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Someone Asked Folks Online “What Is Something A High School Teacher Told You, That You Will Never Forget?”, And Here Are 30 Best Answers
Before TED Talks, there were teachers with their pep talks. A good teacher tries to set students up for success in academics and sometimes other parts of life.
Reddit user u/absolutejuice22 asked the r/AskReddit community "What is something a high school teacher told you, that you will never forget?" People started sharing their stories of the phrases teachers said that made them believe in themselves, in the possibility of happiness, learn how to study effectively, and sometimes how to be mischievous without getting caught.
BoredPanda selected some of the most interesting answers. Feel free to add your own in the comments and share if you were able to give/get a personal pep talk in the Zoom lesson days.
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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. ❤️
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.
I'm on a team of designers and developers. If someone from another team asks for something needlessly complicated, I need to think: if I'm not here, can someone else work on this without swearing? If something does need to be complicated, I leave instructions - it can make my life easier, too, if I have to make updates a year later.
I have written so much documentation in our company wiki. Primarily so that I don't have to continuously re-ask the same questions to my manager a zillion times because sometimes this brain's memory just seems faulty and I feel annoying. But also... wow to be able to just direct coworkers to my docs and ask them to make edits or comments or ask me for clarification so we can improve it. So many times I've gotten random messages thanking me for making that documentation. I'm always thinking "you're welcome, but really it was for me :D"
Load More Replies...There's a nifty little variation on this lesson in Terry Pratchett's Nation (non Discworld). Trying not to spoiler it, one of the lead characters finds an axe in a tree with a message along the lines of "man helps man" (haven't got the book in front of me!). Thinking he'll be a clever bugger, our hero embeds the axe with all his might back into the tree when he's done with it, thinking "the next boy will have to be very strong!" No prizes for guessing what happens when the axe next appears...
I thought I'd read all of Pratchett's books, but I've somehow missed Nation. Thanks for making me aware of it!
Load More Replies...My 7th grade teacher Mr. Marsiglia a vet pilot that was shot down twice. I don't even remember what we did but it was something helpful for another student. It was something like hey don't act like you're expecting a twinkie for doing the right thing, it's supposed to be the normal thing. That really stuck with me for the longest time and still. Maybe because it was coming from an 70 something old history teacher who had insane war stories. I"m dating myself but his stories were from ww2.
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 sh*t 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. 😄
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.
That teacher was brilliant. He had the courage to bring awareness to his students in hours of devastation, and respected them by believing they had the intelligence and maturity to handle it.
My music teacher used to tell me that before you could break the rules, you had to understand them.
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.
I had an English teacher my freshman year of highschool who was one of the RARE adults that treated all of his students with respect while at the same time challenging us to do better.
I distinctly remember him telling our class
You are not as mature as you think you are, but you are more mature than your parents give you credit for
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. So he had told his kids that if they were ever in a situation (underage drinking, drugs, whatever) where they knew they shouldn't be, they could call and using an previously agreed upon codeword that was banal and unsuspicious, he would know he needed to go get them and be 'the bad guy'. He would show up, "Uncle Buck" style and get them out of wherever they were. This would allow them to save face with their friends and there would be no consequences for being the situation in the first place.
In my childhood only one person ever tackled my mother about her abuse of me and my siblings. It was parents day and my b**ch 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 **** b**ch 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 b**ch 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.
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.
Learning how to learn is more useful than learning rote memorization.
"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.
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.
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.
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 f**k 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.
Pay attention to what you pay attention to.
I know this is true, and yet here I am just wasting my time on BoredPanda.
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.
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.
That "no one on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more time at the office" thing is a good reminder, but not always applicable. You can live one way if you know death is close and you don't have any more responsibilities. When life is uncertain and you're trying to pay rent and provide for a family, etc, you have to live a different way. YES balance is important but pretending we're so wise at the end is stupid. When you have potentially decades of your life still to live you have to prepare for them. Balance is hard in that instance because so much is unpredictable.
When I was a freshman in high school, my biology teacher was talking about extinction and plagues and stuff. So I ask him like why haven’t we had another plague and he said that as a species we were remarkably over due for a plaque as the last one was 100 years ago. This was in 2016 and for the rest of high school I would repeat this fact and tell everyone not to be shocked when it happened. My senior year I was right
"We're all trying to figure it out, at any age. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. "
And anyone that tells you they have it figured out is either selling you something, or lying.
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.
If you're ever living in poverty a block of cheese and a loaf of bread can feed you for days.
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!
Was in the 90s, my political thought teacher “Never document your deviance”
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.
