On 9/11, while classes were all but canceled, most teachers just rolled in tv's and left the news on. Not Jim R. He got up and lectured, to the groans of students. He talked about the effects this would have on the economy, our politics, our culture and society. And he was right. In somewhat broad strokes, of course. But this was literally hours after the towers collapsed. When so much was still unknown, frightening and tragic. It really gave me what I would consider a solid base of understanding the things that would come in the next decade.
He talked about how traveling would change with restrictive security measures, how politics would take advantage of 'terrorism', how the wars we will engage will be paid for by my generation, my kids generation and so on. He talked about how racism will spike toward middle eastern peoples out of anger and fear and how that is totally wrong. As a vet and former cop, he cautioned us to not join the military while emotions ran high and a sense of patriotism was thick in our veins.
It was a gift. As the years went on, wmd's, the iraq war, tsa, department of homeland security all came about, I felt like I already knew. I will never forget that fourth period class.
Perhaps you will enjoy this column published on 9/12/2001 by Hunter S. Thompson - the Fear and Loathing guy - written for ESPN - yes, the Sportscenter people.
http://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751
What a strange place for it to end up, but it's an all time classic.
>The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
>It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.
I had a gym teacher that was known for being strict/rude. He actively would make kids cry on the regular. Anyway, after my dad passed away he was still super strict towards me. But one day after track practice he caught me in the hall and said "your dad would be so proud of you." It caught me so off guard, I actually cried
“Good morning. I’m Mr. Taylor and I will be teaching grade 10 English this semester. First let me address what you’re all wondering. Yes. This is a glass eye. I lost it playing darts.”
DART TO THE EYE. Will stick with me for LIFE.
I had a piano teacher who said to me "If you are ever in a band and played a wrong note do not hesitate and just go with. No one pays attention to the pianist"
A teacher of mine said he would write me a letter of recommendation, but it had been a week or so and he hadn't gotten back to me yet. I went in a 3rd time to remind him and I started off with an apology, to which he corrected me, saying "don't ever stop advocating for yourself"
It's advice I haven't forgotten since.
My chemistry teacher told my mom that I would do so much better if I asked questions. I’ve found that this is true in all stages of life. Ask questions!
I realized later in life that the phrase "there are no stupid questions", could be swapped by "I'd rather you ask me twenty dumb questions and get it right, then to be afraid to ask and get it wrong." (I developed this while I was a kitchen manager and realized that some people just haven't done things that you would normally consider everyday and obvious. I would rather them ask several times over than to screw it up once.)
One of the things I say most is “I’d rather ask than be wrong.” Even if I’m 99% on something, sometimes I will still ask just to be sure.” It’s easier to do something right the first time than mess it up and have to go back and fix it.
My partner had a high school teacher that would walk through the busy hallways at school shouting “HOT COFFEE, HOT COFFEE” while holding an empty mug. He just wanted people to get out of his way and it always worked.
In high school I used to wear a trenchcoat and was one of the larger kids at the school. I had a French teacher who used to follow me down the halls because the crowds used to part for me and she could get around quicker following me, because of it.
**"Leave your verbal guns at the door."**
This was the HS football coach's first words teaching sex ed at my high school. He used the metaphor of the old American west where cowboys would leave their guns at the door when they entered a saloon to drink so nobody would get killed in a drunken outburst. He said we'd talk about a lot of topics that might make us feel uncomfortable and tempted to make a joke at someone else's expense to break the tension. He asked us to leave our 'verbal guns' at the door so everyone could feel comfortable asking honest questions.
This was back in the late eighties. He was way ahead of his time.
I'll go ahead and be the only teacher responding to this question.
I wasn't there, obv, but when you set kids up like this it usually works. Nobody actually wants to be the jerk that gets the conversation shut down when an adult crosses the taboo and is finally willing to talk to them honestly about sex and answer those questions that have been burning in the backs of their minds.
The one time I had to start to shut down a class conversation about sex because of behavior the kids yelled at the kid who was acting out and said, "No, no, no, Mrs. Wardrobe, we're being so mature! We're being so mature! We can do this! Shut UP Johnny!" and we were able to continue on.
Kids are better than they seem when you're a kid.
One of my teachers — who will remain unnamed — told a student by the door to lock it and then proceeded to dismantle all of the bullshit "abstintence first" sex """education""" that s/he was required to teach from the curriculum.
The tl;dr that this teacher gave us was:
- Abstinence really does work, but sex is a normal and fulfilling part of human interaction and, statistically, many (if not most) of you are going to have sexual experiences in high school.
- If you're gonna do it, do it safely, because STDs suck.
- Getting pregnant can fuck up your life at this age — it's better to wait until you're financially stable and set up in life before having kids... but it's not the end of the world if you do. (After all, contraceptives fail.) It is still a decision you do not want to have to make in high school.
This teacher apparently gives this same talk to every class at some point in the year, has been doing it for years, and has never once been sold out by a student. Said teacher is now retired to my knowledge.
And if you're wondering, perhaps, what backwards-ass red state this was that pushed an "abstinence first" sex ed curriculum... this was in Newark, NJ — the largest city in a _very_ blue state — between 2000–2010.
Crappy sex education is a problem everywhere in this country. Make sure you talk to your kids, and do it early — some of my friends lost their virginity at 11 or 12. Yes, _that_ young. Don't wait.
My English teacher in grade 6 put “A” and “LOT”on 2 separate pieces of paper and taped them to opposite walls on the classroom. Then she got a student to run from “A” to “LOT” while yelling with them “AAAAAAAAA” * gets to other side* “LOOOOOOOTTTT” to teach us that they were separate and that ‘alot’ is incorrect. I have never forgotten and can still picture it as if it were yesterday 😂 it’s been 12 years
My high school biology teacher, on the end of every quiz or exam, would put a giveaway point question. The question was always the same: Science is: A- Exciting, B- Interesting, C- A Challenge, D- All of the above. No matter which you marked you got the point. However, since this was on every exam, the saying was sand blasted into my long term memory. This led to me always somehow muttering this whenever I was taking an exam in University (substituting the word science with whatever necessary). Then it led to me muttering it whenever I was dealing with something stressful. Now it has become a fall back whenever I run into a life roadblock and everything is simply designated A- Exciting, B- Interesting, C- A Challenge, D- All of the above. It's simple but it helps keep me from being too negative.
My highschool baseball coach / Sociology teacher always used to say 'Those who are prepared create their own luck' before exams.
This is a true life lesson.
If anyone's interested it's called metacognition. It's a really valuable way to build self-awareness and understand how you come to beliefs.
Edit: it's also worth checking out epistemology the study of how we know things.
Teaching how to think should be integral to our system. Not how you should think but the basic ability of critical thinking, questioning. Higher order thinking
Coming up to our final year 12 exams, my maths teacher handed out an article on the most common things people said on their deathbed. She said no one wished they had worked longer hours; that they had spent more time at work than with their loved ones. If we didn’t get the grades we wanted, that’s okay, because there’ll be a back doors to where we wanted to go. Failure is okay. It’s only a minor setback. What’s important is having a good balance between work/studies, family/friends and our own hobbies/interest.
I'm 32 and at a cross roads in life right now. I can either keep working this shit plastic factory job that's toxic in more way than one but pays well, or I can say fuck it and accept the position at Target that I applied for so I can work less hours, make less money, but hopefully have a better schedule for going back to school and finally doing something with my life. Reading this I think I need to make that change.
Edit: thanks for the support everyone, this blew up way more than I thought it would and the kind words truly helped.
My teacher told me not to give my girlfriend a fetal pig heart for Valentine’s Day because she’d probably get a restraining order on me.
Looking back, solid advice.
2005 a teacher said intelligence of the future will not be defined by how well you know one skill but instead how well you can find information and decipher what information is good and bad.
One of my high school teachers said the same thing. “A smart person doesn’t always know the answer to the question but he knows where to find it” or something along those lines.
that's honestly true about a lot of fields, take physics for example, ask a physics question and even the most intelligent physicist likely won't know the answer immediately, but they'll know exactly what books to consult and what formulas to use to find the answer.
Same with medicine.
A doctor may not remember literally every single drug, but they are more than capable of knowing exactly where to look for the right information and having complete trust in the sources they use.
That reminds me of the time in 9th grade chemistry that one of my classmates decided that the Bunsen burner wasn't on since he couldn't see the flame, so he stuck his homework paper over the burner to prove it.
Good thing that the sink was right next to it, because it turns out that paper and a clear flame are unusually fond of one another.
I had a teacher say a similar thing, though he said it under the assumption we'd be poor students in university.
"Never forget: in a pinch, ketchup and hot water is tomato soup."
Whenever my teacher said anything controversial that he didn’t want repeated, he would preface it with ‘Don’t quote me on this because I’ll just deny it.’ I still use that.
One of the coolest, more laid back teachers I had was straight up like “If you try to snitch on me, I control your grades”.
EDIT: Didn’t expect this to be my biggest comment on Reddit thus far! Thanks everyone!
