💬 Open Thread: Teacher Appreciation Week
What teacher inspired you the most?
Preface
This past week marked Teacher Appreciation Week. As a teacher, it’s strange being thanked for teaching. (“Thank you for what?” I respond.) Some impulsively take things apart and put them back together. They can’t help it. Teaching proved like that for me.
As a second generation teacher, I remark how my mom sent me to college with one promise: Never enter teaching. Never follow her footsteps. Yeah, no problem, I said. But I may as well have fought gravity.
This open thread asks anyone to reflect on their best teachers, and for teachers to reflect on the profession as the year ends.
My Take: Meet Dr. Webb
I wouldn’t meet my best teacher until college. Without realizing it, Dr. Webb altered the trajectory of my life with a single insult. Let’s set the stage.
Wabash College requires a Freshman Tutorial, where professors teach their hobbies and interests while teaching the ins and outs of academic life. Dr. Webb taught Christianity and Pop Culture, but devoted a section of the class to his book on Bob Dylan’s gospel era. (We went to a Dylan concert that semester.)
Webb, a prolific writer, devoted inordinate amounts of time towards teaching college writing. Or should we say, insulting students to improvement?
One day, when reading essays out loud, he stopped after my introduction, verbally assaulted my essay, then literally ripped off the introduction, balled it up, and tossed it into the trash can like a free throw. The entire class stared at him then stared at me, mouths hanging open.
“Mr. —,” he began, “that tasted like hot crap when reading.” Then he roared, “I don’t ever want to read anything that bad again. Do you understand me?” I dutifully nodded then sank into my seat. (This retelling toned down the language.)
By the way: My high school taught introductions as moving from general to specific. I deserved the theatrics. I truly thought I was an excellent writer. No, at eighteen I was terrible.
In hindsight, my college years became an Ahab-like quest for a compliment. I had to prove him wrong. I drafted every essay two, three, four times. Writing sonnets for poetry taught the value of words and the music of the line. Studying Logic forced me to consider brevity with arguments. One year I obsessed over crafting the perfect paragraph. I spent my free time writing writing writing.
Finally, during my senior year, I printed an article for a campus publication, waltzed into his office, slammed the door, then demanded he read. No context given.
“Wow,” he said, stroking his unruly grey beard, “that’s good enough for national publication.”
“There!” I pointed. “Eat that!” He just stared. “You don’t remember, do you? When you embarrassed me in front of the entire class freshman year?” He shrugged his shoulders. Guess it was another Tuesday to him.
Look, I know education should be positive and uplifting and encouraging and all that namby-pamby nonsense, but that single insult broke me and forced me to work relentlessly for YEARS. Just to prove him wrong. If you’d’ve told him in 2007 that I’d eventually present about teaching writing at a national teaching conference, he’d laugh.
When Dr. Webb passed some years later, I’m not sure I’ve ever sobbed so much in my life. After Freshman Tutorial we attended four or five Bob Dylan concerts together. After one concert (I had graduated by then), we drank whiskey on his porch, gazed at the stars, and talked theology well into the night. I’d give a small fortune just to talk with him one more time—and perhaps say goodbye properly.
Last month I attended a Dylan concert at Purdue, my first in the nearly ten years since Webb’s passing. After so many years I figured he might have scolded me for stopping part of my life because of him. I’m positive he would have enjoyed Rough and Rowdy Ways. “Mother of Muses” would have been his favorite song, I’m sure.
💬 Discussion Questions
To Anyone: Which teacher inspired you the most? How did they change your life?
To Teachers: What would an ideal Teacher’s Appreciation Week look like? What’s something you would change about the profession?
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There’s little doubt in my mind that my English teacher, Roy Birch, was the best teacher I had at school.
He became my teacher in what is now known as Year 10. I was part of the first ever cohort to take the GCSE and none of us really knew what to expect, but I do remember dreading having Birch as a teacher. He was a physically imposing man – well over 6 and a half foot tall, with a spade beard and size 13 Dr Marten boots. He was widely considered terrifying and there were rumours that one 1st year student had been so scared of asking to go to the toilet that she’d wet herself rather than risk his wrath. I suspect this was untrue, but it made for a wonderful school legend. He was certainly a teacher for whom no student ever considered misbehaving. This was back in the days before corporal punishment had finally been outlawed and a good few of my teachers were sadists, but I cannot recall Mr Birch even raising his voice. I had something of a reputation for being a ‘challenging’ student and made many of my teachers’ lives more difficult than they needed to be. (I was regularly in trouble for silly behaviour but my headmaster once told me that of all the children he ever had to tell off I was the one who was always the sorriest.)
I have three things in particular to thank him for. First, I credit him for giving me a love of literature. We had to read Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge and, despite struggling with it, he somehow also got me to read two other Hardy novels (The Trumpet Major and Far From the Madding Crowd) in my spare time. He got me reading and writing poetry. He’d give me poems like ‘Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress’, Donne’s ‘The Flea’ and Lovelace’s ‘To Althea From Prison’ and say, “I think you may appreciate this.” I did. And I made sure to read them carefully and thoughtfully and he’d always listen to my ill-formed musings and was enthusiastic about my writing. I actually won the school poetry prize in my last two years at school (although this was not something I wanted to broadcast at the time.)
