Paper #2

When I started school I was a daydreamer, it earned me several demerits on my grade reports. My parents had to talk to me several times about it. By 3^rd grade I was pulling out a book the moment I finished my work, to be fair I would occasionally read first and complete the homework later. If I was not interested by the topic I tuned out. I preferred to immerse myself other worlds, Harry Potter, Redwall and many more. My teachers scolded but as I showed that my work would be completed they allowed me to read, they preferred that occupation to that of a troublemaker.  As I entered middle school I was still a voracious reader, I devoured books by the day and I dreaded my classes. The sound of the bell meant I would have to close my book and learn about someone who died 100 years ago without a story to leave behind or a complicated math problem that left me with jackhammers attacking my skull. Despite those horrors it was in middle school that I first learned the value of a good teacher. A good teacher is one who inspires their students to love learning, and encourages them not to hide themselves away while their counterpart is one who teaches simply because it is a job, someone who does not have a passion for their subject.

The best example of a teacher who inspired me was Mr. Davis, my creative writing teacher from North Kitsap High School. Walking into the classroom I immediately decided that it had character. I sat at an old fashioned chair that swooped up to connect to a tan surface pockmarked with scratches and scribbles of verse. The walls were covered with posters featuring the immortal personalities of cinema. Sherlock Holmes was analyzing the members of “Spinal Tap” on the opposite wall while “The Hobbit” stepped out his front door on another. I felt comfortable there, a feeling that was solidified by my new teacher. Mr. Davis immediately sent out this aura of eccentric intelligence. That first week he learned our names and we dived into a world of writing. His prompts ranged from the subject of our least favorite class to the meaning of the color yellow. While the rapid plunge into writing was a little unnerving, the first reading of our work in class was nail biting, he always encouraged us to write without fear. He honestly cared about all of his students. He wanted to know what our writing styles were, and he understood that what we wrote came from a place that most of us wanted to keep hidden. Because of that we had pseudonyms to use whenever we submitted assignments. The project of the week would be stapled into a packet and then read out loud. The pseudonyms gave us anonymity, safety to write and receive comments, without embarrassment. The safety was one of the tools he used to draw us out of our shells and tell the truth in our writing. He never tried to censor what we wrote by telling us it was too political or try to shape our writing into a box of his design. Instead he preferred us to take that box, put it inside of a bigger box, tape it to some explosives and then drop it off the empire state building. That isn’t an actual quote, I’m simply paraphrasing but I feel like it sums up his teaching style. Mr. Davis was a supportive teacher who honestly wanted his students to succeed; he believed that the emotions and stories we conveyed through our writing were important.

The Dreaded Dr. Denton was, unfortunately, my Washington State History teacher in a mandatory 7^th grade course. We were supposed to learn, as the name suggested, the history of our state. Our governors, our founder’s etcetera etcetera, which is not what we learned. Dr. Denton’s first impossible quality was his voice. It was a cross between a monotone and, remember Charlie Browns teacher? I am pretty certain that those two are related. It didn’t matter if we were discussing the bloody death of Narcissa Whitman or the effects of logging in the Rocky Mountains. It was all rendered equally dull by his voice. The effect was often intensified when he gave lectures, which my brain refused to absorb. I don’t mean to suggest that we learned nothing at all, he simply didn’t teach us what we needed to know. We learned the story of the aforementioned Narcissa Whitman who became a missionary and traveled to the Oregon Territory, had numerous children and was then killed by the Cayuse Indians. We spent a month on a woman whose entire life I just summed up in one sentence. This trend continued all year. I don’t know who our first governor was or even who wrote our constitution. His preferred the seemingly most boring aspects of history such as the backwoodsmen of the 1800’s that roamed the Rockies. I am sure that those men, and their families led impossibly hard lives. It’s not so interesting to hear about however when you leave out the outlaws. He did not teach the subject he was hired to teach, instead he taught us subjects not relevant to Washington State or it’s history. His monotone voice was combined with a torturous interest in dull moments of history and this lead to the waste of the entire class.

The teachers I wrote about in this paper influenced my life again and again but each in different ways. Mr. Davis taught me not to be ashamed of my stories and even encouraged me and his other student to send in our writing to be published. He encouraged us not to censor our stories and to let our feelings flow to show the truth in our writings. He gave me a boost of self-confidence I needed in a difficult part of my life. Dr. Denton on the other hand was utterly uninteresting. His voice was dull, simply uninspiring. He did not teach us the history of Washington State. Instead he taught us parts of history that were not compelling. A good teacher is one who listens to their students and teaches them not only the subject but also how to trust there our knowledge. Their opposite is a teacher who teaches for the paycheck and not for the students.