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"
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 love creative teaching :) Our biology teacher taught us about carrier proteins by pretending to be a carrier protein and carrying a sponge through the classroom.
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.
That I wasn't stupid, just lazy. Changed my life.
As a kid with undiagnosed AD/HD, I often heard that I was both lazy and stupid. And my favorite—“doesn’t live up to her potential.” Then someone in authority noticed I had a high IQ. So lazy it was... changed my life, too. Not for the better.
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”
So he took a gamble and lost. And if Bill Gates' startup had failed? He'd still be a High School History teacher, slightly poorer and with one less story to tell. That's the thing about history - it's happened, you have time to look back and reflect. Had he been a Divinations or Prophecy teacher, then he might have had a point (and he'd work at Hogwarts...)
Our high school chemistry teacher said:
"Remember - a warm test tube or Bunsen burner are no substitutes for a satisfying relationship."
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 diet app and food choices sometimes have me trying to calculate how much of a serving I'm eating based on the price per pound vs the price per unit. Loads of fun: sold by the pound, serving in grams. But I sure don't recall sine/cosine/tangent relationship.
Knowing what you are doing wrong, is a very difficult trait to learn. Even grown up adults don't know themselves
"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"
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.
I had a disagreement with a teacher about the air pressure of a round ball in flight making it squash slightly, they were convinced they were correct, but they were not.
Not as inspiring as the others but I always found it funny how my teacher would say "90 degrees" instead of "sit up straight".
My HS biology teacher would round the kids up by saying, "put your gluteus maximus on the polypropylene". Great teacher and if you get enough people from my HS together, someone usually says those exact words.
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.
Today I learned ... I was in high school when the rest of the world found out.
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”.
"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
I got kicked out of class for not putting my backpack in the hallway… Told my gym teacher (who was teaching us that day) I needed it beside me in case I had to grab something. Didn’t agree with me and called up two teachers to pull me out of class. So I’m in the hall, bored asf, when this new teacher pulls up (she kinda hot, but annoying at the time). We get into an argument and I ask her why she doesn’t just listen to me even if I’m right. Told me she doesn’t give a s**t and I had to come to her office. Fast forward end of the day, I had detention and had a talk with the new teacher and my gym teacher. I told them they should handle that s**t like grown ups and not call some teachers on me. Were absolutely in shock by what I said and told me I wasn’t worth nothing, never gonna amount to nothing, and I should shut up cuz I ‘just got my first pubes’ . Walked out of there with the biggest smile on my face ready to tell everyone about this.
That I have no work ethic—yet I’m doing just as good as you can in life. Not a millionaire, but have a decent job. Teachers are overpaid bullies.
Not a teacher but my guidance counselor, Mrs. Martínez , I'll never forget how she helped me figure out how to even get into college. My family was poor and college was just a dream. 3 degrees later I still remember how much she went out of her way to help me.
A couple more degrees and you’ll meet Kevin bacon.
Load More Replies...I had mostly mediocre or bad teachers but some very really good. I remember our science teacher. She was a scary and serious woman (imagine McGonagall in Harry Potter). At 12 I was terrified of her, at 15 I found her sarcasm funny and at 16 she was my favourite teacher. She always believed in me and encouraged to do advance learning about the topics we studied (for example taught me about prions when they were not in the curriculum). She was so extremely proud of me when I graduated. It’s been more than a decade and I will never forget her cheering at me when I got me diploma.
My 6th grade choir teacher noticed that these girls kept bullying me and told them to stop. He said that if they wanted to bully me they would have to deal with him first. They never bullied me ever again.
I have 2. A football coach that taught 7th grade math. First day of school at the beginning of class he drew a horizontal line across the whole board and a hash mark right in the middle of it and circled it. Told us in our basic education we are now 50% done. Every day after this your more than 50% done. If you quit after today and drop out, you'll have quit while you were already half way done. Then, 11th grade business class I flourished and really took off. At the end of the semester we had a mock interview which I knew I had nailed. My teacher Ms. Laplace said to me, "don't ever lose this confidence and you'll go far." As an introvert it made me happy to hear I may be shy, but when I know I'm good at something, I'm able to express it easly.
My 7th grade Social Studies teacher was the greatest teacher I've ever met. What sticks with me most of all though, was when he literally got down ON HIS KNEES and BEGGED me not to become a doctor. And guess what? I haven't.
