This past week has been “Teacher Appreciation Week.” I can think of few professions more deserving of appreciation than that of teaching. Just like anyone reading this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to some very special teachers. In fact, the number of teachers and mentors I have encountered over the years and the lessons learned from them far outreaches the amount of room I have in just one newspaper. However, there are three teachers for whom I am grateful every time I sit down to write anything. They are Mrs. Estic Rollings, Ms. Gwen Faulkner and Mrs. Glenda Hamby.
Mrs. Rollings was my English teacher when I was in the 10th grade. Mrs. Rollings had this wonderful “habit” of using big words. Whenever one of us would ask what she meant by saying we were being “facetious,” her response was always the same, “Look it up in the dictionary.” I remember we had the assignment of memorizing the famous speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. You know the one, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me you ears, blah, blah, blah.” I was determined to put my young, budding acting skills to use and not merely recite the speech. As I look back now, it probably wasn't all that good. But Mrs. Rollings knew what I was trying to do and her response was one of true encouragement. Not long after I began working here at the newspaper, I made it a point to send her a message, thanking her for making such an impact and for holding me to a high standard. She seemed to be genuinely appreciative of my message.
Many of you remember Gwen Faulkner from the time she spent working at North Florida Junior College (as it was called at the time). However, Gwen's (in later years, I was allowed to call her Gwen) biggest impact on me was when she was my English teacher during my junior year in high school. I distinctly remember the first day of school in her class. She told us, “In this class, you will do four things. You will write, you will write, you will write and then you will write some more.” She was not exaggerating in the least. One of her more famous writing assignments was to write detailed instructions on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She went to great lengths to emphasize the word “detailed.” The next day, when we entered the class, there was a table with a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly and utensils. We then took turns attempting to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using the precise directions other students had written. The result was one of laughter and a good lesson learned. Gwen, probably more than anyone else, opened my eyes to the beauty of words and the many ways in which they can be used. I think of her fondly each time I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Mrs. Hamby was one of my mom's “bridge club buddies.” Therefore anything that took place in her class, my mother was likely to hear about. Mrs. Hamby was another teacher who would not allow a student to merely “get by.” In Mrs. Hamby's senior English class, we were able to do more creative writing, which allowed me to further explore using words to paint pictures from my imagination. Granted, the stories I wrote in that class were not likely to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, but the exercise further opened my eyes to the power of words.
These are only three of the many dedicated teachers I have known in my life. These three, and many others had one thing in common. They had a belief in me, even when I struggled to share that same belief in myself; and they never let me settle for anything less than my best.