Friday Favorites - Teacher Time

Today's prompt: Who was your favorite teacher? Write them a note.


Dana Lee wrote:

In a previous post this year I wrote a small note to an old high school English teacher. The words still hold true. However, I would like to take the time to write a note to another high school teacher who really inspired me. Unfortunately he passed away while I was in school so will be unable to read it.

Dear Mr. Humphry,

I know you taught biology but did you know you taught us more than that? You showed me what it meant to be a Christian. You taught me that you do not always have to preach to people in order to show your love of God. You taught me how to love everyone around me. You taught me how to show Gods love through actions but as well as through words if people needed to hear it. You also taught me that being a Christian is cool. That this is something I should embrace because it is a gift.

Thank you. You will never understand how much you changed my life. How much you changed the lives of everyone who walked through the doors of the high school while you were there. Whenever I hear "Amazing Grace," I see you singing it. I can hear your voice radiating through the school halls.

I will never be able to thank you enough for doing all you did for me. I know you are blessed to be in Heaven with Jesus. I can only imagine that you are continuing to inspire everyone you crosses your path there.


Melody Joy wrote:

My favorite teacher would be Dr. Brooks, who insisted that we simply call her Michelle. I had her for Composition 101 and Creative Writing in college.

Dear Michelle,

Thank you for all of the inspiration and encouragement you gave me during the time I spent in your classes. Despite the fact that I was so young in your first class (just 16 and still a Jr. in high school), you treated me with the same respect as you did the rest of the class and gave my writings the same weight as the others. For the first time in my life, it made me feel like I really had something important to share and that maybe what I made was good enough.

I will never forget the time you were talking about the struggles of writing and how most writers (yourself included) spend an hour writing just one or two quality paragraphs, or even sentences. You talked about the writers that were both prolific and great, the category which I fell into, and still do. You also said you hated me for it in front of the class, and having my skills envied by an actual published writer really helped to make me feel like I could make writing my life.

I wish I could say that I allowed your encouragement to push me to finish at least one of my many novels, or that I have since gone out and published many things under my name, but the truth is that while I am making a good second income writing, it’s not under my name nor is it usually about anything that I am passionate about. I write articles, primarily for website marketing purposes.

Sure, it’s covered a few plane tickets along the way, but the satisfaction of making a living doing something you love when you’re doing it for other people and nobody even knows that you were the one that did it is minimal at best. I can only hope that I will take this moment of reflection will get me motivated to devote at least some of my time to my own writing projects.

-Melody Joy


Dan Christmann wrote:

Paigeby!

It’s been a while, eh, mon capitan? Are you still in town? I keep intending to call you, but, as always, life occurs and I put it off until the next day. And the next. And the next.

Are you well? I remember the last time we talked that you were recovering from some medical issues that I, unfortunately, failed to note in exact detail. But when we spoke, I remember that you seemed suddenly very old. I suppose that, numerically speaking, you have always been up there, even when Chloe and I were in high school and you came to teach us British accents for Pride and Prejudice. But it was something I never really realized until I saw you move with a cane, or when I sent an unorganized bit of my thesis to you and you just didn’t understand it. Not that anyone who wasn’t Rena or I would have been able to penetrate what I was getting at, at that point. But I think in so many things you and I had always been of one mind. And you, despite the decades between us, had never seemed old. You weren’t an authority, which I generally associate with age still. You were always, and have always been, my friend.

And so it was strange to see you limp like that, and for me to write something that you couldn’t seem to comprehend. Because it means that you are entering into a part of life that I don’t understand, and that I can’t follow. You are fading from my sight, Michael. And I so want to be able to see you longer, for as long as possible, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with you. I wish I could. The days move far too quickly now for me to count. And I don’t know how to deal with this.

My dear old friend, I am far too distracted by this world to see where your eyes fade off to in the pauses in our conversation. Someday, when there is time, will you tell me what is there? Or, if you can, write to me. It doesn’t have to be anything special. But write it.

-Dan


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