Teachers Who Make A Difference

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! II wanted to talk about teachers who make a difference (made, make, same difference, because their influence still affects my life today)!

While I was back home for vacation, I managed to sneak a visit up to Davis/Sacramento again! I wanted to see if I could catch my favorite professor during office hours so I could update him on my life and thank him for being such an amazing person.

I honestly didn’t think he’d remember me–it’s been 7 years since I last took a course with him, ~5-6 years since I last saw him, and he has several hundreds of students every year...but when he saw me pop up outside his office door, the first thing he said was, “This is such a pleasant surprise, Farrah! How have you been?”

I was so dumbfounded that for a moment, all I could say was, “You still remember me?!?” ? He even remembered that I’d done music as well! :O I’d had this whole spiel planned out in my head but it flew out immediately after hearing that.

He replied, “Of course! Paul and I still keep the gifts you made us in our offices!” (I took woodshop in junior high, so on occasion, I do pyrography and about 6 years ago, I burned two quotes into wooden plaques for them as a thank you of sorts for being awesome.)

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
A teacher ignites the fire that fuels a student’s thirst for curiosity, knowledge and wisdom.

I went to school for a total of 21 years and in that time, I’ve had the fortune of being able to learn from some truly amazing people. My kindergarten teacher and I wrote letters back and forth to each other for 8-9 years, and I had super cool U.S. history teachers in junior high and high school, and awesome English teachers in high school.

By far the ones that have made the biggest difference though were my professors in college–specifically my two Exercise Biology professors and my piano teacher. I took over 110 classes (check out the coolest classes I’ve ever taken + the classes I wish I’d had a chance to take!)

They were the ones that truly cared that we were learning and were so passionate about what they were teaching that you couldn’t help but fall in love with the subject too (if you didn’t already)…I still maintain that if he’d taught me organic chemistry, I likely would’ve aced it and loved the subject (a tall order, seeing as how that subject made me borderline-suicidal). They’re brilliant, patient, encouraging, entertaining, engaging, and take the time out of their day to help you with yours. They have a true gift, and I still feel incredibly blessed that I was able to take courses from them. (I basically took pretty much every class they ever taught.)

Whatever it is that they wrote in their recommendation letters for me, it worked for getting me into medical school. Dr. Shaffrath actually called me one morning worrying that he’d missed the deadline and screwed over my future and read a couple sentences from it to me. :P I’m super lucky that he decided to teach instead of doing family medicine!

Being on vacation was a wonderful time, and my visit back up to Davis was a major highlight–it was awesome to get to see my professors again, and there’s just something about hearing, “I’m very proud of you,” from people you really look up to that can brighten your day/week/month/year like nothing else. :]

You can hear him giving a talk on the shortcuts to excellent teaching here! :P

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• What qualities do you feel make the best teacher?
• Tell me about a teacher/professor who made a huge difference in your life! :]