Teacher Appreciation Day 2018

Today is a day that is set aside in America for the appreciation of the people who taught us.  Teacher is actually a wide-based catchword for an educator, a mentor, or leader.  Five definitions of a teacher are: (1) a provider of knowledge and insight;  (2) a mentor;  (3) one who inspires, motivates, and opens up minds to the endless possibilities of which one can achieve;  (4) one who makes a positive difference in the lives of many;  and  (5) one who is admired, appreciated, and held in the highest esteem.
  Our parents and older siblings are our first teachers, along with grandparents, other relatives and family friends.  My parents played memory games with me and my sister, and I have to admit that I learned to add numbers by playing Blackjack (or 21) with my parents as a 4- and 5-year-old.  My parents read to me until I entered Kindergarten, and had me read to them as soon as we started learning phonics, which I think was about week 3 or 4 of Kindergarten.
   I also have to admit that I have forgotten my Kindergarten teacher's name - I do remember complaining one day, and crying, because I didn't feel well, and the teacher sat me on a stool in the corner with a dunce cap on.  That made me cry more.  That afternoon, I complained to my Mom and she found that I had a temperature of 102; I broke out in measles that night.
   Mrs. Fouts was my first grade teacher; Mrs. Baxter, the wife of the Pricipal, was my second grade instructor.   Mrs. Shirley Shuler was my third grade teacher - and I thew up on her brown alligator pumps after lunch one day when she insisted I eat my spinach.  (She didn't believe it when I said the spinach wouldn't stay down.)  In fourth grade, Mrs Adelaide Ford was my teacher, and for some youthful reason, I thought it was strange that she drove a Cadillac and not a Ford...  Mrs. Christine Cameron was my fifth grade instructor.  Sixth grade was kind of strange - we were supposed to be prepared for junior high school, and changing classes, so we had a 'main' teacher - I had Miss Carol Isley  - and then I would go to math class with Mrs. Maxwell, and to reading with Mrs. Farnbach.  I say that sixth grade was odd because there was a teacher's strike that school year for better wages and working benefits - and we had 6 weeks of instruction from volunteers.... 
   While I was in grade school, we had a music teacher who came into the class room once a week for 45 minutes to an hour, and I was always excited to learn new songs.  I have no clear recollection of the music teacher before January 1966, when I was in fourth grade.  We hadn't had a music teacher since Thanksgiving; I don't know if she had moved or became ill, or what...  But, in January, we had a new instructor appear - and I still call him my big brother.  His name is Jack Carter, and he plays the organ and piano, and just about any simple musical instrument.  He set up a chorus for the school, and had us preform short musical plays for the school and the PTA.  I fell in love with him right away, as did many of the female students.  Finding out that he was single, my parents adopted him as an older son, and that's how Jack became my big brother.  He was Mr. Carter at school, and Jack at home, when he came over for supper or barbeques, or when we went to swim at the lake, beach, or State Park.  He is still one of my best friends today - 58 years later.
   Norman Tessman was my 7th grade general science teacher.  He was a graduate student at the time, researching and writing his thesis for his PhD in paleontology.  He drove a copper color Saab, which the students called "the pregnant cockroach."  One weekend, he took the class out on a dig - and we found a camel's tooth, a vertebrae from a shark, several shark teeth, and multiple flint arrowheads.  I had a blast, and he instilled in me the longing for more knowledge of ancient history - for paleontology as well as archaeology.
   In 9th grade, at the newly built Eastside High School, I was lucky enough to be assigned Mrs. Patricia Poole for my Algebra II class.  I also had Pat for Geometry and Trigonometry.  She is an extremely gifted and skilled instructor, making difficult math problems fun and easy as she dissected them for us students.  I truly wish I had been able to have Pat (instead of Arthur Crumb) for my Statistics instructor in college...  Pat, and her family, were also family friends.  And a core group of students, who had Mrs. Poole for three years running in progressive Math, called her "Prudence Patricia Petunia Poole"  - it was our "pet" name for her.
   I was extremely lucky in the wonderful teachers I had from Kindergarten through 12th grade graduation.  College, with it's huge classes, was another story, but I did well enough....

    Every single person in the United States should thank their teachers, tutors, instructors, and
mentors today, and every day....    But today, especially!