Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, most of the teachers that had positive influence on my life ended up in administration. Annette Scott, L.C. Middleton, Nan Jackson, Linda Allen....and that only names a few.

Too harsh on the coaches, they're just like anyone else, either really good or - not.
My best teacher was Coach Bennett - Trigonometry. He knew his subject and seemed to take it personal if I didn't understand a particular lesson. I didn't excel, but I sure did learn a lot from him.

I'm with you on the gang members, anonyme. Some teachers did not get them scheduled into their classroom. You never saw such in Mrs. Barnhart's chem classes. I really feel for you higher level teachers nowadays. You have to teach chem to these sluggards. You're in a different era for certain!!!

Mrs. Barnhart is an amazing educator, but she is from another era- one that doesn't have to deal with the TAKS or the TEKS or gang members taking required Chemistry classes that should be optional. I'm not trying to disrespect her in any way, but things are different now. I'm a Chemistry teacher. I know what I speak of. I'll prove it- Avogadro's number is 6.022 multiplied by 10 to the power of 23.

I loved Joye Tripson and Mary Fajkus from Stanly Elementary, Dorothy Chappell and Coach Sandoval from Crain, and Sharon Morrell, Sara Wayne, Cheryl Sedlacek and Mary Stahoviak from VHS.

I also echo BS' comment about the absurd practice of requiring coaches to teach subjects. My world history class was taught by a football coach (yes I remember his name, no I won't post it here) who often showed football reels during class and had us grade our own tests. This guy had no place in a classroom, and especially not in a world history classroom.

My clearest memory from his class was when he said that "If god wanted the races to mix he wouldn't have put them on different continents." Any remaining shred of respect I might have had for the guy dissolved then and there.

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Rollinstone: I don't know what teachers you're looking at, but I'm still teaching, and will be right up until the final. ;) And my students are MAD :P

But, then again, my class isn't directly TAKS related. The TAKS doesn't have any bearing on what or when I teach or don't teach.

anxious, I was always amazed by the size of Edith Barnhart's low-nap afro. (We nicknamed her EZ-E.) But, despite being in GT Chemistry, I didn't learn much. She didn't really get me excited about Chem, but she was pretty easygoing. And it was kinda entertaining to catch her mowing the grass at Pelican's Wharf in her striped knee-high socks.

Ms. Wayne, on the other hand, was a motivator.... in her own way. My grades were bad in Physics because I goofed off, but I still enjoyed the class, and it certainly gave me a good basis for Engineering Physics down the road. Still one of my sentimental favorite teachers.

Ha Anxious, touché

I can think of several teachers that taught well and left a huge impression. Edith Barnhart of Victoria High sticks out as a shining example of exemplary teaching in my mind.

TAKS will be gone next year, and EOC will make them teach harder, I hope.

As soon as the TAKS test are done the teachers quit teaching mainly for the whole month of May. All the kids do is watch movies and shoot the bull - makes quite an impression.

Hey Code! How did you get our pic? Looked up your pic in our yearbook, Dude!!! Here ya go... teehee...

http://blog.newsok.com/staticblog/fil...

anxious and anonyme - you're in danger of sounding like these two:

;-)

http://midwestswing.files.wordpress.c...

Huh?

Exactly!!! And you have to reward the kids. In my day, we didn't get any rewards or anything. Just threats of the paddle and our parents backed it up.

Now everything has to be a dog and pony show to try to overcome millisecond-long attention spans.

I don't know about Code, but I saw it, and those inept principals didn't like map coloring, either. I think that studying the book and working on maps are good ways to teach. But I don't know anything. But that's how we learned back in the day before technology.

Code- As a teacher, I'll tell you that teaching from textbooks is strictly verboten. Didn't you see the articles recently about the Patti Welder history teacher the inept principals of the school were trying to non-renew?

If our teachers do not rely on the new textbooks that are inevitably coming we should still have a few positive stories to tell in the future.

lol...Archiebonkers2,I probably had that same teacher or the paddle was a standard issue.

my shop teacher made a big impression on my butt when he gave me licks with a big wooden paddle that took both arms to swing!

I had a string of wonderful math teachers. In 1st grade, Ms. Reger satisfied my thirst by writing multiplication problems on my addition problem papers. From there, Mss. Sally & Gautier where a great 1-2 punch in Jr. High. My 9th grade geometry teacher, Mr. Southers, may be my all-time favorite. Ms. Meyer's calculus class was so thorough that I aced college calculus at UT the following year with little effort.

I've found that math teachers are generally more passionate about teaching their subject than teachers of other subjects. Sadly, history is a subject that was grossly neglected when I was in school. The bulk of my history teachers were football/baseball coaches who thought we were drooling meatheads like they were. I quit football after my sophomore year, but I couldn't seem to escape the reach of their Cro-Magnon influences. I wonder if they thought they were writing on cave walls when they wrote on blackboards.

For those of us of a certain age, who went to school in Refugio, we had the experience of having Arthur P. Daly as our 8th grade English teacher. Most of us suffered for it. He was a real unique character. If you talked in class, you had to write words from the dictionary. Some of us talked more than others. The punishment was education. I think we can appreciate it now, even if we thought it was harsh at the time.

Arthur P. Daly was, without a doubt, the best teacher I ever had.