Susan here, with our Ask-A-Wench prompt for December: Wenches, was there a teacher who influenced you and helped you realize that you wanted to be a writer? Scroll down for our answers!
Our teachers may not have been Professor Snape or Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts, or Miss Shields in A Christmas Story, or even the economics teacher (“Anyone? Anyone?”) in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (some of my favorite movie teachers!). Even so, we were very fortunate in our teachers, encountering some who particularly encouraged, guided, and/or nudged us to discover our talents during our grade school and university years.
So in this holiday season of gratitude, we want to remember the special teachers in our lives. It seems especially important now when teachers truly need to be recognized for their dedication, resourcefulness, imagination, caring--and their resilience when it’s as challenging to be a teacher as it is rewarding. We want to say “thank you!” for what our teachers did for us then and thank teachers everywhere for all they do for their students now.
Read on as we share some memories of the amazing teachers who helped us discover that, after all, we were writers. Please share in the comments some memories of your own favorite teachers!
Pat here: I’ve had several really superb teachers, including one who made it easy to understand basic algebra. Now there’s a gem! But algebra didn’t affect my life, even though he gave me the confidence to survive later high school math classes with abysmal teachers.
The teacher who gently led me out of the awkward middle-school blues started out as a substitute teacher and later took over the class when our regular teacher went on maternity leave. I was too young to understand how she did it, but in both roles, she encouraged my creativity, made me feel as if I wasn’t as weird as I thought, and offered me hope for the future. A kid can really hang onto those pats on the back, the praise for a particularly nice piece of work, personal words of admiration for work done, and public recognition. At that age, kids are humiliated by everything—themselves, their parents, school bullies. Public criticism isn’t anywhere as effective as public acclaim, which encourages a child to do better instead of crawl under the desk.
So along with teaching me that I had a special gift, she also taught me how best to deal with others. As a shy, socially inept kid, learning that one small lesson made an enormous difference in how I dealt with the world forever after.
Nicola here. The first teacher who inspired me was my mother. She taught French and German in a local high school and impressed on me the importance and the fun of learning. It was something I never forgot and I admired her very much. I was a bookish child and felt very comfortable surrounded by people who read and studied.
I went to a small school where most of the teachers were very good even if some of the subjects didn’t inspire me! Both my English teacher, Mr Conway, and my History teacher, Mrs Chary, were amazing. Mrs Chary made history lessons feel like storytelling - it was exciting and made history feel alive. She was the person who nurtured my love of the subject and sent me off on a lifelong quest to read and study it.
Mr Conway was a slightly scary teacher as he had a sarcastic eloquence that could cut you down to size. I remember him once writing a note on the bottom of one of my essays, asking if I had swallowed a dictionary! But he was a great and encouraging teacher and many years later, when I was a published author, he contacted me to say how happy and proud he was that I was a writer. That really touched me. I know how important an inspiring teacher is and I was so lucky to have several in my life.
Christina says: I never had any teachers who inspired me to do great things. I’ve heard other authors say they became writers because of the encouragement of their English teachers, but although I liked mine, no one ever suggested I should do anything to do with books other than read them. My writing career came about in quite a different way. I did, however, have one teacher who made me believe in myself and to feel as though I had the potential to do well in anything I did, and he went on to become a lifelong friend.
When I attended high school in Tokyo – the American School in Japan or ASIJ for short – I studied and Spanish as I enjoyed learning languages. I really lucked out with my Spanish teacher, Mr José Velasco. He was a wonderful man, always smiling, joking and positive, and trying to encourage us to speak the language rather than just learning vocabulary and grammar by heart. He made lessons fun and I never heard him shouting or saw him get angry. He had a wry sense of humour that I loved, and there was a lot of laughter in that class. There was one student who I think was a genius (his IQ was through the roof) which meant he got everything right on paper, but he couldn’t speak a word of Spanish and it must have driven Mr Velasco mad. Yet he only reprimanded him with a smile, encouraging him to try harder next time – he had the patience of a saint! Because I was European like him (the others in the class were American or Japanese), we got on really well and – not to brag or anything – but my Spanish accent was pretty good because I spent summer vacations in Spain with my family and hung out with the local kids there. Mr Velasco kindly awarded me the annual Spanish prize at the end of my junior year and I was delighted because it made me feel worthwhile and to realise that I was actually really good at something.
