Teachers!

Emma started tenth grade last week and she has been doing a lot of thinking about careers.  She has been, lately, settling on Elementary School Teacher. I think that is a fine choice and she would join the ranks of other elementary school teachers in my family.  I have two nieces, one nephew, and a daughter-in-law, all teaching grade school. They teach in the Northwestern, Panther Valley, Palmerton, and Mahanoy Area school districts.

If you have been reading my blog post for a while you know that I always welcome the chance to get nostalgic. All this recent teacher talk got me thinking of memorable teachers I have had in my past. When I say memorable, I don’t mean good or bad. I just mean that when someone says name some K-12 teachers from your childhood, these are the ones that come to mind.  I am going to mention a few, only from my K-12 days, and try to explain what made them memorable.

Sara Miller, my favorite teacher, is at the top of my list. She was a language teacher at Slatington High School. She was an older woman, never married. She had a cleft palate which made her voice distinctive (language teacher was an interesting choice for her).  I had her for three years of German and two years of Latin. She was also my homeroom teacher for most of the high school years.  I saw her a lot.  To me, she makes the memorable list because she challenged you but also knew when it was time to have fun.  Also, she liked to find, and promote, those with talent, and potential, who weren’t jocks or cheerleaders.

Walter Dorward, my sixth grade teacher, is memorable and was quite a hoot!  Sixth grade was part of elementary school back then so he was our teacher all day long. It was, inarguably, the most fun year of school I ever had! Mr. Dorward probably should have retired  a year or two before he taught our class.  He would sometimes come to school with shaving cream around his ears or on his neck. He didn’t understand the SRA, color coded reading program we were using that year, and we often had to explain it to him.  He didn’t have a lot of class control. But we were basically good kids and didn’t take too much advantage of that. We were able to sneak transistor radios into his class for the arrival of the Beatles to America!

The last one I would like to mention today is Mr. Stettler, Trigonometry teacher. I hated math, I despised Algebra, I abhorred Geometry and I loathed Trigonometry. You would think this class would have faded from my memory for that reason alone.  But Mr. Stettler was distinctive, both in appearance and intelligence. He was a large man, with an extreme PA Dutch accent. He had distinctive phrases he would use to encourage us. He would bet us a blueberry pie or a blueberry sundae that we could get the answer to a particular problem. When he was frustrated with us he used to call us members of the IWW (a union at that time), but he called us the I Won’t Works.  But he cared about all of us, even those of us who didn’t care that X=7.  I can honestly say I know no trigonometry to this day, nor have I ever had the need to use it.  But, as a teacher who cared, Mr. Stettler remains memorable. We dedicated our high school yearbook to him.

I could go on and on about teachers I have had. I guess that just shows how important teachers are in our lives.  I hope that this post makes you think of teachers from your past. If it does, I hope you can look back and smile.

Have a wonderful week! If you are in the path of Florence I hope you are safe. Florence is supposed to bring lots of rain and flooding to the Lehigh Valley on Monday. After that, maybe we will see the sun. Remember what that looks like?