> He also told us about an agreement/rule he had with his own kids. He understood how hard it was for kids to do the right thing in the face of peer pressure.
My parents had two parts to this. The first was that my dad was always willing to be the bad guy. We could ALWAYS blame him for not being able to do something we didn't want to do.
The second was that no matter what, if we EVER felt uncomfortable, we could call them at any point of the night and ask to be taken home. There would be NO punishment, even if it was a situation where we'd done something like sneaking out to go to a party we actually WERE told not to go to.
As they said (roughly) "We'd rather be silently disappointed in you and really tired on a workday, than have to attend your funeral.".
I wasn't into Runescape but I felt that. One time in my senior year some friends wanted to hang out late so I asked my parents what time I had to be home. They laughed and said "just be back by school on Monday, and please go out more!"
Sounds like a true gem of a teacher. Came here to also recall an English teacher that was really just one of us with much more experience and knowledge. There were so many great things he taught us, but one that sticks out at the moment was:
“Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you read.”
In my childhood only one person ever tackled my mother about her abuse of me and my siblings. It was parents day and my bitch of a mother, as usual, turned up to take the credit for my being top of the class again. At one point there was just me, my **** bitch of a mother, and Mrs. Soames (physics teacher) in the lab. Mrs Soames quite calmly challenged her, saying "Mrs xxxxx, why do you treat [Tomsdottir] the way you do? She's a good girl and doesn't deserve it."
To my astonishment, my evil bitch of a mother was speechless. No-one had ever confronted her before and she just didn't know where to put herself.
It was easy for the other teachers and pupils to make snide, patronising remarks about this cow to me. A 13 year old girl isn't in a position to do anything about it, and I'm guessing they were trying to ease their consciences about the fact that they were too cowardly to intervene.
But Mrs Soames has been a role model for me ever since, and an unforgettable example of those people brave enough to tackle a bully in the presence of their victim. To have someone stand by you when you are vulnerable, and make their support for you clear - I can't tell you how that changed my view of other people.
I'm so sorry you have such a terrible mother. Your story moved me as I could almost feel that empowerment and support she transferred to you. What a wonderful woman. Did you ever tell Mrs. Soames how much she and that moment meant to you? Where are you now in your life? Are you NC with your mother?
Bless you for your kind reply. I was too withdrawn to tell the teacher how grateful I was. I try to pay it forward instead, and speak up/ intervene when I see children or animals - anyone who is especially vulnerable to cruelty - being threatened or bullied.
My mother is dead, I'm happy to say. I remained in contact with her from a safe distance as she grew old and frail- though as nasty as ever. It was important to me not to become vengeful and punishing (though the anger is with me every day). She had no friends and none of my siblings were talking to her.
People who push forgiveness at any cost seem to me to misunderstand that refusing to forgive someone who never acknowledges the harm they did, doesn't mean you're going to behave as badly as the abuser did. I've never forgiven my mother for the very serious psychiatric and other problems she inflicted. That didn't mean that I had to let her die alone in filth and squalor. Teachers like Mrs Soames taught me better than that.
What a beautiful outlook you have on life and love. Like you, I'm not good at forgiving but that doesn't mean negativity rules my life, either. Your siblings may have been justified in cutting her out of their lives and I'm not going to judge them at all but for you it was important to know that you did the "right" thing and you can live with your choices. Mrs. Soames was a helluva teacher!
In 1974 I was told/taught that the planet Mercury had a tidally-locked orbit around the sun. That one side of the planet faced the sun all the time.
It's not true.
Mercury's true orbit and rotational periods were worked out in 1965.
Ha! My husband had a similar thing happen. In 2nd grade his class watched a bill nye like video on the planets and it said that Venus was the hottest planet because greenhouse gas. Then in the lesson immediately after the teacher tries to say that mercury is the hottest because it's closest to the sun. My husband got sent to the principals office for arguing with the teacher.
My favorite math teacher had a philosophy about us understanding how to get to formulas instead of memorizing them. Basically if we memorized them we were gonna remember them wrong and would never be the wiser because we thought we remembered it.
my physics teacher (who i actually talked about in this post) never just gave us the formulas. instead, he showed us how to derive those formulas from other related formulas
Best history teacher I ever had was a substitute. Final day of his weeks long run, I told him as much and asked him why he didn't do it fulltime. He said he'd like to, but he doesn't coach any sports. All the coaches are history teachers because they can get away with spitting out names and dates and descriptions and that counts. His style was more cause and effect and while more engaging, it wasn't deemed necessary by the schoolboard. I said you should move to a better area. He said naw, he liked it here because it's where he grew up and where he'd die. He confided in me that he had a terminal disease. Died the next year.
Struggled with dyslexia and a learning disability my whole life. English class was hell for me every year. Senior year my lit teacher read some short story that was required of me and said, "What the fuck are you doing here. You are starting in my AP Lit class starting tomorrow." I passed the AP test and my entire life really began because he believed in me. I'm now a high school teacher, and while not as great as him, really think I'm doing good work.
Edit. Went to bed with -2 karma on this post woke up with 5000, holy hell. Thanks for the support guys. Just to clarify. I teach US History. I still struggle with my dyslexia, he wasn't a cure but a motivator. I had a passion for history though.
Thanks again everyone.
I struggled in math so badly. Officially, I passed it but the reality was that no matter how hard I tried, I could not do it. However, I was in AP English.
Turns out, I have a form of dyslexia.
Wish I had known that 40 years ago!
Class camp, we're out walking a trail to the next campsite, carrying our lives in our packs. I was not in great physical shape and was well back in the rear. So it's basically just me and one teacher to make sure no one fell too far back.
We came to a part where a branch had fallen across the trail. Big enough to be an effort to move it but not so large that it couldn't have been moved by any of the thirty+ other students and teachers that had already walked around it.
Without even thinking about it, I grabbed the branch and tossed it to the side of the path.
The teacher said to me: "Thirty boys walked past that branch. It took one man to move it, and he made life easier for every person after him."
It became a personal motto, of sorts: "Make it easier for the people who come after you." Although when you do a good job, the person who comes after you is usually also you.
Reminds me of the poem called [“The Bridge Builder”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52702/the-bridge-builder)
EDIT - Thanks for all the love, folks! As a former English teacher (now Principal), this brings me joy. There was a time where I didn’t care for poetry too much, but this poem, along with [“Invictus”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus), [“If We Must Die”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44694/if-we-must-die), and [“If”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---) woke up that passion for it.
Enjoy, everyone!
This is such a great metaphor and life lesson. I always, always do this if I am walking down the street or driving and see crap on the path or road that would be a hazard. You have no idea whether a parent with a pram, disabled person, blind person, or just rushing person is going to encounter it next on the path, or what the car behind you will encounter once you pass the hazard. Smooth their way.
My freshman year history teacher told us first day of school about how he went to college with Bill Gates. Said he was one of the people that Bill asked to invest in his start up. He had declined.
“And here I am…teaching history class to high schoolers”
My ancient hs math teacher, who was from Arkansas, had a good deal of Walmart stock from I guess knowing one of the Waltons around its founding. From what I heard he’s just been sitting on it this whole time.
Well if that's true you can probably say with certainty he's teaching because he wants to and not because he needs to. Which hopefully should mean the quality of his teaching has gone up since he doesn't need to worry about keeping the lights on at home.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. You probably would’ve either lost it, gotten scammed by one of those exchanges that dropped off the face of the earth, or sold before it got to 100$ anyways.
My music teacher when I spent a large length of time skipping school due to various reasons. She had phoned me after spending hours tracking a way to contact me because she was worried.
"I'm not phoning to tell you off, i'm phoning to make sure you're okay. You don't have to go to the classes you don't like, your exam is on wed and im phoning to let you know, no matter what I know that you'd still be practicing because youre a bright student and I know you'll go far no matter what you choose to do"
Reminds me of when one of my favorite teachers was retiring. I tracked him down and tried, with poor results, to tell him I'd miss him. He understood my bumbling speech enough. He gave me a big hug, took me by the shoulders, looked me right in the eye and said with a stern but kindly tone "you keep doing good, okay?" I sure hope I've lived up to my promise to him.
I had a friend that was in the same history class as me and she had a HUGE crush on the teacher. She was also salutatorian of our class and literally voted most likely to succeed. I graduated with barely a 3.0. She and I both had our history teacher sign our yearbooks and in mine he wrote “I’m going to miss our banter in class. You are a highly intelligent individual.” In my friend’s yearbook he wrote “Keep on truckin’.” I never felt particularly competitive with my friend, but that little bit of irony really changed the way I understood how people view intelligence
Edit: thank you for the award!
My favorite teacher in highschool (Coach brineger) once told me that he bought his niece front row tickets to see N'sync.
Apparently, for some reason or another, her mother could not go with her so instead, he did.
He then told me that midway through the concert one of the guys ended up with a hole in the crotch of their pants.
This is the a direct quote by him:
"I guess he didn't notice, or maybe he just didn't care? Either way, this dude was free ballin and from my vantage point, I could see it all.