He also taught me how to spell. My spelling was atrocious and it was widely believed – not least by me – that I’d never learn to spell. Mr Birch was having none of that and told me that he would not accept work handed in with spelling mistakes. Often I’d know the word I was trying to spell was incorrect but would have no idea where the problem was. He taught me that most people who could spell knew tricks. He taught me that I could learn to spell by thinking about what words look like, what they sound like, and by making links and mnemonics. For instance, I still remember feeling that it’s rather profound that there’s a lie in believe and the fact that there are two rs in February was a huge surprise. He taught me to spell necessary by informing me that I should never eat chips eat salad sandwiches and remain young and that accommodation is made up of cosy cottages and massive mansions. These things stuck and I have passed on the distilled wisdom of Mr Birch to many of children I’ve taught.
Finally, I have to thank him for believing in me. I had been banned from attending school trips because of my dreadful behaviour on a trip to Normandy. When Mr Birch organised a trip to see Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican, he personally negotiated with the headmaster for me to be allowed to come along. He warned me that his reputation was on the line and that if I put a foot wrong he’d make me pay. I have rarely behaved with greater maturity. Through the long drive, the performance itself and even some unsupervised time in London, my behaviour was immaculate. On the drive back we stopped at a motorway service station and a group of us let off some steam by aiming karate kicks at a fence. It was a solidly built thing, much taller than we were and it had been kicked a good few turns before I had a go. With stomach lurching inevitability, as soon as I’d kicked it the whole thing shuddered alarmingly. I watched aghast as it slowly toppled over and crashed to the ground. Grey-faced, I made my way back to the coach and waited for the hammer to fall. Mr Birch bounded on and roared, “What idiot kicked the fence over?” Feeling sick, I admitted it was me. I can’t really remember what happened but I do recall Mr Birch saying, “I’m glad you admitted that David because I’d been given a clear description of the culprit and I knew it was you.”
A year or so after I’d left school I met another of my English teachers – Peter Hayden – who told me that Mr Birch had taken his own life. Apparently he’d struggled with mental illness for many years and, after a protracted absence, had given in to his demons. Of course I was shocked and appalled, but I was also too feckless and callow to really appreciate all he’d done for me.
Last week, I visited Droitwich Spa High School and one of the teachers there is married to a woman who also attended my old school, Hagley RC High School. She read a post on the blog where I’d mentioned Mr Birch and it turned out that he had also taught at Droitwich Spa. I was given a photocopied extracted from the 1971 school bulletin. The Theatre Report had been written by Roy Birch. To say I was a bit choked up would be something of an understatement. Here it is:
The rise in the national cost of living has to some extent affected our theatre-going this year. If we maintain a policy of trying to sit in decent seats where we can both see and hear, then I think we may have to pay even more next year. Again we thank those parents who help us to extend education beyond the walls of the school. It is vitally important to see plays in the theatre and not just to read them. Towards the end of last year a large party of staff and senior students went to Ludlow to see ‘Henry IV’. This visit has now become a very pleasant annual event and helps us to mark the end of the academic year. This year we plan to see ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’. As this year’s ‘A level’ play is ‘Hamlet’, this most difficult of play has loomed large in our programme. The VIth Form and staff visited Stratford to see Alan Howard’s ‘Hamlet’ and if we count last year’s visit to the Birmingham Reparatory Theatre to see Alec McCowan’s production this would seem a surfeit of riches. But not so! Some eagle-eyed member of staff saw that Canon Hill Arts Centre was presenting two film versions of the play, the 1962 Russian version and the 1944 Olivier – both on the same day! There were some survivors. Just for fun we saw a very ‘mod’ production of ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ at Stratford and the 3rd Form saw an equally ‘mod’ ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Birmingham Rep. We also went to see the Royal Ballet when it came to Stratford and to Worcester’s Swan Theatre for Osbourne’s ‘Inadmissible Evidence’. Films seen include Peter Brooks’ ‘Lord of the Flies’ and the very memorable ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’
I wrote about my high school chemistry teacher here: https://laurenbrownoned.substack.com/p/for-teacher-appreciation-week-what
But your post reminded me of the excellent history professor I had in college that led me to change my major, and later my career path.
I had started out as an English major. But one semester I read Huck Finn in an English class and in this professor's U.S. history intro class. The history class gave so much more context. I decided history was where it was at.
Senior year, I took an advanced seminar with the same professor. Talked to him at one point about my thoughts on going to graduate school in history, becoming a history professor.
I have to admit, I was deflated and somewhat offended when he suggested I consider becoming a high school teacher instead. A year later, after I graduated, I decided he was right and went back to school to get my teaching degree. I later realized that my offense was because I had fallen into a trap, thinking about university professors as doing more "important" work. Certainly it was more prestigious-sounding, which is a pretty dumb reason to do it.
A similar bias led me to want to teach high school instead of middle school. Now that I teach middle school, I realize it's really the elementary and preschool teachers who do the most important work, laying the foundation for everyone else. Sadly, they get paid the least.