Teacher Appreciation Week

It's Teacher Appreciation Week! Actually, I think the official week is next week but we're celebrating a week early for reasons I'm not important enough to know. Teacher Appreciation Week is one of my favorite weeks because although my students completely ignore it I do get free Chick-fil-A from participating locations. To celebrate, I want to reflect on some of my favorite teachers from high school. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some of the wonderful educators that have survived me and are therefore deserving of recognition.

CB
My first real Spanish teacher. You were handed a group of kids allegedly in Spanish II who didn't know tener from beber. I think we spent the first 2 weeks just learning how to pronounce your name. Y ahora hablo en espanol con mis estudiantes y mis amigos. And you didn't even laugh at our southern accents trying to speak Spanish like my current students laugh at me cada dia. 

DR
Papa Labamba. You taught me everything I thought I already knew about writing. Your class is why my initial SAT scores were so statistically difficult to improve upon. So thanks a lot, I wasted like fifty bucks to take that thing an unnecessary second time.

ED 
I'm not sure how you survived an entire year of me because I'm pretty sure I was at my most dramatic in your class - and that's saying a lot. I think you're the reason I started to actually consider UNC because if someone as wonderful as you could come from Chapel Hill, how bad could those Tar Heels really be?

ER 
Thanks to you I'm on the AP Statistics Wall of Fame, which prompted one of my students to say "Miss, I didn't know you were smart!" You saved me from having to take a real math in college so I owe you one. Actually, I owe you about 400 based on my calculations and textbook size observations, margin of error = square root, p or z something, it's been 6 years I don't remember.

HM
You taught me for an entire year, not many people are unlucky enough to say that. Your class was downk even though we were a splurry at times. I'm so thankful slash petrified that our performance of Midsummer is still on YouTube.

JP
You taught me everything. From how to be a student of history to how to be a good human being to how to grow a sweet 'stache. You even trusted me to watch your children and stood by helplessly as I backed out through your front yard. Sorry I have a driver's license but never sorry that I had you as a teacher. Even on the days you pretend I'm not the hardest-working student you ever had.

JS
You never actually taught me in the traditional sense but you did confirm my suspicion that all of my teachers in high school not-so-secretly hated me. My favorite memory is when you asked what I was doing to find a husband and I said "my eyebrows" because that's pretty much the extent of my dating efforts.

JT
The only science teacher I had in high school that I actually liked! Sorry that I once burned a hole through another student's paper with a crucible lid. And I still remember you staring at my group asking us how to purify water. We had no idea. Apparently...boiling it? Who knew? 

LM
Your classroom is still one of my favorite places to be, I could listen to you talk for hours and not even realize how much I was learning. My favorite memory of you is when you found out my brother was a middle child and asked, in exhaust and disbelief, "there's another one of y'all?"

LN
No matter how much you hated me as a student, you had the egregious error in judgment to recommend me as a teacher and now you have to work with me every day. Told you I would get the last laugh. When this blog goes viral and I'm making more than $22 per year, I will buy you a Mustang. By my calculations that will be in about 8,843 years.

MB 
Back when math was still divided based on discipline and not this Math I, II & III crap that makes no sense, you taught me precal and I loved all of it except for vectors. Vectors are evil. In Despicable Me and in math.

PL
Dude. Your tests were so hard that eventually I started guessing whichever choice I thought WASN'T the answer. You taught me so much about barbarians, battlefields and of course, basketball. And you still park next to me sometimes. A bold move for a man who's seen me turn left on red and back my car into a pole.

SM
I will never forget you staying in your classroom for hours the day before our exam while we asked you every geometry question we could think of, terrified before our first high school exam. We all made 99s and felt kind of stupid for forcing you to help us study all day.


I couldn't end this post without a tribute to my favorite teacher of all time, White Girl Wednesday's very own Missy Misdemeanor. My mother actually did teach me 5th grade science. And I cannot stress enough that I did NOT like her as a teacher (she gave me a B once and gave my little brother detention for breaking her fish tank) but she's one of my favorite humans so...love you, mean it.