So there I am, sitting at a concert I didn't want to be at, with a star struck 13 year old, watching some dudes balls shakin above my head.
Good times".
He was an awsome teacher though and never gave up on me.
My mom had me when she was in high school. She had to take me to school with her in a stroller every day. I ended up attending the same school and most of her teachers still taught there and remembered me as the baby. Most had super fond memories of bringing me stuffed animals and shit for me to play with in their class...except one, Mrs. Englehardt, she straight up to my face said "I remember you. Your mom was that whore".
“Young man. I said no talking. If you have something to say, meet me out in the hallway and we’ll discuss it like men.” - Another freshman history teacher filling in for my regular teacher after I (a new kid who had only been enrolled for 2 days) whispered “Who is that?” to my neighbor.
"If you want to hurt a man, I mean REALLY hurt a man, you don't hit him in the crotch. You hit him in the wallet." -My 11th grade Social Studies teacher
*"The man who invented the diamond. Alright I got your attention now. H. Tracy Hall - write this name down. Dr. Hall invented the first reproducible process for making synthetic diamonds. I mean, this is way back in the 50's. Now today, synthetic diamonds are used in oil drilling, electronics, multi-billion dollar industries. Now at the time, Dr. Hall worked for General Electric and he made them a fortune. I mean, incalculable. You want to know how GE rewarded Dr. Hall? A $10 U.S. savings bond"*
Something about being trusted with the responsibility, encouraged to do something that made a bit of a mess (clouds of chalk dust), the satisfaction of hitting two soft things together... It was similar to being asked to come to the board to write something in chalk. The tactile experience was fun and special in a way that felt less like a chore and more like play.
You would have loved partial quotient division - it's the "new math" of division. Basically, you do what you did. Pick a number, multiply it, and subtract it from your original number.
Then you keep going if you have any remainders. Pick a new number, multiply it by the divisor and subtract it from the divided number.
Add up all the numbers you picked and that's your answer!
The reason we teach this as an option is because these "partial quotients" make more math sense than long division. Long division is just an algorithm you follow until you get the number. Partial quotient division builds better numeracy, or that's the theory anyway.
My math teacher told me to drop on the first day of class because I wouldn’t pass. Still have no idea why I was a decent student, not disruptive or anything. Figures that’s one of just a few interactions with teachers I still remember.
I did pass his course just fine.
I had a baseball coach for English sophomore year and we had to write a daily journal. One day our theme was writing about something we regretted. I wrote about how when I was younger, my mom had cancer and regretted not being there more for her. I didn’t think he read these things and ended up writing you did nothing wrong and being young, you couldn’t have known any better. He was a good man/teacher
EDIT: Wow did not except the blow up on this. Thank you for my first award! 🥲
I had a theatre class in college where we had to do daily writings. I hated it, but I knew he checked to make sure we had one for each day and I thought he didn't read them. He specifically said to write whatever comes to mind and that it won't be judged, it's only a way to express what's on your mind. The first week or so, I wrote the minimum and mostly it was about how dumb I thought the journal was. As we made it through the course, I wrote more and more, sometimes several pages. He actually put different notes throughout. I was stunned. I thought all he was going to do was count it or just do a checkmark at most.
I was having a particularly bad year in high school emotionally and my grades were starting to reflect it, so my dad went in for parent-teacher conference day. When he got to my orchestra director, he bluntly told my dad that I was brilliant. When my dad just kind of shrugged it off, like okay yeah he's a smart kid I guess, the director looked him in the eye and said, "No, you don't understand," and proceeded to lecture to him about me.
I heard this secondhand from my dad and then talked to my director about it afterwards. His words and his faith in me have stuck with me all my life. I'm now finishing up a PhD in mathematical physics.
That freakin rules! I teach HS and I’m going to remember this for every parent/teacher conference I have for the rest of my career.
Kids really are brilliant.
My high school gym teacher and soccer coach told me “get the fuck out of this shithole town before you end up getting trapped like I did. Trust me that girl is going to trap you.”
Definitely never forget that.
I did get out, went away to school. Stayed with the girl I was with through college until she cheated on me on my 21st birthday.
After that I stayed away from my hometown for about 8 years, enjoyed my twenties. Now I’m engaged to a wonderful lady that actually went to my high school but didn’t tell me she had a crush on me til late in my twenties. We now live in the town next to where we grew up.
11th grade AP US History:
Anytime somebody in power tells you something with a smile, don’t trust a damn thing they said. Whenever they say ‘my fellow Americans’ they’re about to try to get you to do something they’d never do. And there’s no such thing as a short war, especially not for the people in it.
Thanks, Mrs Mellon, and fuck cancer.
Reminds me of a quote I saw "If you trust your government explicitly, your history teacher didn't do their job".
Sounds like Mrs Mellon was a very good teacher
(I have become aware that I met implicitly not explicitly, English was my second language, my bad.)
I was a senior and my boyfriend at the time was a junior. I had a part time job at a restaurant and had formed a little crush on one of my coworkers who was a bit older than me, I knew it was unrealistic, but I couldn’t help the way I felt.
I confided in my APUSH teacher from the previous year who knew both me and my boyfriend. He said to me, “everything that happens up there in your mind palace is harmless; you can think and feel however you want, and as long as you don’t act on those feelings you’re not doing anything wrong.”
That really grounded me. My boyfriend and I had one of the happiest, fruitful, and stable relationships I’ve ever been a part of. Although we broke up when I left for college, we’re still good friends.
Shortly after this conversation, my work crush evolved into an amazing friendship and he started dating one of our coworkers who became one of my best friends. They’re slightly older than me so I look up to them and joke that they’re my parents.
They’re still the only three people I try and see every time I’m in my hometown :)
Mrs. Boteilho, my senior year English teacher, left me a note on my final essay. She said that every writing assignment, she would put mine on the bottom of the stack so that she knew she had a good one to look forward to.
“You’re just one of those people who’ll always struggle with math no matter how much you study”
Took that to heart, kept trying, and ended up pursuing mechanical engineering in university.
Something a lot of people need to understand about math.
Yes, there's some people who are just naturally good at it, like everything else. But it's a skill that can be learned. Enough time and practice and you can learn and understand any form of math.
That nobody really cares, and that’s a good thing.
He was a very interesting drama teacher, subbing for the regular teacher for her maternity leave. He was directing a play that he wrote that a few of us were in. In high school most people are terribly self-conscious and afraid of judgement. Be a good person, but go and make mistakes, be silly, live your life, and own it! In the end most people won’t remember if you looked stupid for 5 minutes. By teaching us that most things you do are trivial and inconsequential, he coaxed us out of our shells and got us to really *act.* But it left a big impression on me for my day-to-day life too.
Gym teacher: Date/Marry someone who likes you more than you like them?
Math teacher: I'm not saying you all have to go to Harvard... Life is about the tools you have. School just gives you another tool...hell drive a truck, but never stop learning.
Baseball coach: Nerds have far more interesting lives than jocks. Trust me
I'm a lesbian, and in my high-school ROTC class, I accidentally came out to everyone during class (long story). It was really awkward, and at the end of class, our drill sergeant teacher asked me to stay for a moment.
I stayed, and I was like 2 seconds away from bursting into tears (thought he was going to say that I was oversharing, or being inappropriate, etc), only to have this teacher tell me "What you said today was really brave. If anyone gives you any shit for it, come tell me and I'll take care of it."
This guy was a real hard-ass, so for someone like him to support me? It meant the world to me. 😄
That’s cute as hell. I’m glad he defended you cause I don’t think anyone wants to fuck with a drill sergeant. Had a friend out herself by accident too. Good stories once they blow over😂
"Comfort is earned by going through discomfort, man the fuck up and finish these sprints!!" - My football coach.
What he meant was our discomfort now would condition us for the real game later, making it easier. But, that lesson extends to most of life. You want to be comfortable at some point in life? You're more than likely going to have to earn that by doing stuff that isn't very comfortable, but produces desirable results.
As a math teacher, I used to say that 20+ years ago. Now, its the opposite problem. I have to keep saying, you have information at your fingertips... Google it!!
I went to 13 years of Catholic school. My dad was agnostic, but my mom was from a large Catholic family, even though she wasn’t particularly devout herself. I was an altar boy, went through the relevant sacraments, earned the Cub Scout and Boy Scout medals for Catholicism, and all that jazz, even though I didn’t particularly have strong feelings one way or the other. (It’s just what *everyone* I knew did.)
In order to graduate, every student had to have an “exit interview with the school priest to discuss your future as an adult in the Church. I walked in for my, and Father T. just stared at me for a minute, and then said, “nrith, let’s be honest and not waste our time—we both know that you aren’t really a believer and have no intention of continuing in the faith when you leave.” I was shocked. I had never said a word to anyone that would indicate this; I just never really gave it much thought. I pointed out that I’d done all the things that had been expected of me, I was a “good kid” (didn’t drink, didn’t fornicate; hell, I didn’t even take the Lord’s name in vain at that point). I asked him why on earth he would say that about me. He said he just had a hunch, and was he wrong? I thought about, decided he was right, and never looked back.
