Elementary, my dear Watson

All of my teachers had an impact on my life growing up. I always wanted to make them proud (well, most of them anyway). I loved them for all they could teach us and for all the loving and caring they showed us at such a young and impressionable age. I looked up to them; they were my heroes. They were the reason I wanted to become a teacher myself.

My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Imbro. I remember her being kind and somewhat "hip" because she was relatively young. She was married to a Stratford fireman (who is now the chief of the Stratford Fire Department, that is, unless he recently retired). She had pretty blonde hair, was very tall and thin, and wore glasses. There's a picture of her a few posts back. She's where it all began. I knew I wanted to be a teacher even way back then.

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Oliver. She was strick but an excellent teacher just the same. She is the teacher that really made me love reading. We learned phonics in first grade (I don't think they teach it anymore, which is a shame), and I loved every minute of it. All we did was read. This is what I wanted more of. Math was so easy for me that I loathed doing it. I'd much rather read a book.

Second grade is in the post prior to this one. No need to rehash it.

My third grade teacher was Miss Tariska. She was also very tall and thin and wore glasses, like Mrs. Imbro, only she had short brown hair. She was soft spoken, caring, and fun to be around. She was the first woman I had ever seen that didn't have a chest. I thought she'd had an operation and had to have her breasts removed (I knew some women had to have this done for some reason), but I later found out that that, of course, wasn't true. She was simply an A cup. It's funny the little things you remember. We did a lot of math that year, and I got to tutor Tommy, my crush from kindergarten, that year. I learned to like math a lot.

My fourth grade teacher was Ms. Knopick. I didn't like her. My mom didn't like her either. The main thing I remember about her is that she used to wear 2 pairs of pantyhose, both of them ripped, to supposedly make one complete pair. Yeah, weird, I know. She was mean and cranky and she didn't really like children. What finally got my mom super pissed off at Ms. Knopick was when she found out that she gave us birthday whacks. Yeah, for our birthdays "as a treat", she would bring us up to the front of the class, and give us 10 whacks on the ass with her hand (for the 10 years we'd been alive), and then she'd pinch our ass for a year to grow on. I shit you not. When my mom found out, she hit the roof. She went in and ripped Ms. Knopick a new one. Needless to say, Ms. Knopick didn't give my younger sister her birthday whacks two years later when she was in her class.

In fourth grade, we also got to switch classes for the first time, too, so I actually had two teachers, the other being Mr. Mickalovich. He taught us science and math. He was an excellent teacher. And we really liked getting to go to another classroom (if for nothing more than to get away from birthday-whack-lady). I remember him asking us one day if any of us knew the 2 national languages of Canada. Well, I had just been to Canada for my cousin's engagement party, and I distinctly heard people speaking Italian and Spanish while I was there. So I bravely raised my hand and answered his question (I was wrong, of course). He didn't make me feel stupid about it; he just told me that was a good guess.

In fifth and sixth grade, we got to have 4 teachers: Mr. Moyher for science, Mr. Sabados for Social Studies, Miss O'Connor for math, and Miss Sutherland for English.

Mr. Moyher was my fifth grade homeroom teacher. He was a weird guy. He used to have jars of sheep's brains and other disgusting things in the back of the room. He also swore he saw bigfoot and used to show us a picture of some guy in a bigfoot costume. He used to have a mint plant in the front of the classroom he'd let us eat off of. He drove an Izuzu Trooper; I can't believe I remember that. My older sister and my younger sister also had him for a teacher. And one of the last days of elementary school, during our last one on one meeting with our teachers, he told me I was never going to amount to anything because of the friends I had (one friend in particular). I had liked him up until that day. What a terrible thing to say to a student. I always thought he didn't like me because I excelled at all of my other classes except science. It just didn't grab my interest. It wasn't that I tried any less in the class; I just didn't get it back then. I later grew to love science (well, some of it, anyway).

Mr. Sabados used to sneeze into his hands and then immediately run his hands through his hair. We used to guess at how much snot was actually lurking in there. We always said he never needed gel. We were both memsmerized and repulsed by this weird quirk. Mr. Sabados taught us about Europe most of the time. We had these cool maps of Europe that had been laminated so you could write on them with markers. We used them nearly every day. He also taught us how to play chess, which is a very cool thing for a teacher to do. I will always thank him for that.

Miss O'Connor was my sixth grade homeroom teacher. She used to be a nun. She used to sing to people when they weren't paying attention, i.e. "[insert child's name}, I am calling yooooooooouuuuuuu-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh!" Used to drive us mad. She used to make it a point that you never went "over" someone's house, you went "to" their house and demonstrated by drawing a house on the board and showing a stick figure jumping over the house and walking into the house. We did SRA on Fridays and one group used to get to play Oregon Trail at the old-as-shit computer at the back of the class. She had a mean streak, but she was a good teacher nonetheless.

And last, there was Miss Sutherland. I wanted to be just like her. Have you seen Mona Lisa Smile? She looked like one of those teachers. She wore her hair the same way everyday with these big swoops in it and all secured in a bun at the back. She never wore makeup. She had beautiful, fluid handwriting that she used to coat the blackboards with everyday. And she made me love writing. She taught us not only to write stories but to write poetry, as well. She was always so giving, helping each student revise each piece they wrote. Every single piece for every single student for the entire two years I was in her class. She was never harsh or cruel. She always made us feel at ease, and we all loved going to her class. I remember finding out in high school that she was a lesbian, and I saw her and her partner at one of my plays. She still looked exactly the same.