He was one of the teachers who gave me a reference for college and after I graduated, we kept in touch sporadically via Christmas cards and the occasional letter. He was thrilled when I decided to study Spanish as part of my university degree and always wrote to me in that language so that I would get lots of practice. Many years later, when I went back to visit Japan with my husband and daughters, we met up with him and his lovely Japanese wife for a delicious meal and lots of chatting. He was interested in everything and so easy to talk to, and always encouraged me to keep up my Spanish skills. Sadly, he has now passed away but I will always remember him with fondness and gratitude.
Anne here. I've been trying to think of teachers I had who made me want to become a writer, but the truth is, none of my English teachers was particularly inspiring in that direction. In fact I left high school believing that I was no good at creative writing at all. In fact, creative writing was something of a mystery to me. You see it was never presented as "write a story" — it was usually some obscure exercise like writing a scene set at night in the city, using as many colors as you can. Plot? Characters? Irrelevant. But had it been "write a story" I probably would have been off and running.
But the teacher who most affected my life, was my maths teacher in year 8 — Mrs Reckenberg. You see by that time, I was at my 5th school, and I had just told her we'd be moving again next year — to the big city, Melbourne. She asked me where in Melbourne and I told her. She was horrified. You see both my parents were teachers, and liked to work in disadvantaged areas, where they felt they could do the most good. They weren't at all worried about my education — I was good at school. I'd manage.
But Mrs Reckenberg knew we were moving into quite a rough area, and the high school I would be attending had a very poor reputation. It didn't even have a final year, let alone good results. So she spoke to my parents and arranged for me to sit the entrance exam at a large academic high school in the heart of the city, over the road from Melbourne University. I was accepted, and it changed my life. The students at that high school came from all over Melbourne, and this country girl got to know other parts of the city not at all like where I was living. It was a great school and it stimulated us in all kinds of ways — not just academic — and when, at the beginning of my final year, we moved again to the other side of the city, I didn't have to change schools or disrupt my education at all. I made friends at that high school that I still see today, and later, along with many of my schoolmates, I studied at Melbourne University, which is one of the top universities in Australia — and the world. I still occasionally wonder how my life might have been had I gone to that high school where most students left at 15, and every time I do, I feel so grateful to Mrs Reckenberg.
Andrea says: I’ve been lucky enough to have a number of wonderful teachers. I know they all played a great part in encouraging my love for learning, and I’m profoundly grateful to them for sparking that sense of excitement and joy in exploring and expanding my world of knowledge. It’s hard to choose one teacher in particular who was the biggest influence, but I do have a mentor who stands out because I credit Mr. White with opening my eyes to the magic of storytelling. As a kid, I was constantly drawing pictures and making up little stories about them (in fact, I was writing and illustrating stories before I even knew how to write, as my Mother’s collection of my early art shows!) However, there was one assignment in his class that made me see things in a whole new light.
It was sixth grade English, and I vividly remember him announcing that he was going to do something a little different in class that day. He had a sheaf of paper in his hands that looked like they had been torn out of vintage books. As he started to pass them out, I saw they were illustrations—old woodcuts of all sorts of different scenes. As he walked by each student’s desk, he chose a picture and put it down. When he came to me, the image—I still see it clearly—was that of a young Masai warrior crouched down and facing a huge lion with thick mane and bared teeth. “The assignment,” he announced, “is to study your picture and write a short story about it—let your imagination have some fun." Toward the end of class we turned in our stories, and he read through them while we did some written grammar exercises. He then asked a few people to read their stories aloud. I was one of them . . . and I still remember my opening sentences : Bead of sweat broke out on Nemo’s forehead. (Hey I give myself credit for understanding back then that first sentence needed to grab a reader’s attention!) When class was over, he was waiting at the door and walked out into the hall with me. “You know,” he said, “you’re really, really good at storytelling,” That encouragement really stuck with me, and though it was a circuitous road before I decided to take up writing full time, I’ll never forget Mr. White and his wonderful creative writing lesson.
Mary Jo says: I grew up in the farm country of Western New York. My school was one of many central schools, with a handsome building that was a WPA (Works Progress Administration) project back in the 1930s. There was nothing special about the school, but that didn't mean it wasn't good. Most of the teachers were capable and conscientious.