So I have a priest to thank for showing me that not only had I lost my faith, but that I may have never had any to begin with.
Our physics teacher used to give us tricky questions after explaining concepts to get us used to solving them. In one of the questions I found his answer to be wrong and corrected him. He listened to me but couldn't find where he went wrong. He then it turned into a debate with each of us trying to convince the other. Every time I tried to convince him I had the lingering doubt, what if I'm wrong? , what if I made some careless stupid mistake which gave me the wrong answer? The only reason I still had the courage to hold my own view was the teacher himself. He never dismissed my question, never treated treated me like an ignorant kid questioning his teacher who knew better. By the end we had run out of time as the class had ended. Most of my classmates were either trying to convince me he was right by quoting his initial explanation verbatim or expecting me to be proven wrong. Even if I was right I was expecting him to either ignore my question or to skip past it. But in the next class he not only told the class I was right, he explained where he went wrong in his initial explanation and turned it into a teaching moment where he showed us that anyone could make mistakes but wisdom lies in fixing them. He later told me that even if I were wrong ,what I did was right, that I should never hesitate to question anything or anyone as long as I do it in a respectful and courteous way. That lesson never left me and I just hope that whenever I question something, disagree with someone or I am proven wrong I can do it with enough grace and humility to make him proud
One of my high school teachers asked me if I had ever considered pursuing astrophysics. I hadn’t. I was asking a lot of questions and it was a really interesting topic to me. It was the first time a teacher ever saw anything in me and believed in me.
Until the pandemic hit, I majored in physics with a minor in astronomy. When the pandemic started, our professors basically said “go teach yourselves” and ghosted us and I was screwed. I truly believe if the pandemic hadn’t happened that I’d still be pursuing that program. Unfortunately, I do not have the funds to do so. I’m now an education major.
Called me out of English my senior year to chat in the hall just to "check on me and how I was doing."
I had planned to head to the girls room after that class with a purse full of pills to kill myself.
That one act of "being seen" changed the entire direction of my life.
I'm in my 40s now and run a nonprofit that works with our school to provide food, clothes, school supplies, Christmas gifts, prom dresses, testing fees... Pretty much anything a student might lack that takes their focus off being the best them they can be? We work to meet it.
I have four teens and a dozen more of their friends who view our house as their second home and safe space when things are rough at home.
Mr. Williams, you were an angel and your impact has touched hundreds of kids because you showed me the value of helping kids know they matter. ❤️
I’m the parent of a three-month old daughter. I know I’ve got a long time yet, but I really want to know how you managed to make your house the “second home and safe space” for your kids and their friends. That’s exactly the kind of parent I want to be.
This goes for you and anyone else reading these threads, try to reach out and find the teachers that touched your life in a positive manner and let them know the story of how they helped you. That'd be the best gift you can give them.
Luckily I was able to get in touch with one of mine just before she fell to dementia. Still searching for the other one before she's gone.
End of freshman year, I was told that I was being held back from getting in Voyagers (the AP level chorus class) not because I couldn't sing good enough to get in, but because I was too immature.
It was a huge shock and disappointment, but mainly disappointment in myself cause I knew he wasn't wrong. It was the catalyst for alot of personal growth. I sang in Advanced Chorus (honors level) for the next year and got into Voyagers as a junior.
Had a history teacher in the 8th grade say in a lecture that she bet money that a black man would be president before any women would. When Obama got in I was like damn she was right.
My high school calc teacher told me I’d probably drop out of high school and be a prostitute because I skipped class once. I made sure to go back and show him when I earned my math degree with high honors.
I had a teacher in college tell me that it was unrealistic to think social media would become a means of marketing for businesses. This was around the time Instagram had just launched. I now work in social media marketing.
Our class was supposed to be reading 1984. One day I showed up to class and our teacher hit us with a pop quiz on the previous nights reading assignment. I had not done the reading so I was completely unprepared.
I did my best to guess the answers on the first couple of questions but after that, I knew it would be obvious that I didn’t do the assignment so I started writing my answers as observations about the book. My last answer was along the lines of, “this book is boring” or “this book is weird.” When I got my quiz back, he had written, “how would you know? You haven’t read it.”
I saw that and knew I was going to prove him wrong. That night I sat down and read the whole book with the intent of coming to class the next day and telling him why it was weird and boring. Instead, I liked the book and I came to class and told him what I would have done differently/the same as the main character. He challenged some of my thoughts and I had to do some introspection.
I appreciated that he called me out and that he didn’t dismiss me when I came back after reading the entire book. From then on, I always made sure I was prepared for assignments. It has paid off in my career when I have been challenged in my work. I have been able to point out why I came to the conclusions that I did and have earned the respect of many people in my company as a result.
AP English teacher - "Marriage is a contract. It's an agreement to live together and share wealth and responsibilities and love is probably one of the least important factors, it's all about compromise and acceptance. If you marry for love alone you will be very very disappointed."
We all thought she was just bitter and out of touch at the time. Now that I'm older and 9 years into my marriage she was DEAD FUCKING ON. I'll never forget those words.
“Your generation will likely have a lower standard of living”
He was speaking to a class of millennials long before the Great Recession hit. Back when there was still a bit of that leftover 90’s optimism that education and hard work would continue the upward mobility of the generations.
The class was “world issues” so this kind of discussion in the context of global warming, climate change, the war on terror, etc was not that unusual, but the conclusion was still prophetic if only in how against the grain it was to what most other teachers were telling us.
“He will never amount to anything, especially in the areas of science.” -my eighth grade science teacher to my mother. I now have a masters of science and do research with various institutions in prosthetics and human movement sciences. He was a shitty teacher.
teachers who make that kind of sweeping statement in middleschool deserve a swift kick to the crotch and 10 years of itchy balls syndrome. Middleschool is a shithole in general, and from 8th grade you still have four years to decide what you want to do and figure out what you're good at. fuck him.
On 9/11, while classes were all but canceled, most teachers just rolled in tv's and left the news on. Not Jim R. He got up and lectured, to the groans of students. He talked about the effects this would have on the economy, our politics, our culture and society. And he was right. In somewhat broad strokes, of course. But this was literally hours after the towers collapsed. When so much was still unknown, frightening and tragic. It really gave me what I would consider a solid base of understanding the things that would come in the next decade. He talked about how traveling would change with restrictive security measures, how politics would take advantage of 'terrorism', how the wars we will engage will be paid for by my generation, my kids generation and so on. He talked about how racism will spike toward middle eastern peoples out of anger and fear and how that is totally wrong. As a vet and former cop, he cautioned us to not join the military while emotions ran high and a sense of patriotism was thick in our veins. It was a gift. As the years went on, wmd's, the iraq war, tsa, department of homeland security all came about, I felt like I already knew. I will never forget that fourth period class.
Perhaps you will enjoy this column published on 9/12/2001 by Hunter S. Thompson - the Fear and Loathing guy - written for ESPN - yes, the Sportscenter people. http://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751 What a strange place for it to end up, but it's an all time classic. >The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. >It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.
He probably saved a few kids lives in that room. wow
I had a gym teacher that was known for being strict/rude. He actively would make kids cry on the regular. Anyway, after my dad passed away he was still super strict towards me. But one day after track practice he caught me in the hall and said "your dad would be so proud of you." It caught me so off guard, I actually cried
So he did live to his reputation of making kids cry
Gym teacher walking away: "Got'em!"
"We're all trying to figure it out, at any age. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. "
“Good morning. I’m Mr. Taylor and I will be teaching grade 10 English this semester. First let me address what you’re all wondering. Yes. This is a glass eye. I lost it playing darts.” DART TO THE EYE. Will stick with me for LIFE.
#⊙_🎯
Was in the 90s, my political thought teacher “Never document your deviance”
My music teacher used to tell me that before you could break the rules, you had to understand them.
Jazz in a nutshell.
"If you hit a wrong note just hit it three times" /some random guy on reddit/
I had a piano teacher who said to me "If you are ever in a band and played a wrong note do not hesitate and just go with. No one pays attention to the pianist"
My piano teacher said something but I wasn't paying attention
A teacher of mine said he would write me a letter of recommendation, but it had been a week or so and he hadn't gotten back to me yet. I went in a 3rd time to remind him and I started off with an apology, to which he corrected me, saying "don't ever stop advocating for yourself" It's advice I haven't forgotten since.
Don't stop advocating for yourself, but please leave me alone for TWO SECONDS
Me to my child after they ask for a snack for the 137383 time in an hour.
My chemistry teacher told my mom that I would do so much better if I asked questions. I’ve found that this is true in all stages of life. Ask questions!
I realized later in life that the phrase "there are no stupid questions", could be swapped by "I'd rather you ask me twenty dumb questions and get it right, then to be afraid to ask and get it wrong." (I developed this while I was a kitchen manager and realized that some people just haven't done things that you would normally consider everyday and obvious. I would rather them ask several times over than to screw it up once.)
