My tenth grade English teacher was an old curmudgeon, extremely strict, and graded me harder than anyone ever had. She told me that one day I would come back and thank her. I didn't.
My favorite school teacher was my 12th grade history teacher, and I don't remember her name, but she was what I now recognize was kind of a right-wing nut. I say nut because she believed that great men throughout history had red hair, and the greatest of them also had green eyes. She was really big on Aryanism. She pointed out that the Manchu dynasty, which came from the Northern Plains outside China, may have had red hair and green eyes, because the statues depicting them used jade for the eyes. So you can agree that she was pretty nutty. This was during the Viet Nam war, and I was extremely anti-war, and pro-civil rights, and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance because I hated the government. I have always loved my country, but I thought that the government was killing innocent people, and was wrong. She was very conservative, but she appreciated my out-spokenness, and gave me A's.
I loved the teachers that loved me. Some of them did. The religion teacher that asked me to lead the class one day on the topic of agnosticism (I was then an agnostic). The chemistry teacher that gave me the keys to the lab and let me be the lab custodian. The speech teacher that gave me the lead in the school play. The ones who agreed with me that I was special. |
