Unfortunately I can't remember any names, but I guess that hardly matters here.
High school:
My Chemistry teacher. At some point she just gave up on us all and we ended up going on nature walks rather than focusing on chemistry. These nature walks were somewhat inspiring and somehow I actually ended up coming out of it with a decent knowledge and interest in chemistry... for a high school class at least... can't say anything about my classmates though.
College: Politics teacher, focused on latin america, but had several more broadly reaching classes. He was considered by most to be a tough teacher you didn't want to deal with if you could avoid it, but I took three of his classes. The first one was tough... but by the end I'd figured out what he expected from us and the next two weren't as bad, just required a lot more reading than I was used to from classes. As a side note he probably taught me more about writing good papers than any one other person. Although I still won't say my writing is any good. Primarily though, he taught me to look at the world from different view points. People often decry that one side or the other is wrong but often, people will think they're right just because of the way they see the picture. I can't say I do this all the time, I know I forget to... but everyone should try, at least, to remember that everyone's view point is theirs for a reason. They see things one way or another because of things they've been shown, things they've experienced. No one person can see the entire picture of something and even if a view point doesn't agree with yours, or make sense given what you know, perhaps you can at least try to understand why they think the way they do.
College: Japanese Culture/Ancient history(sorta) classes: Same teacher, two vastly different classes, and yet... I really really liked him. He exposed us to things we never would have seen on our own. Movies like Ikiru and Tampopo. Descriptions of cultures entirely alien to us that made sense when (again) looked at from the right angle. One day even breaking into a rant after the entire class failed to do the assigned reading, that just laid into the entire educational system for promoting students to simply get a piece of paper in order to get a job rather than actually learn and study things. (There was more, it was nearly an hour of ranting, I've just forgotten some details.) He used religious scriptures as a historical teaching tool, showing us the cultures that influenced their writing and grew from them. The classes were relatively open and freeform and if anyone wanted to discuss something specific, he had no qualms about spending a class or two on it, but he had his own goals and I never felt like we missed them because of these sidetracks.
College: Drawing: I took this on a whim, I just needed one more class for graduation and I'd filled all my requirements up, it was just 3 credits I could have done anything with and partially because it was one of the few open spots left and because I thought it'd be somewhat easy to pass. (I also had a couple of stressful classes that semester, I was looking for something somewhat stress free... heh...) To be honest, I'd never thought I'd ever be able to draw anything half way decently, but that class proved me wrong. I'd not consider myself good, and I'd need a lot more practice to get to that point, but I surprised myself at drawing even recognizable drawings of complicated objects. The teacher was good... and while I still don't agree with everything she said... (One quote that still sticks out in my mind, "Art isn't about what you like." When I used one technique a few times in a row, she tried to get me to change up and I mentioned I liked doing it that way. Now, I admit, I needed to try new things, but there's nothing wrong with liking the way something looks and wanting to do more of it.)
Anyway, I ended up spending more energy on that class than any of the others that semester... but I also had the most fun and probably met more interesting people in there than any other class I'd taken... It did slightly piss me off that nearly half the class were already accomplished artists... but that happens everywhere... German class I took was 1/4 German speakers already.
College: Astronomy: Another elective class, but this man could make anything sound like the most interesting thing in the world, and the way he connected all of science together by explaining (in a very Carl Sagan way) that we were born from the stars and we'll return to them some day. While I love Astronomy, I don't get all that much pleasure from just looking at stars... he still stirred in me a suppressed love for science that remains with me to this day. (High school had mostly pushed me to think that I'd never accomplish anything scientific without amazing math skills, which mine are somewhat lacking. He encouraged us to just go ahead and learn and let things fall into place rather than having to build up the pyramid of knowledge with a heavy, annoying and unwieldy base of math before we could look at anything else. No offense to math lovers, it's just not my thing.)
I will note, except for the politics teacher, none of this actually had to do with my selected field of study. I'm not sure if I chose poorly or just ended up with the best teachers outside my field of study.
I'm still not sure I learned all that much in college, but I definitely had a few very good and very memorable experiences which did change the way I looked at a lot of stuff and I think in some ways, that's more important than textbook knowledge.
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Topic: Awesome teachers you had (Read 1023 times)