“Just because it’s in the book, doesn’t make it accurate” - Mr Farrington and Mr Moore 11/12th grade history.
Both of them encouraged us to seek out historical events from the non-American side for an alternative perspective. Mr. Moore went as far to use A People’s History of the United States and Lies My Teacher Told Me as texts in our AP History class. Almost 30 years later (oh no…) they still resonate.
"You may not have invented the run on sentence, but you are well on the way to perfecting it.". Best piece of writing advice I ever got, though I may not always follow it.
My trigonometry teacher had just become a teacher after having worked a high paying job in the Financial District in NY. When we asked him why he left that job to be a teacher. He told us "you can either make a living or you can make a killing." He reasoned he'd already made a killing, and with a baby on the way, it was time for him to take a job where he could make a living and spend time with her.
8th-grade algebra 1 teacher: not everyone in a position of authority is qualified to be there. Also, as evidenced by your doodling during her class and still getting good grades, you probably have ADHD, but you still won’t know this for sure at age 32.
High school band director: you’ll get better results by being accommodating and supportive than by being perfectionistic and expecting to be prioritized ahead of anything else.
11th/12th-grade AP US/European history teacher: history can be fun and interesting, books aren’t the only way to learn history, and asking “why” matters more than just knowing the facts.
Thesis advisor who I also TA’d for: A good boss will have your back when you need them.
My 11th grade AP European History teacher had a similar take: if you can remember nothing else, remember that the arts of a period in history reflect what’s happening around it. It was meant to encourage the kids who didn’t enjoy or weren’t good at the rote memorization, but it’s stuck with me ever since.
"The goal isn't to get IN to college. The goal is to get OUT of college [with a degree]."
and
From a college instructor, advising undergrads on the prospect of graduate school:
"If you're smart enough to get in, you're smart enough to get out (with a degree). It's all a matter of how much bullshit you're willing to put up with."
"You're not as smart as you think you are, and you need to work hard and show up for things."
-English 101 TA whose name I've forgotten, freshman year of college.
I coasted through second semester of my freshman year of college and managed to fail freshman composition, largely because I couldn't be bothered to show up to class. I wasn't a medium-sized fish coming from a small pond to a Great Lake, but throughout high school (and my first semester) I'd managed to pull Bs and the occasional A with little effort. I retook the class fall semester of my sophomore year, doubled down my effort, got an A, but the sting of failure has been a constant reminder not to take aptitude for granted, show up, and generally that if something is worth doing, you shouldn't half-ass it.
Funnily enough mine is a similar theme: my HS Latin teacher (an old priest from Massachusetts). Latin 1 was mandatory for freshmen and before tests he used to say “remember, kiddies, there’s no point in asking the good Lord for help if you haven’t already paid the price.” I’m not sure if that was doctrinally sound from a theological standpoint but it was a good lesson in tying your expectations to your effort.
"You should never want to be the smartest person in the room."
This one came from my student activities director in HS. You might end up being so, but you should not strive for that because you won't learn anything.
"You can learn something from everyone, even if it's just what you don't want to do."
That was from my college grad assistant when I was lamenting that the teacher I was observing for my pre-student teaching hours was not particularly good at her job.
I'm horrified at the version of this from my student's perspective because I am sure "Only you can prevent forest fires." or "That's the closet."
I did appreciate the one time about seven years ago when I said it as my usual end-of-week proscription: "Be careful, be safe, be smart, and remember that only you can prevent forest fires." one of my students noted the last one was good advice because they were going on a Boy Scout camping trip that weekend, and I yelled "Finally!"
For a science person, a lot of my important lessons were from English and history teachers:
1) There's more to literature than a narrative. Find the subtext. What does this MEAN? Ms. Tacz, my 9th grade English teacher, taught me how to think critically for the first time.
2) When you write "this," you need a noun to follow it. Miss Adams, my AP English teacher was known to write "This what?" on essays if you failed to follow that guideline.
3) Miss Adams was also a big proponent of the "don't use 'very'" rule. She used to cross out "very" and replace it with "damn," which felt insulting and a little badass. She also made us write every single day for the purpose of finding our voice.
4) From Mr. P, my AP History teacher: don't use "feel" in the cognitive sense: you feel angry, you feel sad, you don't feel that Thomas Jefferson was a contradiction. He also made us read primary sources, which was the first time I realized that things in the history textbook weren't necessarily the whole story.