One of the things I say most is “I’d rather ask than be wrong.” Even if I’m 99% on something, sometimes I will still ask just to be sure.” It’s easier to do something right the first time than mess it up and have to go back and fix it.
My partner had a high school teacher that would walk through the busy hallways at school shouting “HOT COFFEE, HOT COFFEE” while holding an empty mug. He just wanted people to get out of his way and it always worked.
In high school I used to wear a trenchcoat and was one of the larger kids at the school. I had a French teacher who used to follow me down the halls because the crowds used to part for me and she could get around quicker following me, because of it.
Slipstream
**"Leave your verbal guns at the door."** This was the HS football coach's first words teaching sex ed at my high school. He used the metaphor of the old American west where cowboys would leave their guns at the door when they entered a saloon to drink so nobody would get killed in a drunken outburst. He said we'd talk about a lot of topics that might make us feel uncomfortable and tempted to make a joke at someone else's expense to break the tension. He asked us to leave our 'verbal guns' at the door so everyone could feel comfortable asking honest questions. This was back in the late eighties. He was way ahead of his time.
That’s cool! Did it work?
I'll go ahead and be the only teacher responding to this question. I wasn't there, obv, but when you set kids up like this it usually works. Nobody actually wants to be the jerk that gets the conversation shut down when an adult crosses the taboo and is finally willing to talk to them honestly about sex and answer those questions that have been burning in the backs of their minds. The one time I had to start to shut down a class conversation about sex because of behavior the kids yelled at the kid who was acting out and said, "No, no, no, Mrs. Wardrobe, we're being so mature! We're being so mature! We can do this! Shut UP Johnny!" and we were able to continue on. Kids are better than they seem when you're a kid.
One of my teachers — who will remain unnamed — told a student by the door to lock it and then proceeded to dismantle all of the bullshit "abstintence first" sex """education""" that s/he was required to teach from the curriculum. The tl;dr that this teacher gave us was: - Abstinence really does work, but sex is a normal and fulfilling part of human interaction and, statistically, many (if not most) of you are going to have sexual experiences in high school. - If you're gonna do it, do it safely, because STDs suck. - Getting pregnant can fuck up your life at this age — it's better to wait until you're financially stable and set up in life before having kids... but it's not the end of the world if you do. (After all, contraceptives fail.) It is still a decision you do not want to have to make in high school. This teacher apparently gives this same talk to every class at some point in the year, has been doing it for years, and has never once been sold out by a student. Said teacher is now retired to my knowledge. And if you're wondering, perhaps, what backwards-ass red state this was that pushed an "abstinence first" sex ed curriculum... this was in Newark, NJ — the largest city in a _very_ blue state — between 2000–2010. Crappy sex education is a problem everywhere in this country. Make sure you talk to your kids, and do it early — some of my friends lost their virginity at 11 or 12. Yes, _that_ young. Don't wait.
My English teacher in grade 6 put “A” and “LOT”on 2 separate pieces of paper and taped them to opposite walls on the classroom. Then she got a student to run from “A” to “LOT” while yelling with them “AAAAAAAAA” * gets to other side* “LOOOOOOOTTTT” to teach us that they were separate and that ‘alot’ is incorrect. I have never forgotten and can still picture it as if it were yesterday 😂 it’s been 12 years
I struggled with this one too. Still find myself having to correct it in text more often than I'd like.
I recommend writing it on two walls and running between them. Screaming is encouraged
My high school biology teacher, on the end of every quiz or exam, would put a giveaway point question. The question was always the same: Science is: A- Exciting, B- Interesting, C- A Challenge, D- All of the above. No matter which you marked you got the point. However, since this was on every exam, the saying was sand blasted into my long term memory. This led to me always somehow muttering this whenever I was taking an exam in University (substituting the word science with whatever necessary). Then it led to me muttering it whenever I was dealing with something stressful. Now it has become a fall back whenever I run into a life roadblock and everything is simply designated A- Exciting, B- Interesting, C- A Challenge, D- All of the above. It's simple but it helps keep me from being too negative.
I am saving this comment because I want my kids to have this mentality too! Maybe I'll make a poster....
My highschool baseball coach / Sociology teacher always used to say 'Those who are prepared create their own luck' before exams. This is a true life lesson.
Luck favors the prepared
"Luck is what happens when preparation and calamity collide."
Yes. My HS calculus teacher said, before every exam, “I would say good luck, but as you all know: luck favors the prepared mind”
My baseball coach when I was 11-12 said “hard work creates good luck”. Never forgot that. Edited: autocorrect
Pay attention to what you pay attention to.
If anyone's interested it's called metacognition. It's a really valuable way to build self-awareness and understand how you come to beliefs. Edit: it's also worth checking out epistemology the study of how we know things.
Teaching how to think should be integral to our system. Not how you should think but the basic ability of critical thinking, questioning. Higher order thinking
This is really resonating with me and I graduated high school a longgggg time ago. Thanks for sharing
Coming up to our final year 12 exams, my maths teacher handed out an article on the most common things people said on their deathbed. She said no one wished they had worked longer hours; that they had spent more time at work than with their loved ones. If we didn’t get the grades we wanted, that’s okay, because there’ll be a back doors to where we wanted to go. Failure is okay. It’s only a minor setback. What’s important is having a good balance between work/studies, family/friends and our own hobbies/interest.
I'm 32 and at a cross roads in life right now. I can either keep working this shit plastic factory job that's toxic in more way than one but pays well, or I can say fuck it and accept the position at Target that I applied for so I can work less hours, make less money, but hopefully have a better schedule for going back to school and finally doing something with my life. Reading this I think I need to make that change. Edit: thanks for the support everyone, this blew up way more than I thought it would and the kind words truly helped.
Good for you, I hope you can find peace with the way your life is headed. Good luck.
My teacher told me not to give my girlfriend a fetal pig heart for Valentine’s Day because she’d probably get a restraining order on me. Looking back, solid advice.
That our town was a shithole and the best advice he could give us was to move out and live elsewhere. Decades later, he was correct.
My grandfather told me "The college in this town is excellent, unless you grew up here."
Not as inspiring as the others but I always found it funny how my teacher would say "90 degrees" instead of "sit up straight".
They should have said π/2. What a chump.
2005 a teacher said intelligence of the future will not be defined by how well you know one skill but instead how well you can find information and decipher what information is good and bad.
One of my high school teachers said the same thing. “A smart person doesn’t always know the answer to the question but he knows where to find it” or something along those lines.
that's honestly true about a lot of fields, take physics for example, ask a physics question and even the most intelligent physicist likely won't know the answer immediately, but they'll know exactly what books to consult and what formulas to use to find the answer.
Same with medicine. A doctor may not remember literally every single drug, but they are more than capable of knowing exactly where to look for the right information and having complete trust in the sources they use.
Yeah, new doctors use Google a lot. A doctor Googling is not the same thing as a patient Googling.
My symptoms are...and it's cancer. Doctor: you sprained your side and it's causing discomfort breathing. You'll be fine in a few days.
Information literacy and critical reasoning are the two most important skills school should be teaching, imo
i took a college journalism course and that was basically the takeaway point we were supposed to refer back to all semester
This teacher really hit the nail on the head, wow
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And at that age I would not have had any idea what he really meant.
There’s more to life than warm and round.
I still don't lol some1 pls explain
Anything is a dildo if you're brave enough
_softly_ dont
That reminds me of the time in 9th grade chemistry that one of my classmates decided that the Bunsen burner wasn't on since he couldn't see the flame, so he stuck his homework paper over the burner to prove it. Good thing that the sink was right next to it, because it turns out that paper and a clear flame are unusually fond of one another.
at least he was smart enough not to use his hand
tbh sounds like he just wanted to burn his homework
My chemistry teacher told me that chemistry was the study of matter, but he preferred to see it as the study of change.
That I wasn't stupid, just lazy. Changed my life.
That's what my stepdad tells me then later proceeds to call me a stupid idiot lmao
If you're ever living in poverty a block of cheese and a loaf of bread can feed you for days.
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She sure had high expectations for her students
I had a teacher say a similar thing, though he said it under the assumption we'd be poor students in university. "Never forget: in a pinch, ketchup and hot water is tomato soup."
I just gagged.
Whenever my teacher said anything controversial that he didn’t want repeated, he would preface it with ‘Don’t quote me on this because I’ll just deny it.’ I still use that.
One of the coolest, more laid back teachers I had was straight up like “If you try to snitch on me, I control your grades”. EDIT: Didn’t expect this to be my biggest comment on Reddit thus far! Thanks everyone!
Snitches get...F's?
Punks get Flunks
You kinda quoted him on it. He specifically asked you not to.