All these amazing posts - and the first thing that popped into MY mind was, "30 days hath September, April, June, and November...." LOL
My Yr12 English teacher was one of the most supportive people we had at my school. Most of my year group were members of the Rural Fire Service and served in the Black Summer fires. Through him we got approval to leave school if an emergency call arose, whenever we had his class first thing in the morning after a 12hr deployment on the fireground, he was fine with us coming in and sleeping his class or skipping and coming in at recess. He also made it known every time we had him for class or had a year assembly that he was proud of us. During our graduation assembly (september last year) he stood up and gave a speech to us, the opening line he gave us was: I am proud of all my past students, but these students have gone beyond what was required of them, for that they are the people to look up to. As we left we gave him a gift from us. my bushfire Helmet was badly cracked after a tree fell near me while at a fire. we all signed it and mounted it to a plaque, that hangs in his room
A fossil of a matron guidance counselor told me I could only hope to be a nurse or a teacher. Her life of being a massive bitter pill was poisoning graduating women. Looking at that depressed woman, even a bad example serves a purpose -- DON'T TAKE ADVISE (or live a life) LIKE THAT! My mother said I can be ANYTHING! And she is RIGHT!
My American Lit teacher called me stupid in front of the whole class because I couldn't stay awake through Ethan Fromme.
I had one monster, but the rest ranged from pretty good to phenomenal.
My senior British Masterpieces teacher. She was the only teacher I ever had that worked one on one with me. She showed me how to write. How to put the pieces together like a puzzle. Introduction, body, conclusion. And so on. She forgave my final when I had to make a trip to London for my grandfather's funeral. She said that trip was far more enriching than the final. Now I am a retired teach with over 32 years in plus author of 7 elementary art textbooks.
Quotes that stuck with me Orchestra teacher: "IVE ALMOST DIED 6 TIMES IN WALMART PARKING LOTS but traffic after graduation is crazier", "Guys are you okay I'm getting depressing vibes. Do you wanna watch vines", "my 4 year old keeps on reciting lines from Shrek the musical it's terrifying" Anatomy teacher: "we are all squishy monstrosities without our skeletons", "Osteo is bone"(this one she had us chant), "the ground is the world's best splint... As long as it's not trying to kill you" European history teacher: "King Leopold II was Hitler before Hitler", "when in doubt revolution", Astronomy teacher: "I have and am willing to commit crimes for a can of spam" (he never told us the crime sadly), "sometimes late at night i have existential crises over how large the universe is and how there could be multiple of them or different time lines and I'm just a tiny little speck in the grand scheme of things."
My favorite bit of wisdom from my high school English teacher: 'When all else fails, read the directions.'
"Don't touch s**t because it stinks" - this I remember from my teacher and it works in life every day :))
I had an English teacher who decided to read the story I had turned in for our creative writing assignment to the whole class. He kept it anonymous. I was surprised. He had never read anybody's assignments out loud before, and didn't do it again for the rest of the year. I also remember how he used to tell us about all the places he would travel to during the summer, and I would wonder how he could afford it on a teacher's salary. At the time, I didn't know anybody who just casually traveled the world like that. That was until I learned he was single and didn't have any kids. Life lesson, there.
Remember the old saying 'Practice makes perfect'? Well, it wasn't until I was coaching summer travel baseball that I realized that saying was implying/imparting some unrealistic advice. It tends, also, to lead to some unrealistic expectations that can end up sabotaging ones ambitions. What I told my kids was NOT that 'practice makes perfect' but that 'practice makes permanent'. I first heard that from my HS English Lit teacher when I was struggling with a Shakespeare speech we had to recite in class. It has served me well these decades later.
My 6th grade homeroom/math teacher always said "If you're gonna do the wrong thing, at least do it well," and then pointed to two whispering girls and said "See? They aren't supposed to be talking, but they did a good job so I didn't hear what they were saying"
I never forgot this: "You are not your sister, and I never imagined you were related." That came as such joy to me. Being tarred with the same brush as an a-hole relative is a nightmare all its own. So that.... That was huge for me.
I went to a very rural high school that was stuck in the 1800s. One of my classmates was a young woman who was one of the most brilliant mathematicians I ever met. However, in this community, girls got married straight out of HS and started having kids. Women don't go to college. The week of graduation, she married her BF and moved into the "small house" on his farm. I was in home economics with her and our 60something teacher took her aside and I overheard her say "Just because someone says you shouldn't do anything doesn't mean you can't. It works for pie and it works for pi". That really stuck with me. The best part - 5 years later after she got a geometry proof published in a journal, she took the kids, left town, and now runs her own think tank. That quote is her e-mail tagline.
Music teacher use to always say, "Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." If you practice how to do something, but you are doing it wrong, congratulations, you are going to have a horrible time unlearning the wrong way and learning the right way. For instance, there are a handful of words I always spell wrong, I know the right way to spell them, but I always initially write it wrong because I did it for so long I can't brake that initial habit.