- Never write “I think”- you’re the one writing, it’s implied
- While we’re here, if you’re doing something persuasive, never say “I”- your thesis is the main character, you are not making a cameo
- Iobst and Marshall taught me the value of editing and re-editing to make concise points. The latter gave me one perfect score on a paper, with the note “I do not give out perfect scores. I am mad about this.” (The former still asks my parents if I gave up on “that made up home ec major” and went back to school for English)
Mr. Marcum, 11th grade AP Lit: “Embrace failure”. He used it to motivate us to learn from our mistakes and improve on our work. I’ve taken that axiom to heart.
"Don't trust anything that claims to have all the answers" One of my HS math teachers refused to use the "teachers" edition of the textbook with the answers printed in it. First it was not infrequently wrong, and second of all he said "if I can't figure it out, I don't know how I could expect you kids to"
Also had a fantastic Physics II teacher where he would pick students with the most appropriate attributes to perform experiments. Loudest in the room went outside and ran past the classroom yelling at the top of their lungs - Doppler Effect. Sprinter front the track team ran down the hall pushing a weight on a pulley on a rolling chair trying to keep it from dropping - Constant Acceleration.
"Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see."--10th grade social studies teacher Frank Gallo. I think he was actually saying it in response to some after-class teenage griping about rumors going between a friend group but I've found it far more applicable in grown-up years than I ever expected.
Also, no pithy quote but similar to Scott's teacher's admonition about "very", I took a similar lesson in general brevity from an 11th grade AP US History paper I wrote. This teacher was known as one of the toughest graders in the school, and true to form, I NEVER got better than a B+ on any essay the first few months of the year. Mid-February, sick as a dog with the flu, I had to write an essay on Vietnam or Nixon or something and I remember just putting down the most basic ass sentences, the type of stuff you do when you have writers block and you plan to come back around later and fluff it up. Only I never fluffed it up, it was simply "Intro-thesis-example-conclusion" over and over. I got an A on that, my only one of the year, and it taught me that simple isn't necessarily bad.
Mr. Perry taught me voice first when I was about 7 years old. He became a daily part of my life when I started high school and had the privilege of having him as my choral director. It's safe to say that nearly every student of his loved him. If he was your teacher, it's because you wanted to be in the room, learning music. Occasionally, Mr. Perry would ask, "You know how in baseball, when a batter is on deck, they swing two bats? This is like that." Every so often, I'd quote this back at him. Every time he'd genuinely say "That's very wise" and be surprised when I reminded him that he's the one who taught me that. I reflect on this weekly in my professional life.
"Look at things a different way, you'll be surprised what you already know"--Mrs. Wold, Spanish 3 (11th grade)
My high school had a Spanish 3 & 4 course you could take as an elective after completing the requisite 1 & 2 grammar courses everyone took. It was a small class, something like 8 juniors and seniors, and was basically a literature class in Spanish. (I think there were two alternating versions of the course, so it was level 3 if you were a junior, 4 if you were a senior, and you wouldn't face repeat materials.) We read portions of things like El Cid, Don Quixote, and at one point, a handout of pages copied from the Spanish translation of the novelization of Star Wars, and discussed them as a group.
As we worked through the school year, it clicked for me that the best approach wasn't to try to translate the readings one word/phrase at a time, the way we always had for small reading samples and worksheet sentences in the two Spanish grammar years (and the elementary and middle-school Spanish I'd taken before that). It was to just read it in Spanish, let your head voice speak Spanish to you, and realize you're getting the basic mental images (even if you don't clock every single word as you go) and understand way more of the language than you knew you did.
In the 30+ years since, I've certainly gotten far rustier on my Spanish, and never got around to learning any other foreign languages, so it hasn't helped me directly in that way, but I still think that lesson to get out of my usual way of thinking and look at the bigger picture has helped in my appreciation of everything from music to art to keeping up with the news.
“Just because it’s in the book, doesn’t make it accurate” - Mr Farrington and Mr Moore 11/12th grade history.
Both of them encouraged us to seek out historical events from the non-American side for an alternative perspective. Mr. Moore went as far to use A People’s History of the United States and Lies My Teacher Told Me as texts in our AP History class. Almost 30 years later (oh no…) they still resonate.
