School

[XIII]

Hey Iwakuans. Iwakians? Iwakis? Whichever, welcome back to the newest topic of the day.

I didn't have many good topics for today, but came up with this one while talking with my son's teacher. I'm not a huge fan of this woman, or the way she teaches, and I'm excited for my son to move on up to the next grade. But she made me think; did you have a teacher or subject you like the most? And why were they your favorite?

When I was younger, my 3rd grade teacher was an eccentric woman who, when you were good, you got to collect a heart (a little cut out heart that was laminated) from the basket and put it on your desk. If you still had it at the end of the day, you got to pick out a prize from her heart basket. It taught us to be kind to each other, and I appreciated that.

When I was a freshman in high school (year 10 for my UK friends,) I had this chaotically neutral physics professor who would yell at kids to levitate to class when they were out past the last bell. Great teacher and I learned a lot from him. But my favorite subject was English Writing. For obvious reasons, I absolutely adored the written word, and have a few poems published in books all around.

So, my subject is simple; what was your most memorable or favorite teacher or subject and why?

 

[Diana]

School for me was an absolute nightmare, and I never really understood why until now in realizing I am autistic.

It was a sensory nightmare, and me trying to be human, on top of not being interested in any of the work, thus not wanting to do it. I hated every single moment of it until I dropped out of highschool. >:[

There were some good moments, though! My fourth grade teacher is why I am so into writing now! And I loved my highschool art teacher, she was a joy and a blast. O:

 

[wisteria]

I also hated school for the most part, but I did have a favorite teacher all through high school—my english teacher—and she, too, was the reason I pursued writing as more than just a hobby. That was probably my favorite subject in school too, along with art. And I recently got in touch with that teacher after graduating from university, and we are friends on social media now! :D

 

[Fluffy]

6th grade was the one good year I had. All students in the class and the neighboring 6th-grade class were my friends. Literally all of them. When I had a birthday party, all of them stopped by to see me, including the ones who didn't get an invitation. The teachers were very sweet and caring, too. The lady who taught me in 6th grade noticed I was a troubled kid from a troubled home, she was always doing these nice little things for me... Thinking about her now makes me tear up a bit. She was one of the nicest people I ever met, and the students were so nice, too. I look back on those days and remind myself it wasn't all a dream. For a little while there, I belonged somewhere and had a lot of friends. <3 Very much a contrast from the usual 'bad' experiences I could expect. I dealt with a lot of bullying whether for being 'different' or being the 'new kid' (we moved too much!) or having my mom's bad reputation tacked onto me. x__x

As for favorite subject, it was always Language Arts. I loved the writing and reading assignments, a good number of them anyway.

 

[Manna Beast]

I've always hated school. Mostly cause at the time the idea of different types of learning were pretty much non-existent. So I was always treated like I was stupid or handicapped when i was perfectly functional. I just didnt' learn the same way as other kids, but that didn't stop the system then from separating me like some sort of pariah. Most due to the fact that I was originally born deaf, so I didn't speak as clearly. Therefore dumb kid.

Since I was a different style learner than most, I had a hard time stepping out of my comfort zones or opening up. Hell, i couldn't even tell time on an analog clock till i was 12 or so! I had only reached out to one of my teachers then that I trusted and made attempts to teach me different to show me how to read the damn things.

Eventually when I entered my high school years and could drive, I begun to skip classes. I did graduate but I have such a hate for schooling now that unless its a mandatory thing I need for work, I will actively avoid anything with schooling. Dont care that it will help, I'd rather never be involved.

Though my favourite subject was either English, Legal Studies or Comm tech (camera's). I did have a great teacher though for my English that honestly I got to know very well. SO much that when he learnt I liked comics, he gave me the original Young Justice (when Bart was still Impluse and not Kid Flash) and now that same teacher is actually the Mayor of my Town. He tries to get me to call him by his name but never! never in a million years XD, he will always be Mr!