French teacher encouraged my "thinking outside of the box" kind of creative writing that EVERY other teacher was trying to repressed to fit in the mold the school was trying to present (trying to create the next Molière or whatever even though he created some funny stuff). I wrote some absurd and uplifting funny stories with a dark humor twist full of "bad puns" or "Mel Brook-y" kind of jokes (think about combing the desert in Spaceballs). She read one of my text in front the class without naming me (I was shy and didn't think I belong, writing was my way to show my true self) and when she saw the class was extremely receptive (laughing) to my writing she named me and I saw that I should share that side of me more often. It's just upward from that moment on :-)
my math highschool teacher used to say: "in Math you have to be leazy. because you want to get to your result the fastest way possible"
Math is all about shortcuts. That's the purpose being taught the proofs. You see that 15 steps produces the same right result as a 1-step answer does. From then on, you use the easy, quick way. But you have to understand how you got there to keep getting the right answers. Calculus is a short-cut for algebra. Algebra is a short-cut for a bunch of arithmetic. Arithmetic is a short-cut so you don't have to re-count from zero every time you change the number of cows in the yard. Your integral will be wrong if you don't know how to count.
Load More Replies...Not a teacher but my guidance counselor, Mrs. Martínez , I'll never forget how she helped me figure out how to even get into college. My family was poor and college was just a dream. 3 degrees later I still remember how much she went out of her way to help me.
A couple more degrees and you’ll meet Kevin bacon.
Load More Replies...I had mostly mediocre or bad teachers but some very really good. I remember our science teacher. She was a scary and serious woman (imagine McGonagall in Harry Potter). At 12 I was terrified of her, at 15 I found her sarcasm funny and at 16 she was my favourite teacher. She always believed in me and encouraged to do advance learning about the topics we studied (for example taught me about prions when they were not in the curriculum). She was so extremely proud of me when I graduated. It’s been more than a decade and I will never forget her cheering at me when I got me diploma.
My 6th grade choir teacher noticed that these girls kept bullying me and told them to stop. He said that if they wanted to bully me they would have to deal with him first. They never bullied me ever again.
I have 2. A football coach that taught 7th grade math. First day of school at the beginning of class he drew a horizontal line across the whole board and a hash mark right in the middle of it and circled it. Told us in our basic education we are now 50% done. Every day after this your more than 50% done. If you quit after today and drop out, you'll have quit while you were already half way done. Then, 11th grade business class I flourished and really took off. At the end of the semester we had a mock interview which I knew I had nailed. My teacher Ms. Laplace said to me, "don't ever lose this confidence and you'll go far." As an introvert it made me happy to hear I may be shy, but when I know I'm good at something, I'm able to express it easly.
My 7th grade Social Studies teacher was the greatest teacher I've ever met. What sticks with me most of all though, was when he literally got down ON HIS KNEES and BEGGED me not to become a doctor. And guess what? I haven't.
All these amazing posts - and the first thing that popped into MY mind was, "30 days hath September, April, June, and November...." LOL
My Yr12 English teacher was one of the most supportive people we had at my school. Most of my year group were members of the Rural Fire Service and served in the Black Summer fires. Through him we got approval to leave school if an emergency call arose, whenever we had his class first thing in the morning after a 12hr deployment on the fireground, he was fine with us coming in and sleeping his class or skipping and coming in at recess. He also made it known every time we had him for class or had a year assembly that he was proud of us. During our graduation assembly (september last year) he stood up and gave a speech to us, the opening line he gave us was: I am proud of all my past students, but these students have gone beyond what was required of them, for that they are the people to look up to. As we left we gave him a gift from us. my bushfire Helmet was badly cracked after a tree fell near me while at a fire. we all signed it and mounted it to a plaque, that hangs in his room
A fossil of a matron guidance counselor told me I could only hope to be a nurse or a teacher. Her life of being a massive bitter pill was poisoning graduating women. Looking at that depressed woman, even a bad example serves a purpose -- DON'T TAKE ADVISE (or live a life) LIKE THAT! My mother said I can be ANYTHING! And she is RIGHT!
My American Lit teacher called me stupid in front of the whole class because I couldn't stay awake through Ethan Fromme.
I had one monster, but the rest ranged from pretty good to phenomenal.
