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QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

  • 1.  QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    GENESYS
    Posted 12 days ago

    Graduation is upon us, teacher appreciation month is just behind us, and before we know it, a new school year will be here.

    We thought now is as good a time as any to ask: Who was your favorite teacher and why? 

    What is a teacher: 

    • Could be someone from grade school
    • Collegiate/graduate
    • Tutor
    • Trainer
    • Personal Mentor

    Anyone who answers the QOTM gets this badge on their profile to certify their participation:

    For our graduates, congratulations! We hope your celebration is epic and your summer memorable. For the teachers who get to enjoy a break, may your sleep be glorious, your travel flawless, and your meals perfect. For the parents whose kids are home for summer, we extend our sympathies. ;)

    Cheers to the end of the school year! 

    Matt & Team


    #CommunityQuestions(Contest,Community,etc.)

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    Matt Lawson
    Genesys - Employees
    Online Community Manager
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  • 2.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 12 days ago

    I had a math teacher in high school that was a certified clown. No really, he actually went to clown school and performed for many years with Barnum & Bailey. One of the things that I'll always remember him for was that he would use a yo-yo(which he picked up how to use while in the circus) to explain angles and concepts in class.

    He made learning a lot of fun in classes which are not known to be fun whatsoever. That will always stick with me.



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    Seean Weaver
    MAPFRE USA - Telecom Analyst
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    GENESYS
    Posted 11 days ago

    That's really cool! All I had like this was a teacher who would sing "Green Acres" to our school name "Town Acres".



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    Matt Lawson
    Genesys - Employees
    Online Community Manager
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 12 days ago

    I had a teacher in high school, Mr. Richardson, who taught 11th-grade English Lit. He was one of those "cool" teachers that everyone adored because he could talk to you - and I mean real talk. He would tell us how being an adult was not all that we saw in the movies - doing what we wanted when we wanted to - and he gave honest life advice. I also grew up in the deep south (Mobile, Alabama) and we, unfortunately, had banned books. Mr. Richardson made sure that our assignments were as many banned books as he could which was amazing. He would discuss them with such passion that even The Grapes of Wrath was a barn burner! 

    Mr. Richardson taught me to always be unapologetically authentic because if I end up rubbing people the wrong way, they aren't my people anyway... those were powerful words to a yet-to-be-diagnosed neurospicy kid. I still live by that mindset to this day and I have been out of his class for 35 years.



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    Amy Sessions
    City of Clearwater - Cutomer Service Manager
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 11 days ago

    @Amy Sessions why do English teachers seem to always get it? My first English teacher in high school had a radical, at least to me back in 1997, way of doing tests.... Everything is open book. Jaw dropping as a high school freshman. His philosophy was, "who cares what you are able to memorize, that will come in time if you use it enough, but you should be able to know how to FIND information". 



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    Seean Weaver
    MAPFRE USA - Telecom Analyst
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 11 days ago
    Edited by Brian Jones 11 days ago

    Hands down it would be my 5th grade teacher Ms. Hughes. She was in her late 30s/early 40s at the time, and would call us her little lambs. My parents also shared that during their last parent-teacher meeting with her, she made it quite clear to my parents that if they were okay with it she would adopt me so I could stay with her family & study abroad, haha

    You see, our family was stationed in Germany at the time, precisely when the Berlin Wall was torn down. Not only was she an informative, passionate, caring, and fun teacher, but instead of keeping her students on the Air Force Base the entire school year, she got approval to schedule and personally partially fund monthly field trips to various German castles & markets so we could learn about the culture & people we were surrounded by. 

    She would also encourage healthy competition, community, and class culture by implementing a quarterly rewards system for her students for everything from random acts of kindness, being a good person/friend to others, and high/improved performance. She had this gift for finding something to honor about each of her students, and would then take the top performers from each of her categories (typically 4 students) out to dinner in a German village. That was when she also taught us about (and I have never again tried) escargot, haha

    What I find most endearing about Ms. Hughes though is after her students left Germany she kept in touch for decades through an annual newsletter with a personalized letter on the back. We have had the opportunity to reunite one-time when she returned stateside, and she's still as amazing now as she was overseas.

    Thank you, Ms. Hughes, for shepherding the herds so well!



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    Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    GENESYS
    Posted 11 days ago

    When I think of favorite teachers, I am lucky to have a flood of ideas. 

    My frist go-to response is Mr Jolley. I mean, how can a teacher named Mr Jolley not be everyone's favorite. He was an english teacher my senior year, and he had just learned of LARPing with foam weapons and found a student who had an armory of these hand-made foam swords, axes, shields, and even a mace. All of those weapons came to class one day as we were reading Beowulf for a battle. 

    Beyond making school fun, he was incredibly supportive of everyone's interests. He would host clubs, go to plays/sporting events, find ways to showcase students' talents. He may be most remembered for two things:

    1) He had a cafe station in his room with coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Students could leave money to fund the operation. Probably highly illegal.

    2) He would let students pick the music for the day. Anyone could bring a school-appropriate CD and that would be the music he played between classes. 

    Great guy! 

    I also had some incredible college students and to go participate in two independent studies at the University of TN. A true honor for me. One on short story adaptations in film and another on modern poetry. I valued the time Michael Knight and Art Smith spent with (both great teacher names).

    Post grad, my favorite mentors were when I was in sales. I had two leaders that blend together, they worked in tandem, but what I remember them telling me that I'll never forget is "chaos becomes normal". The first time you do something it can be scary, but the more you do it the more comfortable and eventually "normal" it will become. My pickleball skills are definitely a testament to that concept.

    Thank you teachers!