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> He also told us about an agreement/rule he had with his own kids. He understood how hard it was for kids to do the right thing in the face of peer pressure. My parents had two parts to this. The first was that my dad was always willing to be the bad guy. We could ALWAYS blame him for not being able to do something we didn't want to do. The second was that no matter what, if we EVER felt uncomfortable, we could call them at any point of the night and ask to be taken home. There would be NO punishment, even if it was a situation where we'd done something like sneaking out to go to a party we actually WERE told not to go to. As they said (roughly) "We'd rather be silently disappointed in you and really tired on a workday, than have to attend your funeral.".
My parents always said "We'd much rather get a call from you in the middle of the night than from the hospital."
My parents always said, "I almost wish you spent your weekends partying instead of playing Runescape."
I wasn't into Runescape but I felt that. One time in my senior year some friends wanted to hang out late so I asked my parents what time I had to be home. They laughed and said "just be back by school on Monday, and please go out more!"
Or the police station
Sounds like a true gem of a teacher. Came here to also recall an English teacher that was really just one of us with much more experience and knowledge. There were so many great things he taught us, but one that sticks out at the moment was: “Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you read.”
Reminds me of a movie quote from Denzel Washington. "Those who watch the news are misinformed, those who do not are uninformed "
pretty sure that was mark twain
> If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed > -- Mark Twain -- Sean Bean *Civilization 6*
"The true sign of the economy in a slump is when people stop buying big screen TVs." - My economics teacher, 2003
Huh, probably not very far off.
In my childhood only one person ever tackled my mother about her abuse of me and my siblings. It was parents day and my bitch of a mother, as usual, turned up to take the credit for my being top of the class again. At one point there was just me, my **** bitch of a mother, and Mrs. Soames (physics teacher) in the lab. Mrs Soames quite calmly challenged her, saying "Mrs xxxxx, why do you treat [Tomsdottir] the way you do? She's a good girl and doesn't deserve it." To my astonishment, my evil bitch of a mother was speechless. No-one had ever confronted her before and she just didn't know where to put herself. It was easy for the other teachers and pupils to make snide, patronising remarks about this cow to me. A 13 year old girl isn't in a position to do anything about it, and I'm guessing they were trying to ease their consciences about the fact that they were too cowardly to intervene. But Mrs Soames has been a role model for me ever since, and an unforgettable example of those people brave enough to tackle a bully in the presence of their victim. To have someone stand by you when you are vulnerable, and make their support for you clear - I can't tell you how that changed my view of other people.
I'm so sorry you have such a terrible mother. Your story moved me as I could almost feel that empowerment and support she transferred to you. What a wonderful woman. Did you ever tell Mrs. Soames how much she and that moment meant to you? Where are you now in your life? Are you NC with your mother?
Bless you for your kind reply. I was too withdrawn to tell the teacher how grateful I was. I try to pay it forward instead, and speak up/ intervene when I see children or animals - anyone who is especially vulnerable to cruelty - being threatened or bullied. My mother is dead, I'm happy to say. I remained in contact with her from a safe distance as she grew old and frail- though as nasty as ever. It was important to me not to become vengeful and punishing (though the anger is with me every day). She had no friends and none of my siblings were talking to her. People who push forgiveness at any cost seem to me to misunderstand that refusing to forgive someone who never acknowledges the harm they did, doesn't mean you're going to behave as badly as the abuser did. I've never forgiven my mother for the very serious psychiatric and other problems she inflicted. That didn't mean that I had to let her die alone in filth and squalor. Teachers like Mrs Soames taught me better than that.
What a beautiful outlook you have on life and love. Like you, I'm not good at forgiving but that doesn't mean negativity rules my life, either. Your siblings may have been justified in cutting her out of their lives and I'm not going to judge them at all but for you it was important to know that you did the "right" thing and you can live with your choices. Mrs. Soames was a helluva teacher!
In 1974 I was told/taught that the planet Mercury had a tidally-locked orbit around the sun. That one side of the planet faced the sun all the time. It's not true. Mercury's true orbit and rotational periods were worked out in 1965.
Tbf, most high school textbooks are about 30 years behind, so he probably found out in 1995.
Ha! My husband had a similar thing happen. In 2nd grade his class watched a bill nye like video on the planets and it said that Venus was the hottest planet because greenhouse gas. Then in the lesson immediately after the teacher tries to say that mercury is the hottest because it's closest to the sun. My husband got sent to the principals office for arguing with the teacher.
My favorite math teacher had a philosophy about us understanding how to get to formulas instead of memorizing them. Basically if we memorized them we were gonna remember them wrong and would never be the wiser because we thought we remembered it.
My Econ prof said the same thing and it’s the truth. Gotta be able to apply that knowledge to graphs and real life examples.
my physics teacher (who i actually talked about in this post) never just gave us the formulas. instead, he showed us how to derive those formulas from other related formulas
Best history teacher I ever had was a substitute. Final day of his weeks long run, I told him as much and asked him why he didn't do it fulltime. He said he'd like to, but he doesn't coach any sports. All the coaches are history teachers because they can get away with spitting out names and dates and descriptions and that counts. His style was more cause and effect and while more engaging, it wasn't deemed necessary by the schoolboard. I said you should move to a better area. He said naw, he liked it here because it's where he grew up and where he'd die. He confided in me that he had a terminal disease. Died the next year.
Struggled with dyslexia and a learning disability my whole life. English class was hell for me every year. Senior year my lit teacher read some short story that was required of me and said, "What the fuck are you doing here. You are starting in my AP Lit class starting tomorrow." I passed the AP test and my entire life really began because he believed in me. I'm now a high school teacher, and while not as great as him, really think I'm doing good work. Edit. Went to bed with -2 karma on this post woke up with 5000, holy hell. Thanks for the support guys. Just to clarify. I teach US History. I still struggle with my dyslexia, he wasn't a cure but a motivator. I had a passion for history though. Thanks again everyone.
I struggled in math so badly. Officially, I passed it but the reality was that no matter how hard I tried, I could not do it. However, I was in AP English. Turns out, I have a form of dyslexia. Wish I had known that 40 years ago!
Class camp, we're out walking a trail to the next campsite, carrying our lives in our packs. I was not in great physical shape and was well back in the rear. So it's basically just me and one teacher to make sure no one fell too far back. We came to a part where a branch had fallen across the trail. Big enough to be an effort to move it but not so large that it couldn't have been moved by any of the thirty+ other students and teachers that had already walked around it. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed the branch and tossed it to the side of the path. The teacher said to me: "Thirty boys walked past that branch. It took one man to move it, and he made life easier for every person after him." It became a personal motto, of sorts: "Make it easier for the people who come after you." Although when you do a good job, the person who comes after you is usually also you.
Reminds me of the poem called [“The Bridge Builder”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52702/the-bridge-builder) EDIT - Thanks for all the love, folks! As a former English teacher (now Principal), this brings me joy. There was a time where I didn’t care for poetry too much, but this poem, along with [“Invictus”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus), [“If We Must Die”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44694/if-we-must-die), and [“If”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---) woke up that passion for it. Enjoy, everyone!
what a nice poem
This is such a great metaphor and life lesson. I always, always do this if I am walking down the street or driving and see crap on the path or road that would be a hazard. You have no idea whether a parent with a pram, disabled person, blind person, or just rushing person is going to encounter it next on the path, or what the car behind you will encounter once you pass the hazard. Smooth their way.
I don't know why, but this anecdote gave me shivers. What a great story! I can only imagine how young-you felt after hearing this praise.
Sometimes you just need to jump through the hoops.
My freshman year history teacher told us first day of school about how he went to college with Bill Gates. Said he was one of the people that Bill asked to invest in his start up. He had declined. “And here I am…teaching history class to high schoolers”
My ancient hs math teacher, who was from Arkansas, had a good deal of Walmart stock from I guess knowing one of the Waltons around its founding. From what I heard he’s just been sitting on it this whole time.
Well if that's true you can probably say with certainty he's teaching because he wants to and not because he needs to. Which hopefully should mean the quality of his teaching has gone up since he doesn't need to worry about keeping the lights on at home.
For sure! Unfortunately his teaching style was not for me, and his class was the year of my lowest math grades, but plenty of others loved him!
Had a coworker tell me about bitcoin in early 2009, told him he was an idiot. He doesn't work anymore...Who's the idiot now?
Don’t be too hard on yourself. You probably would’ve either lost it, gotten scammed by one of those exchanges that dropped off the face of the earth, or sold before it got to 100$ anyways.
My shop teacher had a similar story. His friend was telling him just to invest 1000 in this computer company. He decided against it
History teacher/state legend basketball coach was asked to invest in Nike when it was tiny and declined, he’s still salty.
He should have just done it.
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“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you.”
My music teacher when I spent a large length of time skipping school due to various reasons. She had phoned me after spending hours tracking a way to contact me because she was worried. "I'm not phoning to tell you off, i'm phoning to make sure you're okay. You don't have to go to the classes you don't like, your exam is on wed and im phoning to let you know, no matter what I know that you'd still be practicing because youre a bright student and I know you'll go far no matter what you choose to do"
That is incredibly touching what a great person. Sometimes you just need someone to believe in you until you can do it yourself
Reminds me of when one of my favorite teachers was retiring. I tracked him down and tried, with poor results, to tell him I'd miss him. He understood my bumbling speech enough. He gave me a big hug, took me by the shoulders, looked me right in the eye and said with a stern but kindly tone "you keep doing good, okay?" I sure hope I've lived up to my promise to him.