My senior British Masterpieces teacher. She was the only teacher I ever had that worked one on one with me. She showed me how to write. How to put the pieces together like a puzzle. Introduction, body, conclusion. And so on. She forgave my final when I had to make a trip to London for my grandfather's funeral. She said that trip was far more enriching than the final. Now I am a retired teach with over 32 years in plus author of 7 elementary art textbooks.
Quotes that stuck with me Orchestra teacher: "IVE ALMOST DIED 6 TIMES IN WALMART PARKING LOTS but traffic after graduation is crazier", "Guys are you okay I'm getting depressing vibes. Do you wanna watch vines", "my 4 year old keeps on reciting lines from Shrek the musical it's terrifying" Anatomy teacher: "we are all squishy monstrosities without our skeletons", "Osteo is bone"(this one she had us chant), "the ground is the world's best splint... As long as it's not trying to kill you" European history teacher: "King Leopold II was Hitler before Hitler", "when in doubt revolution", Astronomy teacher: "I have and am willing to commit crimes for a can of spam" (he never told us the crime sadly), "sometimes late at night i have existential crises over how large the universe is and how there could be multiple of them or different time lines and I'm just a tiny little speck in the grand scheme of things."
My favorite bit of wisdom from my high school English teacher: 'When all else fails, read the directions.'
"Don't touch s**t because it stinks" - this I remember from my teacher and it works in life every day :))
I had an English teacher who decided to read the story I had turned in for our creative writing assignment to the whole class. He kept it anonymous. I was surprised. He had never read anybody's assignments out loud before, and didn't do it again for the rest of the year. I also remember how he used to tell us about all the places he would travel to during the summer, and I would wonder how he could afford it on a teacher's salary. At the time, I didn't know anybody who just casually traveled the world like that. That was until I learned he was single and didn't have any kids. Life lesson, there.
Remember the old saying 'Practice makes perfect'? Well, it wasn't until I was coaching summer travel baseball that I realized that saying was implying/imparting some unrealistic advice. It tends, also, to lead to some unrealistic expectations that can end up sabotaging ones ambitions. What I told my kids was NOT that 'practice makes perfect' but that 'practice makes permanent'. I first heard that from my HS English Lit teacher when I was struggling with a Shakespeare speech we had to recite in class. It has served me well these decades later.
My 6th grade homeroom/math teacher always said "If you're gonna do the wrong thing, at least do it well," and then pointed to two whispering girls and said "See? They aren't supposed to be talking, but they did a good job so I didn't hear what they were saying"
I never forgot this: "You are not your sister, and I never imagined you were related." That came as such joy to me. Being tarred with the same brush as an a-hole relative is a nightmare all its own. So that.... That was huge for me.
I went to a very rural high school that was stuck in the 1800s. One of my classmates was a young woman who was one of the most brilliant mathematicians I ever met. However, in this community, girls got married straight out of HS and started having kids. Women don't go to college. The week of graduation, she married her BF and moved into the "small house" on his farm. I was in home economics with her and our 60something teacher took her aside and I overheard her say "Just because someone says you shouldn't do anything doesn't mean you can't. It works for pie and it works for pi". That really stuck with me. The best part - 5 years later after she got a geometry proof published in a journal, she took the kids, left town, and now runs her own think tank. That quote is her e-mail tagline.
Music teacher use to always say, "Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." If you practice how to do something, but you are doing it wrong, congratulations, you are going to have a horrible time unlearning the wrong way and learning the right way. For instance, there are a handful of words I always spell wrong, I know the right way to spell them, but I always initially write it wrong because I did it for so long I can't brake that initial habit.
French teacher encouraged my "thinking outside of the box" kind of creative writing that EVERY other teacher was trying to repressed to fit in the mold the school was trying to present (trying to create the next Molière or whatever even though he created some funny stuff). I wrote some absurd and uplifting funny stories with a dark humor twist full of "bad puns" or "Mel Brook-y" kind of jokes (think about combing the desert in Spaceballs). She read one of my text in front the class without naming me (I was shy and didn't think I belong, writing was my way to show my true self) and when she saw the class was extremely receptive (laughing) to my writing she named me and I saw that I should share that side of me more often. It's just upward from that moment on :-)
my math highschool teacher used to say: "in Math you have to be leazy. because you want to get to your result the fastest way possible"
Math is all about shortcuts. That's the purpose being taught the proofs. You see that 15 steps produces the same right result as a 1-step answer does. From then on, you use the easy, quick way. But you have to understand how you got there to keep getting the right answers. Calculus is a short-cut for algebra. Algebra is a short-cut for a bunch of arithmetic. Arithmetic is a short-cut so you don't have to re-count from zero every time you change the number of cows in the yard. Your integral will be wrong if you don't know how to count.
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