Top 5 Best Teachers I've Had

Good Morning (or night or afternoon, wherever you are, whenever you read this)! This post / email is for those who want something fun to read. Hope you stick until the end!

Teachers are arguably the most important part of the school system, as well as the student’s experiences in school. They also play a part in the student’s favoritism towards a subject. In this two-part newsletter, I will be discussing my top 5 best and worst teachers I’ve had, what I liked or disliked about them, as well as what I’ve learned by reflecting on them (I will not be mentioning any names, BTW). I hope you enjoy!

Going in chronological order are my Grade 8 teachers. I have two from that year, so let’s start with my English teacher. She was a funny woman. She retired right after I graduated middle school, and would probably list in my most influential teachers list if I had one. She was, from what I could tell, smart, and able to manage time well as she simultaneously went to college (night school) while teaching us kiddies. She wanted to be an interior designer after retiring (as part-time), so she took a course in college, I suppose. She taught us the value of organization, made the class fun, and attempted to teach us how to write an essay (I didn’t, to my regret). She was a teacher that could’ve been teaching in a high school, and since middle school was basically ruled by teacher’s decision on what to teach (as long as they followed the curriculum somewhat), we learned a lot of useful English, I think. She was also fairly flexible in how noisy we were, which made it much more interactive. She was an overall awesome person and teacher, and I wouldn’t wish for any other English teacher for my Grade 8 self.

The other Grade 8 teacher on my list is my Math teacher. There was something going on with those two, my English and Math teacher, I swear. They had this thing where one of them would denounce the importance of the other’s subject of teaching and then the other would denounce the importance of the other’s subject, creating this effect that was super funny. They didn’t do so with our class, but I’d imagine it to be like, “English? What’s that going to do for you? Stay for an extra hour and skip English to learn something actually worth learning—Math”, and vice versa. Super hilarious to me, and they were both older teachers and probably had good vibes—enough to insult each other through students. My Math teacher was a funny man who was also my Gym teacher. Apparently, he watches volleyball games while teaching or something, but that’s only happened a countable amount of times, it scarcely registers in my brain. He also said he wanted to retire in the next year, but I doubt he did, and I doubt he would find the opportunity to. Unless the Grade 8s get too unbearable to teach for him. He made us accountable. He prioritized Math over Gym, to the point that he would drag us from Gym class to teach us Math whenever we lagged behind the other classes in our grade. He taught well, and I believe he made Math as fun as he could. If there’s one thing I actually learned in Grade 8, its Math and English, and that would most definitely not be the case if not for these two amazing teachers.

Next on the chronological order are my Grade 11 teachers (such a jump, I know). My first Grade 11 teacher I believe was the best is my Physics teacher. He was a funny man who would encourage us to tell us something interesting, and encouraged off-topic discussions (though we scarcely did). He frowned upon silence and inactiveness towards our fellow peers, and he encouraged us to study and gave out homework he never held us accountable for. I liked his classes because he made Physics fun, understandable, and was super interactive with us, and didn’t mind the interruptions from the occasional “So, wait…” from one of my classmates. He introduced the Pomodoro to me first, and how to study (though I didn’t really put that into work immediately). He was also an amazing teacher that somehow dished up lesson after lesson, and he marked relatively fast. I believe he made teaching as fun as possible for himself, and made it fun and as practical as Physics could be for us. He was also a Chemistry teacher, and he and one of the Biology teachers had this “Ew, Physics? I could never” and “Ew, Bio? Never take that” thing going on. It was one of the funniest interactions I’ve witnessed since they said it as a joke, intentionally in front of us, students. He was strict when it came to learning and assignment due dates, but was like us, teenagers, whenever we went off the topic of learning Physics. He’s also the reason I enjoyed Physics as much as I did, and the reason I took Grade 12 Physics.

Next is my Grade 11 English teacher. This is actually in chronological order. The teacher I was supposed to have retired the year before, and our class had a number of supply teachers before they settled for my English teacher. So, yes, my Physics teacher was first in chronological order, unlike the case with my Grade 8 teachers. My English teacher and Physics teacher in Grade 11 were both young. So young, my English teacher only had a few years of being a full-time teacher (I think). My Physics teacher was older than that, but that’s besides the point. So you might be thinking, “English again?” The school I went to, English teachers were pretty good, so yes. And I like English. I believe it had something to do with her youngness, but she related to us and gave good vibes. There wasn’t many lessons, and we learned by doing assignments. I feel bad that our class was so talkative when she didn’t want us to be, but she was mostly okay with it, as long as we did our work. She held us accountable, but was flexible with deadlines. She read every single word of my apparently 13 or so papers on an assignment. If you asked me what I learned in her class, I would probably list Macbeth, Life of Pi, Indigenous creation stories, Thomas King, the existence of instapoems, the importance of the PEE chain (or whatever they call it. There’s thousands of variations), and writing freely. I’m sorry to say, but none of the history of poetry ever made sense to me, and I cannot tell you the difference between Romanticism, American Transcendentalism, and Renaissance poetry even if you asked me. English is probably a subject that is too vague to have a proper teaching structure, so we learned by interacting and she made it as fun as possible, and gave us as many options as possible.

