Teachers I Have Known

Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was a student at Lehi High School.  I was not an exemplary student by any stretch of the imagination.  I was one of those students who sat in the back corner desk and tried very hard to remain invisible, and I had a very high success rate in this area until my sophomore year when Mr. Achziger came along.  I remember writing an introductory essay for his class entitled "Five Cups of Me" in which I had to tell five things about myself.  After the very first assignment he marched to my mother's office--she was the secretary in the counseling office--and asked why I was not in the Honors English class.  This simple question put an end to my days of invisibility and mediocrity in the English world.  Now I was expected to "do my best" and "achieve my potential."  At that moment in time I began to despise Mr. Achziger.


What I failed to realize in my all-consuming rage against the man was the fact that Mr. Achziger was the first teacher who refused to accept my minimum effort because he knew that I had more to offer.  The time that I spent in his class contains some of my greatest memories from high school.  Why?  He was a teacher who made students feel important and intelligent.  I still remember the authors that we read in his class:  Bradbury, Vonnegut, O'Henry.  Not only did I read works by these great authors, I devoured them.  The reason for this is quite simple...Mr. Achziger made it fun.  Not like "balloons-and-streamers" fun, but fun in the sense that we had real discussions about the texts where he asked questions and allowed us to answer them without contradiction or condemnation.  Students were welcome to express their opinions and defend their ideas using textual evidence. He encouraged us to read these texts with an open mind and come to our own conclusions.  He let us read and appreciate the stories for the greatness that they contained.  I know this doesn't sound overly exciting, but for a student who had never been treated with this kind of respect from a teacher, this new experience was AWESOME! 


After leaving Mr. Achziger's class, I was excited to see what possibilities my junior year in English would hold, and then Mrs. (insert name that should not be named here) happened.  She was a "war veteran," as she called herself, because she had survived 25 years of teaching students who "would never be able to understand really good literature" and had lived to tell about it.  She taught with a thinly veiled attitude of superiority and contempt. I went from the greatest reading experience of my life to the worst in 12 short months.  There are only a couple of memories I have of Mrs. X's class.  First, we read The Illiad, and this teacher spoon fed us every ounce of symbolism and literary merit that this text contained because she didn't think that we, in our near vegetative state, could ever figure it out for ourselves.  I hated every moment of the reading I did in her class.  No one likes to be made to feel inferior, and no one likes to be taught (I use the word loosely in this case) by a know-it-all.  The second memory is much happier.  It just so happens that one day Mrs. X took on her haughty tone with a student who didn't appreciate it at all, and she got knocked out, literally!  One minute she was berating this student in front of the entire class, and the next minute she was laying on the floor due to the right cross that landed on her chin.  Now, I am in no way condoning violence, but I think there was a bit of karma that happened that day.  In short, Mrs. X's teaching style had an adverse effect on my love of reading because she never trusted me as a reader.  She never gave me the opportunity to come up with my own ideas or conclusions.  She never gave any students the chance to discuss a text and decide on its theme.  She only let us know from the beginning that we weren't capable, and when a teacher doesn't trust a student's abilities, it is nearly impossible of a student to trust in his or her own abilities.