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    Matt Lawson
    Genesys - Employees
    Online Community Manager
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    NEW MEMBER
    Posted 7 days ago

    My high school art teacher was my favorite. I always loved art growing up and Mrs. B. encouraged me to try new mediums and branch out creatively, which gave me better perspective not only in art, but in life. Because of her I was in the National Art Honor Society and frequently spent time after-school with various projects (when I didn't have soccer practice). Many years later, now, and I am still trying new mediums; just got into whittling and have been wood-burning a few years now.



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    Nicki Dehn
    AAA Club Alliance Inc.
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 7 days ago

    While I've got a few that come to mind, I'm going to go with my high school drawing teacher. He was one of the first teachers I had who treated us like people instead of kids and acted like a real person instead of a classroom dictator. He was always super encouraging in a genuine way, offered constructive criticism, and provided great guidance and suggestions by leading you there instead of telling you what to do. It was by far and away one of my very favorite classes. He was a great artist to boot, and I still have a drawing he did for me on the last day of class.



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    Emily Kammerer
    Ascendium Education Solutions, Inc.
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    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    NEW MEMBER
    Posted 7 days ago

    I have had many great teachers over the years but Mr. Rischell, my 2nd grade teacher, showed me that effort can go a long way.  I was admittedly lazy after Kindergarten, I did the bare minimum effort in 1st grade and fell behind in Reading.  I started 2nd grade reading in a 1st grade reading group.  Mr. Rischell taught using a pay-for-performance method.  Every two weeks, each student met with him to go over their "Pay Statement", the more work completed, the better the effort, the higher the test scores resulted in more pay.  And we would get paid the money (fake) that was earned.  This money could then be used to things throughout the year.  I loved getting paid but also saw the value in putting in the effort to earn more.  By the end of 2nd grade, I was reading at an almost 4th grade level.



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    Mike Shepard
    First Source Federal Credit Union
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    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 7 days ago
    Edited by Robert Wakefield-Carl 6 days ago

    That is easy.  Mr. Flores, 3rd grade.  It was he that saw the potential of myself and 3 other students that stood out from other students and took it upon himself to create his own gifted and talented program.  Remember this was is the early 70s - a time of new math and English that was "encouraging" students to just feel good about their answers no matter if it was correct or not.  He got us out of half a day 3 times a week to teach us Spanish, rocketry, typing (manual without electricity) advanced math and science and for me computer programming.  We did not have a computer, so he made me write out on a legal pad the hundreds of lines of code and sent it to a colleague in Greeley (I was in Colorado at the time) to verify it would work.  He would input the Cobol and send back the results.  We learned about orbital mechanics while building Estes rockets, had speed typing contests, and even learned speed reading.  It is amazing what we accomplished in a single year.  He encouraged other teachers to do the same and by middle school, we had about 10 of us in our group.  I truly believe without his tutelage, I would have dropped out early from boredom and never would have accomplished all I have done.  He allowed me to appreciate learning and to never settle for mediocrity but become the renaissance man I am today.  There is not a week that goes by that I thank him for what he did for us and the many students that followed after us.  Thank you, Mr. Flores, for teaching the most important part that it is not what you gain in this life but what you give to others that is important.



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    Robert Wakefield-Carl
    ttec Digital
    Sr. Director - Innovation Architects
    Robert.WC@ttecdigital.com
    https://www.ttecDigital.com
    https://RobertWC.Blogspot.com
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    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Top 25 Contributor
    Posted 6 days ago

    For this was a Uni professor Ed Mares. I originally took Phil: Logic 101 as an interest paper, but I loved it and did well enough in 101 that I could skip the second year course and did his 3rd year paper in my second year. He would always provide example that included his pet Labrador dog. I remember him walking in to the small classroom, Einstein like hair, and telling us we were going to learn about some topic but on his way over he was thinking about modal logic and so that is what we are going to be focusing on instead. This is someone who clearly loved his subject and loved thinking about and talking about it with other people, and that passion really made those classes memorable and fun.



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    Anton Vroon
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    Original Message


  • 13.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    Posted 5 days ago

    My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Kurth, was my favorite. She was very caring and always read out of a chapter book to us after lunch. Where the Red Fern Grows was one of our favorites! We also made a newspaper of sorts at the end of the school year that included all the fun events we did throughout the year.



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    Steph Voelker
    Westconsin Credit Union
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    Original Message


  • 14.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    GENESYS
    Posted 5 days ago

    My favorite teacher HAS to be my AP English teacher, Mrs. Melba Johnson. She was so kind, patient, and really knew her stuff. I even worked cleaning beach houses with her and her husband on the weekends! She prepared me so well for all of my final exams and it's because of her that I did well. 



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    Nicole Milliken
    Genesys - Employees
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    Original Message


  • 15.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    GENESYS
    Posted 3 days ago

    Probably my high school Spanish teacher, Mrs. Pierce. She taught us immersively, with areas of the classroom set up as a clothes closet, a bathroom (with a real toilet), kitchen, garage, etc. Lots of "Simón Dice" and hands-on learning the first year. Singing, cooking, all kinds of activities. Her parents came from El Salvador, so she grew up speaking Spanish as a first language. I learned a ton, and for a while I was the primary Spanish-speaking instructor for Interactive Intelligence in Bogotá, Colombia.



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    George Ganahl GCP, GCSME, ICCE, ICHD, etc.
    Senior Principal PS Consultant
    Genesys
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    Original Message


  • 16.  RE: QOTM - O Captain! My Captain! Who's Your Favorite Teacher?

    GENESYS
    Posted 19 hours ago

    I had a Professor in college that was integral to my transition into civilian life from the Army. He was a veteran cop who had seen some stuff. He was involved in the investigation in the Rochester Brink's depot in 1993. 



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    CameronTomlin
    Online Community Manager/Moderator
    Genesys - Employees
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    Original Message


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