and play. He is long dead, but loved by all of those, like me, who knew that he was completely committed to us, and to the infinitesimal possibility that one day we might get a glimpse of his wonderful mathematics. He was about as close to a gruff saint as I have found in this world.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Neil Lowe
Date: 21 Jul 99 - 11:56 AM

I sincerely think that genius in any endeavor is just logical thought with some sort of time compression factor applied... I could come up with revolutionary theories on the nature of the physical universe, like Einstein did, if I were so inclined....it would just take me a thousand years to do it.

I had a music teacher in high school who qualifies. He is primarily responsible for my *formal* interest in music today, and were it not for him the four years I spent in secondary education would probably have been a total waste of time. I can't recall anything else of value to me today that I learned there.

He was a relentless and demanding bastard, and while under his tutelage my feelings for him bordered on resentment and strong dislike. He was arrogant and vain, belittleling and chastising. But he had the uncanny ability to draw out of his students what his students didn't realize they had within them; to inspire them to push themselves successfully beyond their own limits. He was also one helluva musician. In spite of myself and my dearth of natural ability and talent, I spent hours and hours practicing particularly difficult passages of music just for an almost imperceptible nod of approval from him. He is probably the reason I had no social life in school. More importantly, he taught me that I was not confined to the arbitrary limits I had imposed on myself, that no one could set those limits for me without my willing participation, that I could extend beyond those limits if I so desired badly enough, that there were no limits. He taught me to believe in myself. Although he wasn't demonstrative by any stretch of the imagination, when you performed to his demanding expectations you knew he truly loved you.

He died in a supper club fire, where he was the leader of the house band. I was told he went back in to help other people out to safety- showing the way even at the end. I wish he were still alive so he could read this post.

Regards, Neil (a little remroseful at the moment)

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Bert
Date: 21 Jul 99 - 02:02 PM

I had this math teacher once, His name was Tampkins. He'd come into class and chat about all sorts of things as well as math. He was very quiet spoken. He never gave homework; he said that it wasn't teaching. Even when teaching calculus he would go back as far as necessary, I've even seen him put 2 + 2 = 4 on the board. He had this gift that somehow, miraculously, at the end of the class you knew about math. There was a saying in the school - "If you don't pass with Tampkins, you'll never pass"

Bert.

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Roger the zimmer
Date: 22 Jul 99 - 03:48 AM

No good music teachers I'm afraid but one particularly good English teacher, David Turner, who not only instilled a love of literature, especially the theatre, and writing, and didn't mind us (OK, ME!) using humour in our essays. He used to tell us Black Country (UK version!) stories later broadcast on tv as "Me, Me Dad & His'n" though he wore a battered cloth cap we all saw through his "disguise". He later wrote a lot for BBC radio and television and had one successful stage play produced "Semi-Detached" that Laurence Olivier played the lead in when it transferred to London. He gave up teaching to write full time but, sadly, ended up writing scripts for bad soaps (If I say "Crossroads", UK 'catters will know what I mean) which drove him to drink and an untimely early death.

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Jul 99 - 04:43 AM

Gee, it's hard to choose because I had so many wonderful professors my 8 years in the seminary, but I guess I'd pick Father Robert Mueller (which is pronounced "Miller" in Milwaukee). He taught me 2 years of German and music in high school and college. In the evening, he'd walk the halls and talk German with his students, and I still remember all the German drinking songs he taught us. It sure made things easy for me when I was trained as a German linguist for the U.S. Army (and kept me out of Vietnam).
I wasn't good enough to join the seminary choir, but he sure made them sound wonderful - and he led the choir with a gentle hand.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Mudjack
Date: 22 Jul 99 - 11:38 PM

Mr Jean Estes was my sixth grade teacher and he was a folkie before there was such a thing. He had us students singing in the class room aside from our regular music class time. We belted out great Woody Guthrie tunes and other songs where he sang with us. I have to say he was a major influence on my youth in allowing me the opportunity to realize I should be a singer. Of course I never got serious until my 30th birthday.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Jul 99 - 11:27 PM

Sadly I would have a lot of difficulty coming up with a "best" teacher. I really don't remember any of them that fondly - although I think that has far more to do with my confusion through the teen years than anything else. I do however have a great fond memory of Mr. Hodge, the librarian at MacDonald high school in St Anne De Bellevue Quebec. He turned me on to Folkways Records!
A few months ago he heard something of mine on the radio up in northern Alberta, and contacted me through his daughter. What a hoot. Couldn't call him Gil though. He's still "Mr. Hodge".
Rick

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Bert
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 02:39 PM

I think we must add our own Peter T here

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Davey
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 02:55 PM

I grew up in the military (father was a career soldier) and during my last year of school I was constantly nagged to join the army.. No Way! but I couldn't have stated exactly why at the time.. I wasn't particularly encouraged in anything else, so I sort of drifted through school just getting by. During grade 12 my homeroom/math teacher, Barry Attridge, used to write a problem on the side board every week for those who wished to work on it, and I accepted the challenge and solved the majority of them. When I barely passed the year (with my best marks being in the maths), his comments on my final report card were "This boy's waste of talent cannot be adequately described in such a small space." So here I am still wasting my talent (**GRIN**) talking to you Mudcatters when I should be working.

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Marion
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 03:08 PM

Rick: you went to Macdonald High? Are you from Ste. Anne de Bellevue or thereabouts?

I ask because I went to Macdonald College (graduated a year ago) and Ste. Anne's is thick with warm fuzzy acoustic memories for me.

Marion

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Vixen
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 03:14 PM

Wow Bert--Thanks for the connection to Peter's class. I teach, and I hope I inspire whatever positive things my students want to achieve. My father is a teacher (retired now, but still "teaching") as was his mother (dead now, but I know I'm still learning from her...) And I have had the good luck to find many others through the years, both in the classroom and out.

My Dad says "every day's a school day," and perhaps we could add "everyone teaches us something."

V

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: MMario
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 03:15 PM

Vixen - how true! For myself, I find the best teachers I have had are all children....

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Tom B.
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 03:17 PM

Mr. Muir taught us about propaganda and persuasion in the ninth grade, how there were 7 types, in advertising but also in politics; it was all new to me and I've been using it ever Mr.Hughes taught about the higher truths in literature and philosophy, Mrs. Cornelius about being yourself, and Mr. Abbott about the 5 W's and the H in journalism, and reporting only facts.

Mr. Muir was so unconventional in his teaching method, and in our honors English class in 9th grade I remember actually disliking him; it was only the next year that I appreciated it, because I had a lot of maturing to do, it was ahead of my time.

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Davey
Date: 23 Sep 99 - 04:54 PM

I just finished reading a number of articles about teaching... One quotation in particular jumped out at me, and that was "There's a lot of data out there. A teacher will help the students sort out the information from the data. A good teacher will help the students find the knowledge in the information. An excellent teacher will help the students find the wisdom in the knowledge." Have any of your teachers been like that? And I agree with Vixen and MMario, that children are excellent teachers. They ask the most innocent, but sometimes the most difficult to answer questions. Let's hope we don't discourage them from continuing to ask those questions..

Subject: RE: The Best Teacher I Ever Had (BS!!!)
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Sep 99 - 10:19 AM

I am not even close to being in the same league as any of the people mentioned here. I know what good teaching is like, I saw it once, maybe twice, and I am not even close.
yours, Peter T.