Last on my list is my Grade 12 accounting teacher. I know that, around the web, people talk about accounting teachers not being an accountant, therefore, not knowing how to teach accounting—which is kind of true, but not really in my case. My accounting teacher was awesome. She was an older teacher, and she was a corporate lawyer before going into teaching. She’s able to teach well (if she wanted to) as accounting, in my perspective, is something that you could learn if you took the time to learn it, and teaching it a number of times will most likely make it easier to teach new students (though this might only be in the case of Grade 12 accounting). I believe she also minored in accounting or something along those lines (so perhaps she was actually qualified to teach the course). She was pretty easy going, but held us accountable for homework. Accounting is pretty easy (in my opinion), which means that I was okay with her teaching style: teaching a lesson for 30 minutes, assigning us a load of homework so we can assimilate our learning, and taking up homework half the class didn’t do half the time. It was awesome. I had so much freedom in choosing how, when, and what I learned, and she was pretty much only there for guidance and accountability. The textbook we had was our directory, and I’d imagine that is what university would look like. She was also awesome in that, even when we went off topic and talked about random stuff and she wasn’t interested, she would roast us and tell us to stop wasting our time and get working. Now, I do admit that my classmates almost never did, however, I believe she is an influential figure when it comes to my study habits and perspective in life. When we talked off-topic, we went really off-topic, but those closer to school-related got her talking, and her wisdom is nothing to scoff about. I could confidently say that I learned as much accounting in her class as I did about life (in general), though I couldn’t say the same for my fellow classmates. I love accounting and I had a bunch of electives that semester, which allowed me to concentrate on accounting homework, unlike my fellow classmates with one too many academic courses, they had to write 4 exams. I had also been interested in self-study and attempting to be self-taught, so, in a way, she was my starting point.

I realize this is getting long, however, I would like to reflect on my choices in teachers. First, they were all easy-going, held me accountable for my work, and typically knew when to be strict and when to not. I also believe their humanness contributed to me liking them (since some other teachers act like they aren’t like us in any shape or form). Majority of them are older teachers with more experience in the teaching aspect, while some others are not. I believe, teacher-wise, older teachers are better, so long as they don’t have a bad personality, can teach properly, and they don’t develop a stiff and inflexible teacher persona. You will see in my top 5 worst teachers that some were the case.

I realize that I did not do much justice to my teachers, and that there are probably tons of teachers that I liked in my schools, even though I didn’t have them, and that I might’ve liked them as a teacher had I been taught by them, however, I am only talking about this from my experience, and it would not be fair to include teachers I have never been taught by (i.e. the other Physics teacher. God, why did my school have to have good Physic teachers?). I can also say, with confidence, that I am not a pro at evaluating a teacher’s teaching abilities. The teachers I may put into my ‘best teacher’ category may be the same teachers others have put into their ‘worst teacher’ category. Here, I only talk from my personal experience, my perspective, and the alignment of my thinking. Also, these are teachers from the schools I attended, and (sadly), does not include extracurricular teachers I’ve had (shout out to my piano teacher who is awesome). This list will also include summer school teachers I had (as you will see in the other list).

The reason I reflect upon my former teachers (and why I encourage you all to do the same) is because the teachers that I realize that I like or dislike contributes to my overall perspective when it comes to studying and learning. Teachers, in particular, have power over us, even after we leave school, and I believe it is important to know yourself, and why you might like or dislike a certain person or learning environment. This is a long path of self reflection, however, I believe that reflection upon former teachers are one of the best places to start.

Thanks for sticking this long, and I hope you have a great week (next week, I will be discussing my top 5 worst teachers, so be sure to look out for that)! 😁 

An inspiring YouTuber with more content and more knowledge on Identity Shifting, which is the bigger picture of this newsletter (if you like and want to expand on this idea) 😀 I encourage you to check him out. Link → https://www.youtube.com/@clarkkegley.

I want some feedback: Do you like this topics? Anything else you want to send me is much appreciated. Thanks for reading, and I hope it was worth your while 😄 Please tell me something about your best teachers (if you want), and remember, you’re awesome! If you want, sign up to my weekly newsletter (if you haven’t already). Link down below! Email: [email protected]