I got the counterlesson, if someone says it's in the book, demand that they show you.
"You may not have invented the run on sentence, but you are well on the way to perfecting it.". Best piece of writing advice I ever got, though I may not always follow it.
This is tremendous
My trigonometry teacher had just become a teacher after having worked a high paying job in the Financial District in NY. When we asked him why he left that job to be a teacher. He told us "you can either make a living or you can make a killing." He reasoned he'd already made a killing, and with a baby on the way, it was time for him to take a job where he could make a living and spend time with her.
8th-grade algebra 1 teacher: not everyone in a position of authority is qualified to be there. Also, as evidenced by your doodling during her class and still getting good grades, you probably have ADHD, but you still won’t know this for sure at age 32.
High school band director: you’ll get better results by being accommodating and supportive than by being perfectionistic and expecting to be prioritized ahead of anything else.
11th/12th-grade AP US/European history teacher: history can be fun and interesting, books aren’t the only way to learn history, and asking “why” matters more than just knowing the facts.
Thesis advisor who I also TA’d for: A good boss will have your back when you need them.
My 11th grade AP European History teacher had a similar take: if you can remember nothing else, remember that the arts of a period in history reflect what’s happening around it. It was meant to encourage the kids who didn’t enjoy or weren’t good at the rote memorization, but it’s stuck with me ever since.
From my HS trig teacher, about college:
"The goal isn't to get IN to college. The goal is to get OUT of college [with a degree]."
and
From a college instructor, advising undergrads on the prospect of graduate school:
"If you're smart enough to get in, you're smart enough to get out (with a degree). It's all a matter of how much bullshit you're willing to put up with."
"You're not as smart as you think you are, and you need to work hard and show up for things."
-English 101 TA whose name I've forgotten, freshman year of college.
I coasted through second semester of my freshman year of college and managed to fail freshman composition, largely because I couldn't be bothered to show up to class. I wasn't a medium-sized fish coming from a small pond to a Great Lake, but throughout high school (and my first semester) I'd managed to pull Bs and the occasional A with little effort. I retook the class fall semester of my sophomore year, doubled down my effort, got an A, but the sting of failure has been a constant reminder not to take aptitude for granted, show up, and generally that if something is worth doing, you shouldn't half-ass it.
Funnily enough mine is a similar theme: my HS Latin teacher (an old priest from Massachusetts). Latin 1 was mandatory for freshmen and before tests he used to say “remember, kiddies, there’s no point in asking the good Lord for help if you haven’t already paid the price.” I’m not sure if that was doctrinally sound from a theological standpoint but it was a good lesson in tying your expectations to your effort.
"You should never want to be the smartest person in the room."
This one came from my student activities director in HS. You might end up being so, but you should not strive for that because you won't learn anything.
"You can learn something from everyone, even if it's just what you don't want to do."
That was from my college grad assistant when I was lamenting that the teacher I was observing for my pre-student teaching hours was not particularly good at her job.
I'm horrified at the version of this from my student's perspective because I am sure "Only you can prevent forest fires." or "That's the closet."
I trust that Mr. Barker's students have far greater takeaways than those. (Although the forest fire thing is legit.)
I did appreciate the one time about seven years ago when I said it as my usual end-of-week proscription: "Be careful, be safe, be smart, and remember that only you can prevent forest fires." one of my students noted the last one was good advice because they were going on a Boy Scout camping trip that weekend, and I yelled "Finally!"
Closet identification is an important skill
For a science person, a lot of my important lessons were from English and history teachers:
1) There's more to literature than a narrative. Find the subtext. What does this MEAN? Ms. Tacz, my 9th grade English teacher, taught me how to think critically for the first time.
2) When you write "this," you need a noun to follow it. Miss Adams, my AP English teacher was known to write "This what?" on essays if you failed to follow that guideline.
3) Miss Adams was also a big proponent of the "don't use 'very'" rule. She used to cross out "very" and replace it with "damn," which felt insulting and a little badass. She also made us write every single day for the purpose of finding our voice.
4) From Mr. P, my AP History teacher: don't use "feel" in the cognitive sense: you feel angry, you feel sad, you don't feel that Thomas Jefferson was a contradiction. He also made us read primary sources, which was the first time I realized that things in the history textbook weren't necessarily the whole story.
