Do YOU remember your favorite teachers?

New Blogger Ray Brocklesby thinks back about his own school days and his favourite teachers

Hi, there has been a slight gap since the last post on this blog but I have just joined the company and hope to bring you some more thought provoking subjects to discuss. To start off I am going to talk about my favorite teachers. I am not so young now and it is many years since I went to school in the UK, but I can still remember certain teachers that influenced me. I can still remember their names yet the names of some of my close friends of the same period have receded into the deepest corners of my memory. Why is it that these people had such an influence on me that I remember them clearly after all these years?

My Favourite Teacher

I remember my favorite teacher, Mr Kerr, who taught Spanish. How he would perch on his desk with his feet resting on the front row of student desks in front of him. He made the subject come alive and kept us captivated throughout the whole class. Then there was Mr Elias, who taught Art, he was so hip (now that’s a word we don’t hear any more) but once again the fact he was so different from the formal teachers that he worked with. Then finally, there was “Whacker Wilson” who waved a gym shoe around and we just knew that we would get a slap on our rear end if we misbehaved. But, you know, thinking back I don’t ever remember him actually punishing anybody. In fact I remember a kindly man that sat with me and explained difficult mathematical concepts that I struggled with. Yet he was still “Whacker Wilson”.

Pause for a moment and think back to when you were at school. Do you remember certain teachers who had an extra-ordinary effect on you? Why was it that you remember those particular teachers? I have given this some thought and I believe that it was the teachers that shared and experience with me that I remember most. Teachers that talked at me recede from my memories whereas the teacher who walked with me as I learned are still here and influencing me today.

Teachers that influenced me. An odd topic to be thinking of all these years later, but it was sparked off by thinking about how to encourage learning with my 15 year old adopted Chinese son who finds reading a chore and is more attuned to video games and dvd’s. How could I make learning more interesting and encourage him? To be honest reading a book is a solitary activity and for someone who does not like reading it is hardly likely to inspire. I thought back to the times when we had watched a movie together and chatted about it both during and after the film. That was when it occurred to me that the subscription to Zane was what I needed to use as an inspirational tool. Instead of just parking my son down in front of the computer with instructions to watch a particular video from the Zane library, I sat down with him and we watched the videos together, using them as a tool to spark off discussion, interspersed with a few jokes. We verbally pulled each video apart and in doing so, without him knowing it he had absorbed much more of the content than before. It worked for me, why not give it a shot yourself.

I look forward to hearing from readers about what they remember from school and what inspired them…..