Though I haven't forgotten being in seventh grade when a teacher talked to me about my "attitude." I was puzzled what she meant so I finally asked. "Do you mean I'm cynical?"
She exclaimed, "You shouldn't know a word like that!"
I was notably uncowed by this rather odd experience. <G> It didn't stop me from reading and expanding my vocabulary!
No one ever encouraged me to become a writer either then or later in college. Actually, I can't remember anyone ever giving me career advice. I guess my teachers thought I'd figure it out for myself. I was seriously addicted to reading stories and my impossible fantasy was to become a writer, but rural New York was not a hotbed of authors so I prepared for more reliable employment.
The only person who ever said I was a storyteller was my Mayhem Consultant and future husband. We were driving through an isolated area of California's Central Valley, out of range of a radio station in a time before there were alternative entertainment devices.
From sheer boredom, I started telling him the story of the Twelve Labors of the Little Fish, who was in love with the Crab Princess, who wasn't very pretty and she wasn't very smart, and some people thought she was obnoxious, but he loved her anyhow.
However, her father, the Alaskan King Crab, didn't want his daughter to marry a mere little fish, so he set her suitor with twelve mighty tasks to carry out. I borrowed heavily from the Twelve Labors of Hercules, with topical bits from our lives. The Fabled Fabulous Fishing Cats of Sumatra were born from this saga. <G> The MC kept saying. "I didn't know you could tell stories!"
Can't everybody? I thought. As it turned out, no, not everyone can. So I learned when I bought my first computer and the MC showed me how to use the word processing program. The rest is history.
But being able to tell stories doesn't mean it's ever easy!
Here's an image of the very dramatic and Gothic Crouse College of Syracuse University, where I got my English and Industrial Design degrees. When I was a student, Crouse College housed both the art and music departments. I have fond memories of sketching details of the carved staircase for my drawing class while down below, music students were playing and singing beautiful music in the practice rooms in the basement.
Susan here. Years ago, my dad found an old report card of mine from second grade, and in the comment section, the teacher had written, “Susie is a good little storyteller!” We had a good laugh wondering *quite* what she meant – though I remember loving to write stories in my most earnest penmanship (remember that paper with the dotted guidelines?). Before that, as a very little preschool girl, I loved making up stories about princesses (and loved drawing princesses whenever I had a crayon and a blank page—in a book of nursery rhymes, in the family bible . . .). Here's a sample of my work. ;)
In grade school, I was shy, tiny, and scared of everything, but somehow they tagged me as a smart kid and put me in a small group throughout elementary school. My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. McIntyre, had this group and gave us extra work. He was a great teacher, funny and always encouraging--it was in his class that I began to feel like I was doing well, especially in art, reading, and writing (math was, and still is, a bugaboo).
But it wasn't until I went to the University of Maryland that I encountered professors who not only encouraged me to write, but taught me real skills to do so - meticulous research, yes, and also the importance of pacing, interesting language, flow, goals, solving a historical puzzle, keeping the reader interested, all translatable to fiction (which I secretly wanted to try someday). Dr. Farquhar in medieval, Dr. Wheelock in Baroque, and Dr. Hauptman in 19th-century studies all helped me so much with improving the writing (at the grad level, tons of in-depth research papers!). With their amazing mentoring, I was selected to present original research at the National Gallery of Art. During those years, one small moment stands out when an eminent art historian said of one of my papers, “This is publishable quality.” Another proud moment was, years later, running into Dr. Wheelock on a visit to the NGA, and how fun it was to tell him that I was multi-published with Penguin. My professors, and those intense grad years, made a much better writer out of me.
Now I’m not only a published writer, I also teach creative writing to middle and upper school students—and that has taught me new respect for teachers, including the teachers in my own family, who are just incredible, and among the best I’ve ever seen. They put in long hours, have unbelievable workloads, and deeply, truly care about every kid in their classrooms.
So here’s to teachers who made a difference every day in our lives and make a difference to children today. They are a quiet, steady, essential force helping to shape the world and the future. Thank you!
How about you? Did you have a teacher who made a real difference for you? We'd love to hear about it!