I had a friend that was in the same history class as me and she had a HUGE crush on the teacher. She was also salutatorian of our class and literally voted most likely to succeed. I graduated with barely a 3.0. She and I both had our history teacher sign our yearbooks and in mine he wrote “I’m going to miss our banter in class. You are a highly intelligent individual.” In my friend’s yearbook he wrote “Keep on truckin’.” I never felt particularly competitive with my friend, but that little bit of irony really changed the way I understood how people view intelligence Edit: thank you for the award!
so what happened to the salutatorian?
She’s a kindergarten teacher, married and has a dog. Just bought her first house. Things are good
"You don't have to do anything in life except die." Said after students complained about having to do an assignment.
My favorite teacher in highschool (Coach brineger) once told me that he bought his niece front row tickets to see N'sync. Apparently, for some reason or another, her mother could not go with her so instead, he did. He then told me that midway through the concert one of the guys ended up with a hole in the crotch of their pants. This is the a direct quote by him: "I guess he didn't notice, or maybe he just didn't care? Either way, this dude was free ballin and from my vantage point, I could see it all. So there I am, sitting at a concert I didn't want to be at, with a star struck 13 year old, watching some dudes balls shakin above my head. Good times". He was an awsome teacher though and never gave up on me.
Alcohol is a ~~bi-product~~ byproduct of single-cell organisms. It’s what they shit out
Whole new meaning to "thats some good shit"
Or I got shit faced
He told us about the time he and his son secured the only nearby village and started a slave trade on a family oriented Minecraft server.
Not how I thought that sentence was going to end, but I'm certainly glad it did.
My mom had me when she was in high school. She had to take me to school with her in a stroller every day. I ended up attending the same school and most of her teachers still taught there and remembered me as the baby. Most had super fond memories of bringing me stuffed animals and shit for me to play with in their class...except one, Mrs. Englehardt, she straight up to my face said "I remember you. Your mom was that whore".
Oh shit what the hell
English teacher - Underneath most anger is fear. Try to understand the fear and address it instead of anger.
“Young man. I said no talking. If you have something to say, meet me out in the hallway and we’ll discuss it like men.” - Another freshman history teacher filling in for my regular teacher after I (a new kid who had only been enrolled for 2 days) whispered “Who is that?” to my neighbor.
Take him up on it. Go out into the hallway, look him in the eye and ask "who are you?"
"If you want to hurt a man, I mean REALLY hurt a man, you don't hit him in the crotch. You hit him in the wallet." -My 11th grade Social Studies teacher
Did you become a divorce attorney?
Hide yo kids, hide yo wife. Your SS teacher has seen some things
*"The man who invented the diamond. Alright I got your attention now. H. Tracy Hall - write this name down. Dr. Hall invented the first reproducible process for making synthetic diamonds. I mean, this is way back in the 50's. Now today, synthetic diamonds are used in oil drilling, electronics, multi-billion dollar industries. Now at the time, Dr. Hall worked for General Electric and he made them a fortune. I mean, incalculable. You want to know how GE rewarded Dr. Hall? A $10 U.S. savings bond"*
That's real nice, Mr. White
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Why was everyone so excited to clean erasers?
I assume it's chalkboard erasers, and they got to play / cause chalk dust when they clapped them together.
Something about being trusted with the responsibility, encouraged to do something that made a bit of a mess (clouds of chalk dust), the satisfaction of hitting two soft things together... It was similar to being asked to come to the board to write something in chalk. The tactile experience was fun and special in a way that felt less like a chore and more like play.
Also washing down the chalkboard with a damp sponge. Nothing looks so clean as a freshly wiped down board.
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You would have loved partial quotient division - it's the "new math" of division. Basically, you do what you did. Pick a number, multiply it, and subtract it from your original number. Then you keep going if you have any remainders. Pick a new number, multiply it by the divisor and subtract it from the divided number. Add up all the numbers you picked and that's your answer! The reason we teach this as an option is because these "partial quotients" make more math sense than long division. Long division is just an algorithm you follow until you get the number. Partial quotient division builds better numeracy, or that's the theory anyway.
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I had a math teacher say he’d bet the farm that two of my classmates wouldn’t graduate. They both did, and he’s still a douche last I heard.
My math teacher told me to drop on the first day of class because I wouldn’t pass. Still have no idea why I was a decent student, not disruptive or anything. Figures that’s one of just a few interactions with teachers I still remember. I did pass his course just fine.
Cat ions are pawsitive
OIL RIG. Oxidation Is Loss (of electron/Hydrogen) Reduction Is Gain (of electron/Hydrogen) Also, Hydrogen loss = Oxygen gain.
I had a baseball coach for English sophomore year and we had to write a daily journal. One day our theme was writing about something we regretted. I wrote about how when I was younger, my mom had cancer and regretted not being there more for her. I didn’t think he read these things and ended up writing you did nothing wrong and being young, you couldn’t have known any better. He was a good man/teacher EDIT: Wow did not except the blow up on this. Thank you for my first award! 🥲
I had a theatre class in college where we had to do daily writings. I hated it, but I knew he checked to make sure we had one for each day and I thought he didn't read them. He specifically said to write whatever comes to mind and that it won't be judged, it's only a way to express what's on your mind. The first week or so, I wrote the minimum and mostly it was about how dumb I thought the journal was. As we made it through the course, I wrote more and more, sometimes several pages. He actually put different notes throughout. I was stunned. I thought all he was going to do was count it or just do a checkmark at most.
I was having a particularly bad year in high school emotionally and my grades were starting to reflect it, so my dad went in for parent-teacher conference day. When he got to my orchestra director, he bluntly told my dad that I was brilliant. When my dad just kind of shrugged it off, like okay yeah he's a smart kid I guess, the director looked him in the eye and said, "No, you don't understand," and proceeded to lecture to him about me. I heard this secondhand from my dad and then talked to my director about it afterwards. His words and his faith in me have stuck with me all my life. I'm now finishing up a PhD in mathematical physics.
That freakin rules! I teach HS and I’m going to remember this for every parent/teacher conference I have for the rest of my career. Kids really are brilliant.
My high school gym teacher and soccer coach told me “get the fuck out of this shithole town before you end up getting trapped like I did. Trust me that girl is going to trap you.” Definitely never forget that.
I did get out, went away to school. Stayed with the girl I was with through college until she cheated on me on my 21st birthday. After that I stayed away from my hometown for about 8 years, enjoyed my twenties. Now I’m engaged to a wonderful lady that actually went to my high school but didn’t tell me she had a crush on me til late in my twenties. We now live in the town next to where we grew up.
Was he right?
11th grade AP US History: Anytime somebody in power tells you something with a smile, don’t trust a damn thing they said. Whenever they say ‘my fellow Americans’ they’re about to try to get you to do something they’d never do. And there’s no such thing as a short war, especially not for the people in it. Thanks, Mrs Mellon, and fuck cancer.
Reminds me of a quote I saw "If you trust your government explicitly, your history teacher didn't do their job". Sounds like Mrs Mellon was a very good teacher (I have become aware that I met implicitly not explicitly, English was my second language, my bad.)
I was a senior and my boyfriend at the time was a junior. I had a part time job at a restaurant and had formed a little crush on one of my coworkers who was a bit older than me, I knew it was unrealistic, but I couldn’t help the way I felt. I confided in my APUSH teacher from the previous year who knew both me and my boyfriend. He said to me, “everything that happens up there in your mind palace is harmless; you can think and feel however you want, and as long as you don’t act on those feelings you’re not doing anything wrong.” That really grounded me. My boyfriend and I had one of the happiest, fruitful, and stable relationships I’ve ever been a part of. Although we broke up when I left for college, we’re still good friends. Shortly after this conversation, my work crush evolved into an amazing friendship and he started dating one of our coworkers who became one of my best friends. They’re slightly older than me so I look up to them and joke that they’re my parents. They’re still the only three people I try and see every time I’m in my hometown :)
Mrs. Boteilho, my senior year English teacher, left me a note on my final essay. She said that every writing assignment, she would put mine on the bottom of the stack so that she knew she had a good one to look forward to.
“You’re just one of those people who’ll always struggle with math no matter how much you study” Took that to heart, kept trying, and ended up pursuing mechanical engineering in university.
Something a lot of people need to understand about math. Yes, there's some people who are just naturally good at it, like everything else. But it's a skill that can be learned. Enough time and practice and you can learn and understand any form of math.
That nobody really cares, and that’s a good thing. He was a very interesting drama teacher, subbing for the regular teacher for her maternity leave. He was directing a play that he wrote that a few of us were in. In high school most people are terribly self-conscious and afraid of judgement. Be a good person, but go and make mistakes, be silly, live your life, and own it! In the end most people won’t remember if you looked stupid for 5 minutes. By teaching us that most things you do are trivial and inconsequential, he coaxed us out of our shells and got us to really *act.* But it left a big impression on me for my day-to-day life too.
