I just opened a thread with a history theme, and it started me thinking about how I came to love the subject.

I've been fortunate in my lengthy life to encounter a few truly great teachers. I imagine many of you have too.

When I was in high school (I graduated in 1955) history was generally regarded as crushingly dull, mostly because of how it was taught. It certainly bored me to death, but it was required. Then, after deciding engineering school was not for me because I have the mathematical ability of a sea cucumber, I transferred to the University of Louisville to mark time while I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was allowed to skip the world history course requirement, but decided to take the second semester just for the hell of it. That's where I encountered a professor whose lectures made history come alive so vividly and powerfully that I would forget to take notes. I was blown away by the sheer majesty of the subject.

Halfway through my third course with that amazing teacher he left the classroom and dropped dead of a heart attack; but he ha given me a love of history I have to this day.

I learned virtually all the English grammar and syntax I know today from a brilliant teacher in the eighth grade. She taught us to diagram sentences, something that is rarely if ever taught today. (Thanks to a high school language requirement in those days, I learned most of the rest of my grammar tools by taking Latin, which also vastly improved my vocabulary and gave me a love of languages.) We loved and slightly feared Mrs. Roth, the English teacher. She made the diagramming a fascinating exercise, almost a game, and pretty well tattooed it on our callow minds.

There have been a few others, but those two magnificent teachers stand out and gave me gifts that have changed my life.

Of course, I've also had incredible teachers outside the classroom, like the grandfather who started me fishing when I was very small, and my father, who taught me the power of the written word and the importance of the truth.

Who are some of the ones who have given you the most?

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Oh well, what the hell.

I took some classes at Northern Virginia Community College and had one of the most impressive teachers ever. Mrs. Smith taught Composition, Grammar, and Lit. I took the grammar class and was surprised to see students there from Georgetown, George Washington, Catholic, Mary Washington, etc.....Come to find out she was the only teacher in the DC area who still taught Grammar. The textbook was last updated in 1955 and cost $155. The entire class was sentence diagramming. We did sentences that were so long they started at the upper left of the board and ran off the lower right.

Great teacher, a complete lady, and a darn nice person to boot.

My Dad. He used to quote *his* father: "Only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."

That and his general outlook on life inoculated me against a tidal wave of BS until I started thinking for myself. I'm sure that he occasionally despaired of its ever happening...better late than never!

Thanks, Dad. (He'd have loved the internet and Amazon Prime.)

I hated history and dreaded the classes, I was forced to take. Until, my eighth year, where my instructor injected life into the study of history. I read the assignments, and only halfway paid the teacher any mind, until the day he began speaking about Jefferson. He made sure everyone in class, was participating, including yours truly, and asked why the man who wrote our beloved Constitution, was never recorded, to have given a public address, of any kind..An interesting question, yes indeed, why did this lexicon, this poet, not participate in public exchanges??Thomas Jefferson was a shy, self conscious, man with a horrible speech impediment, a stammer..Jefferson communicated, for the most part, through handwritten notes, and virtually never spoke to anyone, save family or his closest friend, but only in private. From that moment on, I was smitten with history, and glean readings looking for those bits of humanity, usually left out. These were men just like me, with the same human urges, wants, needs, and shortcomings, as I have, to a great extent, not just names, with dates you were tested on!

"shouldazagged....'I've been fortunate in my lengthy life to encounter a few truly great teachers'......
Thanks very much!

My 6th grade teacher loved history...therefore I freaking hate math! But love history and maps...and those things that go bang!

That's shocking, but it's the kind of thing that helps explain a lot of atrocious writing I see everywhere, produced by people who are supposed to be professional communicators.

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Oh well, what the hell.

Gravity and Water

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I Love This Site

The one stand out for me was a calculus professor I had for three of the seven courses I took while in college at Cal Poly SLO. His name was Jim Mueller, a Cal Tech PhD, and he was just superb. He started teaching the first year I started in 1980 and, I believe, now heads the math department there.

My 9th grade world history teacher was Skip Diaz. He played for BC Lions and Oregon as a lineman. He was huge and everyone was respectful in his class. While giving lectures, he would habitually grab the edge of his desk with two fingers and absentmindedly lift and move it.

In college, most of my courses consisted of students sitting with a blank look on their faces. Physics classes.

My advanced placement history teacher, Angelo Monteleone, at Quigley South Preparatory Seminary in Chicago was amazing.

His anecdote about the hilarious meeting between the Pope and the head of the Greek Orthodox church justified his employment by itself. It was like a cross between a Monty Python skit, an episode of "Big Bang Theory" and the insane campaigns of one-up-manship between the North and South Koreans at Panmunjom.

Mr. Monteleone's family was from Montemaggiore, Sicily. He used to like to go there at election time. There weren't just various political parties (conservative, socialist, communist, etc.) or even just factions of political parts; there were NEIGHBORHOOD and even VANITY political parties. Imagine an election in your town that featured not just the Republican and Democrat parties, but the East 55th Street Republican and Herb's Democrat parties.