"Everything is a choice and has a cost".
~Mr. Snow 12th grade AP Economics
I think about this all the time in almost every context. I am sure my kids are also already tired of hearing it.
oooh that's a great Dad Axiom, I'm gonna start using that on my kids
English teachers have a knack for these:
- Never write “I think”- you’re the one writing, it’s implied
- While we’re here, if you’re doing something persuasive, never say “I”- your thesis is the main character, you are not making a cameo
- Iobst and Marshall taught me the value of editing and re-editing to make concise points. The latter gave me one perfect score on a paper, with the note “I do not give out perfect scores. I am mad about this.” (The former still asks my parents if I gave up on “that made up home ec major” and went back to school for English)
Mr. Marcum, 11th grade AP Lit: “Embrace failure”. He used it to motivate us to learn from our mistakes and improve on our work. I’ve taken that axiom to heart.
"Don't trust anything that claims to have all the answers" One of my HS math teachers refused to use the "teachers" edition of the textbook with the answers printed in it. First it was not infrequently wrong, and second of all he said "if I can't figure it out, I don't know how I could expect you kids to"
See now, *my* high school math approach was "if I can't figure it out, I can just copy off of Lee"
worked pretty well ngl
Also had a fantastic Physics II teacher where he would pick students with the most appropriate attributes to perform experiments. Loudest in the room went outside and ran past the classroom yelling at the top of their lungs - Doppler Effect. Sprinter front the track team ran down the hall pushing a weight on a pulley on a rolling chair trying to keep it from dropping - Constant Acceleration.
"Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see."--10th grade social studies teacher Frank Gallo. I think he was actually saying it in response to some after-class teenage griping about rumors going between a friend group but I've found it far more applicable in grown-up years than I ever expected.
Also, no pithy quote but similar to Scott's teacher's admonition about "very", I took a similar lesson in general brevity from an 11th grade AP US History paper I wrote. This teacher was known as one of the toughest graders in the school, and true to form, I NEVER got better than a B+ on any essay the first few months of the year. Mid-February, sick as a dog with the flu, I had to write an essay on Vietnam or Nixon or something and I remember just putting down the most basic ass sentences, the type of stuff you do when you have writers block and you plan to come back around later and fluff it up. Only I never fluffed it up, it was simply "Intro-thesis-example-conclusion" over and over. I got an A on that, my only one of the year, and it taught me that simple isn't necessarily bad.
Mr. Perry taught me voice first when I was about 7 years old. He became a daily part of my life when I started high school and had the privilege of having him as my choral director. It's safe to say that nearly every student of his loved him. If he was your teacher, it's because you wanted to be in the room, learning music. Occasionally, Mr. Perry would ask, "You know how in baseball, when a batter is on deck, they swing two bats? This is like that." Every so often, I'd quote this back at him. Every time he'd genuinely say "That's very wise" and be surprised when I reminded him that he's the one who taught me that. I reflect on this weekly in my professional life.
"Look at things a different way, you'll be surprised what you already know"--Mrs. Wold, Spanish 3 (11th grade)
My high school had a Spanish 3 & 4 course you could take as an elective after completing the requisite 1 & 2 grammar courses everyone took. It was a small class, something like 8 juniors and seniors, and was basically a literature class in Spanish. (I think there were two alternating versions of the course, so it was level 3 if you were a junior, 4 if you were a senior, and you wouldn't face repeat materials.) We read portions of things like El Cid, Don Quixote, and at one point, a handout of pages copied from the Spanish translation of the novelization of Star Wars, and discussed them as a group.
As we worked through the school year, it clicked for me that the best approach wasn't to try to translate the readings one word/phrase at a time, the way we always had for small reading samples and worksheet sentences in the two Spanish grammar years (and the elementary and middle-school Spanish I'd taken before that). It was to just read it in Spanish, let your head voice speak Spanish to you, and realize you're getting the basic mental images (even if you don't clock every single word as you go) and understand way more of the language than you knew you did.
In the 30+ years since, I've certainly gotten far rustier on my Spanish, and never got around to learning any other foreign languages, so it hasn't helped me directly in that way, but I still think that lesson to get out of my usual way of thinking and look at the bigger picture has helped in my appreciation of everything from music to art to keeping up with the news.