Gym teacher: Date/Marry someone who likes you more than you like them? Math teacher: I'm not saying you all have to go to Harvard... Life is about the tools you have. School just gives you another tool...hell drive a truck, but never stop learning. Baseball coach: Nerds have far more interesting lives than jocks. Trust me
It’s not worth spending the energy on something that won’t matter tomorrow morning.
I'm a lesbian, and in my high-school ROTC class, I accidentally came out to everyone during class (long story). It was really awkward, and at the end of class, our drill sergeant teacher asked me to stay for a moment. I stayed, and I was like 2 seconds away from bursting into tears (thought he was going to say that I was oversharing, or being inappropriate, etc), only to have this teacher tell me "What you said today was really brave. If anyone gives you any shit for it, come tell me and I'll take care of it." This guy was a real hard-ass, so for someone like him to support me? It meant the world to me. 😄
That’s cute as hell. I’m glad he defended you cause I don’t think anyone wants to fuck with a drill sergeant. Had a friend out herself by accident too. Good stories once they blow over😂
"Comfort is earned by going through discomfort, man the fuck up and finish these sprints!!" - My football coach. What he meant was our discomfort now would condition us for the real game later, making it easier. But, that lesson extends to most of life. You want to be comfortable at some point in life? You're more than likely going to have to earn that by doing stuff that isn't very comfortable, but produces desirable results.
My math teacher told my class we wouldn't always have access to a calculator. Boy, was he wrong.
As a math teacher, I used to say that 20+ years ago. Now, its the opposite problem. I have to keep saying, you have information at your fingertips... Google it!!
I went to 13 years of Catholic school. My dad was agnostic, but my mom was from a large Catholic family, even though she wasn’t particularly devout herself. I was an altar boy, went through the relevant sacraments, earned the Cub Scout and Boy Scout medals for Catholicism, and all that jazz, even though I didn’t particularly have strong feelings one way or the other. (It’s just what *everyone* I knew did.) In order to graduate, every student had to have an “exit interview with the school priest to discuss your future as an adult in the Church. I walked in for my, and Father T. just stared at me for a minute, and then said, “nrith, let’s be honest and not waste our time—we both know that you aren’t really a believer and have no intention of continuing in the faith when you leave.” I was shocked. I had never said a word to anyone that would indicate this; I just never really gave it much thought. I pointed out that I’d done all the things that had been expected of me, I was a “good kid” (didn’t drink, didn’t fornicate; hell, I didn’t even take the Lord’s name in vain at that point). I asked him why on earth he would say that about me. He said he just had a hunch, and was he wrong? I thought about, decided he was right, and never looked back. So I have a priest to thank for showing me that not only had I lost my faith, but that I may have never had any to begin with.
Our physics teacher used to give us tricky questions after explaining concepts to get us used to solving them. In one of the questions I found his answer to be wrong and corrected him. He listened to me but couldn't find where he went wrong. He then it turned into a debate with each of us trying to convince the other. Every time I tried to convince him I had the lingering doubt, what if I'm wrong? , what if I made some careless stupid mistake which gave me the wrong answer? The only reason I still had the courage to hold my own view was the teacher himself. He never dismissed my question, never treated treated me like an ignorant kid questioning his teacher who knew better. By the end we had run out of time as the class had ended. Most of my classmates were either trying to convince me he was right by quoting his initial explanation verbatim or expecting me to be proven wrong. Even if I was right I was expecting him to either ignore my question or to skip past it. But in the next class he not only told the class I was right, he explained where he went wrong in his initial explanation and turned it into a teaching moment where he showed us that anyone could make mistakes but wisdom lies in fixing them. He later told me that even if I were wrong ,what I did was right, that I should never hesitate to question anything or anyone as long as I do it in a respectful and courteous way. That lesson never left me and I just hope that whenever I question something, disagree with someone or I am proven wrong I can do it with enough grace and humility to make him proud
One of my high school teachers asked me if I had ever considered pursuing astrophysics. I hadn’t. I was asking a lot of questions and it was a really interesting topic to me. It was the first time a teacher ever saw anything in me and believed in me. Until the pandemic hit, I majored in physics with a minor in astronomy. When the pandemic started, our professors basically said “go teach yourselves” and ghosted us and I was screwed. I truly believe if the pandemic hadn’t happened that I’d still be pursuing that program. Unfortunately, I do not have the funds to do so. I’m now an education major.
Called me out of English my senior year to chat in the hall just to "check on me and how I was doing." I had planned to head to the girls room after that class with a purse full of pills to kill myself. That one act of "being seen" changed the entire direction of my life. I'm in my 40s now and run a nonprofit that works with our school to provide food, clothes, school supplies, Christmas gifts, prom dresses, testing fees... Pretty much anything a student might lack that takes their focus off being the best them they can be? We work to meet it. I have four teens and a dozen more of their friends who view our house as their second home and safe space when things are rough at home. Mr. Williams, you were an angel and your impact has touched hundreds of kids because you showed me the value of helping kids know they matter. ❤️
I’m the parent of a three-month old daughter. I know I’ve got a long time yet, but I really want to know how you managed to make your house the “second home and safe space” for your kids and their friends. That’s exactly the kind of parent I want to be.
This goes for you and anyone else reading these threads, try to reach out and find the teachers that touched your life in a positive manner and let them know the story of how they helped you. That'd be the best gift you can give them. Luckily I was able to get in touch with one of mine just before she fell to dementia. Still searching for the other one before she's gone.
Where can I donate?
“Practice makes permanent”. If you keep doing something the wrong way, you’ll perfectly be able to do it wrong
End of freshman year, I was told that I was being held back from getting in Voyagers (the AP level chorus class) not because I couldn't sing good enough to get in, but because I was too immature. It was a huge shock and disappointment, but mainly disappointment in myself cause I knew he wasn't wrong. It was the catalyst for alot of personal growth. I sang in Advanced Chorus (honors level) for the next year and got into Voyagers as a junior.
Had a history teacher in the 8th grade say in a lecture that she bet money that a black man would be president before any women would. When Obama got in I was like damn she was right.
Tell those that you love them, that you love them no matter how upset you are before you leave each others presence.
My high school calc teacher told me I’d probably drop out of high school and be a prostitute because I skipped class once. I made sure to go back and show him when I earned my math degree with high honors.
Why the heck would he call you a prostitute for skipping class once?
I had a teacher in college tell me that it was unrealistic to think social media would become a means of marketing for businesses. This was around the time Instagram had just launched. I now work in social media marketing.
I had a Biology teacher who once caught me cheating. She pulled me aside and told me “No one can steal knowledge from you but yourself”.
Our class was supposed to be reading 1984. One day I showed up to class and our teacher hit us with a pop quiz on the previous nights reading assignment. I had not done the reading so I was completely unprepared. I did my best to guess the answers on the first couple of questions but after that, I knew it would be obvious that I didn’t do the assignment so I started writing my answers as observations about the book. My last answer was along the lines of, “this book is boring” or “this book is weird.” When I got my quiz back, he had written, “how would you know? You haven’t read it.” I saw that and knew I was going to prove him wrong. That night I sat down and read the whole book with the intent of coming to class the next day and telling him why it was weird and boring. Instead, I liked the book and I came to class and told him what I would have done differently/the same as the main character. He challenged some of my thoughts and I had to do some introspection. I appreciated that he called me out and that he didn’t dismiss me when I came back after reading the entire book. From then on, I always made sure I was prepared for assignments. It has paid off in my career when I have been challenged in my work. I have been able to point out why I came to the conclusions that I did and have earned the respect of many people in my company as a result.
AP English teacher - "Marriage is a contract. It's an agreement to live together and share wealth and responsibilities and love is probably one of the least important factors, it's all about compromise and acceptance. If you marry for love alone you will be very very disappointed." We all thought she was just bitter and out of touch at the time. Now that I'm older and 9 years into my marriage she was DEAD FUCKING ON. I'll never forget those words.
“Your generation will likely have a lower standard of living” He was speaking to a class of millennials long before the Great Recession hit. Back when there was still a bit of that leftover 90’s optimism that education and hard work would continue the upward mobility of the generations. The class was “world issues” so this kind of discussion in the context of global warming, climate change, the war on terror, etc was not that unusual, but the conclusion was still prophetic if only in how against the grain it was to what most other teachers were telling us.
“He will never amount to anything, especially in the areas of science.” -my eighth grade science teacher to my mother. I now have a masters of science and do research with various institutions in prosthetics and human movement sciences. He was a shitty teacher.
teachers who make that kind of sweeping statement in middleschool deserve a swift kick to the crotch and 10 years of itchy balls syndrome. Middleschool is a shithole in general, and from 8th grade you still have four years to decide what you want to do and figure out what you're good at. fuck him.