I don't know if Mr. Monteleone is still around, but Quigley South is long gone. The building's still there near the corner of 79th and Western, but it's now "St. Rita", that school having been closed and the name slapped across Quigley South.

He does sound like a great one.

Your post reminded me of the classic story about the time Cardinal Newman and the Archbishop of Canterbury had to share a carriage in London. The Archbishop remarked, "You know, it's fitting we should be riding together since we both serve God." The Cardinal reportedly replied, "Ah, yes, you in your way and I in His."

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Oh well, what the hell.

The only teacher I had that ever really had any effect on me was my high school English teacher, Mr. Mike DeNoia. To this day I'm still using his teachings. Last I heard he was suffering from a form of dementia. When they had our last class reunion he was the only teacher there.

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Stan

"Get off my lawn."

Frankly I don't remember a lot of my teachers, especially the ones before high school. I did have a HS English teacher all the guys had the hots for, then she went and got married and broke all of our hearts.

The "teachers" I do remember, mostly from my Boy Scout days, are the ones that taught me how to shoot, pitch a tent, how to tie knots that work...many of which I still use today, how to survive in the wilderness, make a fire, rappel off a mountain, and the many other things that have stuck with me for the past 60 years or so. Then I thank the Navy Officers and Chiefs who taught me how to survive in a Military world, the guys in survival school who taught me to navigate at night by the Stars, how to avoid capture by the VC if shot down over VN, how to field strip a 1911 in the dark. Going through life presents each of us with a great number of teachers, the best of whom have been there and speak from experience.

I was very lucky that I had several good teachers. Mrs Michener was my best friend's mother and I had her in 5th grade. It was toward the end of her career and my dad had her for 5th grade the first year she taught. She use to read to us each day after lunch, and she instilled a love of reading and books in me. She had a great voice and read us some really good books. She also hit me with a yardstick because I called her by her first name. She said "I know you spend as much time at my house as yours, but here you call me Mrs, not Juanita. I said "But that is your name" and she hit me again, but not hard.

Mrs Hall was the first Southerner I ever knew and she moved to town when I was in HS and she taught history. Again, she had a great voice, beautiful accent, and made history come alive. She made me want to be a history teacher. I got the degree, but never taught. That is one reason I post so many historical facts and dates here. I was never in a classroom, but I try to teach every day.

In the 11th grade I had a World History teacher, named John Campbell, his lectures got me very interested in History. When we got to Napoleon he let one of the students give the lecture, because he knew that the student was more knowledgeable on that subject than he was.
In college I had a blind history professor (Dr. Marti). The class was California History. He would lecture and show slides that he was able to narrate because he had memorized the order that they would be viewed. His seeing eye dog would sleep under the table.

History was my favorite subject in school and to this very day I still love history I did not have a specific teacher who helped me develop my love of history. But every history teacher that I had when I was in school was excellent.

I had an English teacher my junior year of high school who, when we studied A Tale Of Two Cities (required in those days), brought in photographs illicitly taken from a roof of one of the last executions by guillotine in France. Took place in the late '30's, as I recall. The series of stills was quite blurry, but made a pretty powerful impression. Certainly brought the novel into more vivid focus.

She'd probably be both fired and sued today.

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Oh well, what the hell.

My great teacher was Mr. Lavinsky. He was my music appreciation teacher and was popular around the whole school. He was an accomplished trumpeter and often played Al Hirt at our auditorium sessions.
He always tried to set the mood when he played a piece for us.
I remember he chose a very dark and gloomy day to play the Pathetique for us. Luckily he was our last class of the day. We went walking out of the class room like zombies. He got us revved up for the 1812 Overture and explained each movement in Romeo & Juliet. (Tchaikovsky ) He made me appreciate Russian music and I became a particular fan of Prokofiev.
Before his class I was pretty indifferent to classical music.
RIP Sir and thank you.

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Regards, Ron
USASA 1965/69

I wonder if there is anyplace in the country where music appreciation is still taught in the public schools. I doubt it, but hope I'm wrong.

That's another way I was awfully lucky, growing up when I did, and with parents who loved music and books.

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Oh well, what the hell.

My favorite teacher was Fr. Barry Hagen, a blind priest who approached the study of history as one would a crime scene. The historian was a detective who sifted through the conflicting viewpoints and eyewitnesses to arrive at a closer version of the actual event. When you read for him you had to pay attention to the minutia. Made the subject come alive.

I've never been a good "student", but have always been a good "learner", and am still, albeit as an autodidact. I generally had poor, boring, automaton teachers in elementary, middle, high school, and college, none energizing any subject, or inspiring interest. But, there was an exemplary, outstanding music teacher in our small town, Paul Kramer by name, who recruited kids at the elementary school level into his band/orchestra program, and formed and nurtured and cajoled them into an award winning high school orchestra and solo and ensemble prizewinners, me among them, despite my paucity of inherent musical talent. If he could make me a "musician" I figured, I could encourage others in different directions...