 

[Nougat]

In primary school my favourite teacher was probably my 6th grade teacher. She was very chill and liked to joke around. I was pretty shy so I didn't tend to approach teachers of my own volition. She also let me hand in a written copy of a presentation once because i was suddenly hit with stage fright and couldn't present in front of the class.

Alternatively there was a volunteer, this lady whose kids used to go to my school, and she came in every day to do yard duty and also ran a spanish club in the mornings. I loved her, once she went back to mexico to visit family and when she came back she gave me a bunch of cool rocks because she knew i liked to collect them, and that was just really sweet of her to think of me while she was out. I have a lot of little trinkets that she gave me back then.

In HS I had a few teachers I liked. I really liked my art teacher. I wasn't a particularly good artist but he always made a point of saying something nice about everyone's work. I also took music every year so I think I liked my teacher just because I saw him so much (I had class every other day, I was also in three of the ensembles and music council)

I also liked my AP English teacher. He trusted us to not destroy the school if left unsupervised so he always let us wander off to different parts of the school to do our readings.

Also two of my french teachers were great. No particular reason, but they were just the sort of people who were always smiling and just seemed very sweet. I also cried in front of one of them (because I had a conflict between my AP exam and my french fluency test) and she did not make fun of me so my opinion of her is very high lol.

My favourite subjects in school were probably my art class and creative writing classes. I put significantly more effort into those classes than anything else; or like, I probably spent an equal amount in music but that was mostly because I was first chair and we did a lot of performances so I was stressed lol. But I remember my 12th grade final projects for art and creative writing took me so much time compared to everything else. I really dropped the ball on everything else because I just didn't really care about my grades by that point, but I think I did like three separate pieces for art and I wrote a 43 page story for creative writing. I went into biology and comp sci though lol.

 

[Cosmic Fey]

School was tough for me for various reasons (not the least of which was a lot of my teachers assuming I had no right to be in mainstream classes just because I was on crutches and occasionally used a wheelchair. Having dyslexia and dysgraphia on top of a stutter did not help my case there) but I love learning. I just didn't like being told what to learn when. I do much better with self-study at my own pace.

One of my favourite teachers was only my teacher for all of half an hour. My first English class of tenth grade, she instantly clocked me as someone who would be horribly bored in her class. She told me she'd seen my grades from last year and wondered why I was in Applied level English when I would be much happier in the Academic-level class (I think that's like AP or Honors English? I don't know, I'm Canadian, I'm not sure of the proper equivalent). After I explained to her that during course selection for ninth grade, where I did initally sign up for Academic level English that year, my parents and eighth-grade teacher got together and bumped me down to Applied because they decided I wouldn't be able to handle it even though I had the grades for it, and I assumed the same thing would happen again if I tried to move up to Academic level for the tenth grade, so I didn't bother trying when it was time for course selection, she immediately sent me to the Guidance Office to change it and if my parents had a problem with it, they could talk to her.

That was the first time it felt like an adult had my back and she's my favourite for that reason.

My favourite subjects were English and Creative Writing. Despite having dyslexia and most people assuming I was barely literate because of it, I thrived in those classes which confused a lot of people. My dyslexia flares up the most when I speak - things get jumbled from my brain to my mouth - so presentations were difficult, and I learned a lot of little tricks for spelling. It helped that most of my English teachers were understanding and respected my accommodations (barring one extremely ablest Classic Lit teacher, but that's a different story). I also switched to a laptop for note-taking halfway through 12th grade and that helped a lot.

 

[PavellumPendulum]

I had a love hate relationship with school. I do really love to learn and teach (which is why I ended up becoming a teacher myself!) but man, kids can be cruel. Growing up in the early 2000s can really mess you up when you're closeted and it feels like everyone you know uses 'gay' as an insult. I had few friends but I really loved my teachers! They're definitely what ended up making it all worth it in the end, since lots of them were major role models for me. My only hope is that I can do the same for my kids now