An independent, college preparatory, co-ed, Episcopal Day School serves a community of students in grades 6-12.
Issue link: http://palmertrinityschool.uberflip.com/i/1524541
I R E M E M B E R S I T T I N G I N A N " I N T RO T O E DUC AT ION " C L A S S A S A C OL L E G E S OPHOMOR E , W H E N OU R T E AC H E R—A R E T I R E D P U B L IC S C HO OL T E AC H E R T U R N E D A D J U N C T PROF E S S OR—A S K E D US T O TA L K A B OU T " T H E T E AC H E R T H AT C H A N G E D OU R L I V E S ." This task was simple for the other 15 female students, who had seemingly been waiting their entire lives to be asked that question. The task, however, put me at a disadvantage, not because I was the only male student in the class (albeit, probably so), but because I was the only one without a heart-warming "teacher changed my life" story. When my turn came, at the end of a barrage of truly moving and beautiful recollections, I simply said, "Well, most of my teachers sucked, so I figured I could do a better job." In retrospect, I regret my answer. It was unintentionally flippant and arrogant, and the statement just wasn't entirely true-–something I was unaware of at the time. Mark Twain hilariously quips that when he was 14, his father was so ignorant that he couldn't stand to have the man around; however, when Twain turned 21, he was astonished at how much his father had learned. The irony, of course, is that the one who learns is Twain, not his father. And now that time has taught me more than I thought I knew at 18, I have the privilege of acknowledging the impact high school teachers had on my development. My drama teacher, whose single attempt at cross-curricular teaching led him to offering extra credit to those students who wrote vocabulary terms in index cards and practiced them in class, is probably the reason I bolstered my vocabulary. The cap advisor who let me study in her room during lunch, with the SAT book she had lent me, is the reason I learned of the SAT and probably the reason why I ended up being accepted into college. And the AP teacher I observed for an assignment in that "Intro to Education" class made me see the possibility of teaching AP English in the future—and interestingly, she and I ended up teaching side by side a few years later. B Y ED U A R D O B A R R E T O, UP P ER S C HO OL ENGL I S H ASSROOM: THE TR ANSFORMATIVE POWER OF TE ACHING 29