Teacher Appreciation Week – Our Writers Look Back

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, our writers share their memories of the teachers who impacted their lives. There’s still time to share your own stories for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate for yourself and the teacher who has inspired you, so head on over and celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week with us!

Reflections During Teacher Appreciation Week

Ann Mazzaferro, Writer

If we learned only one lesson during our junior year in high school, Mr. Schulz was going to make sure that it was that life isn’t fair. It headed the list of classroom rules that we read during our first session of American Studies (a combination of AP English and Honors US History), and it became the refrain we returned to time and time again throughout the year. Computer crash and eat your essay? A classmate earned a higher grade on an assignment while doing half the work? Group members dragging you down on a project? Well, no one ever said that life was fair. In fact, just the opposite.

Lest this paint Mr. Schulz as an uncaring, unfeeling teacher, let me note that he was one of the most passionate, energetic and exacting instructors I’ve ever had. Some of my favorite high school memories came from his class, where we did everything from re-enact the 1912 US Presidential Election to host a 1950s cocktail party where we each played blacklisted McCarty-era writers, actors and politicians. He didn’t stress that life isn’t fair in order to drag us down or belittle us; he did it to prepare us for a world that would, by and large, not care about our calls for fairness. It taught us to be self-sufficient and responsible, and to find new solutions to problems (Ever written a campaign speech for William Howard Taft by candlelight because a massive storm has knocked out your power and crashed your computer? Try it some time.)

It was the hardest class I had in high school, and it was the one that taught me the most. When Mr. Schulz retired a couple of years ago, I was heartbroken for the students that would have American Studies in the years to follow – they would never have the chance to work with one of the smartest, most exacting, challenging and outright inspiring instructors I’ve ever met.

But then again, life isn’t fair.

Alexander Poirier, Writer

Coming into my senior year of high school, I heard horror stories about my school’s AP English course and the tormenter who oversaw it. “Mr. Bott,” they said, “he’s relentless. He LOOKS for ways to fail you.” But so goes the high school rumor mill, so I enrolled in his class, did my summer reading and waited for the new school year to begin. Sometime in between the flurry of weekend shows and 2:00PM alarm clocks, I found out that his nephew, who was one of my classmates throughout my high school years, had opted out of his uncle’s AP English class. When I asked him why, his response was simple.

“My uncle’s a prick.”

Needless to say, I went into Mr. Bott’s class expecting the worst. Who I found wasn’t a relentless sadist who wanted to watch the world burn, however. Instead, I found a teacher who was genuinely concerned with my educational development, a teacher who didn’t play into the “This is Stagg, so we need to take it easy on them” mentality and a teacher who finally expected something of me.

Prior to going into Mr. Bott’s class, I had my major listed as “Exploratory” (the major for the lost and confused) on all of my college applications. The genuine passion for reading, writing and the English language on display in his class, however, inspired me to declare myself an English major, a declaration I stayed true to despite all of the stories of gloom and doom for English majors after college. It’s a decision that has served me well and, for that, I would like to thank you Mr. Bott.

So, thank you.