Who was the best "teacher" you ever had? Not necessarily in school but anywhere? Some folks are excellent at educating. Some suck. Why?

I will never forget my seventh grade world history teacher. Her name was Mrs. Scandura. She made history come to life. I had never had the caliber of teacher she was till then, nor did I have one like her ever. She taught me to love ancient world history, and the importance of how relevant it is today. I will never forget her.

My best teacher was Mrs. Porter, in the mixed, local-authority Emsworth (Hampshire) Infants' and Primary School c.1958.

She had some very progressive ideas, including setting out our tables - not desks as I recall - conference-fashion. This not only left a big, clear central area for informal activities  on mats. We each could see most of our fellow-pupils face-to-face, as well as having a clear view of the blackboard; so rather then being just individual backs of heads were could spark off each other.

Mrs. Porter encouraged my somewhat unusually early ability to read, and well as A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh,  and similar, she would sometimes lend me her daily newspaper! I would not have understood the major news stories fully, but I could understand their texts. 

I've still my copy of  Winnie The Pooh, with her signature and message to "Keep on reading", in the flyleaf.

Then there was Mr. Hodge in my primary school, who not only taught the intended curriculum and syllabi, but added to it by his own initiative. I remember him introducing us to logarithms as arithmetical tools, at least a year before we were scheduled to meet them formally, and demonstrating light-ray tracing by pins, lamp-and-slit and glass blocks, long before encountering them in the upper school. He didn't teach us Snells Law etc, simply showed how us basic reflection and refraction.

Mr Hodge also ran an after-school Radio Club in which  several of us built very simple radios capable of receiving BBC's then-"Home Service" - needing such skills as following simple diagrams, and soldering wires.


Just a pity some of my teachers in senior school were the opposite, though most were at least reasonably good!

Why are some excellent teachers while others "suck", whatever that inelegant term means? Personal ability I suppose. Plus it might depend
on their own backgrounds. The good ones will be like Mrs. Porter and a few others I'd know, who clearly enjoyed their work and enjoyed helping you learn. Those brought up and taught the only way to teach is by rote, or who are only interested in the bright, keen pupils likely to pass exams with high marks, won't teach you how to escape a paper bag. 

I believe the worst was Mr. Hill, a sarcastic, bumptious so-and-so we all knew behind his back by the bizarre nick-name "Drasher", apparently given him by a cricket-club for which he'd played years back. He made a very good of making sure my poor inability to understand mathematics paid off by failing the exam.


I've also encountered people at work who are really skilled in their field, but utterly hopeless at teaching it, especially if they cannot understand that not everyone has their levels of intelligence AND learning ability.

During my senior year of high school, I had the good fortune to be a student of the late Mr. H. Griffin. He taught British Literature, a requirement of seniors that counted as an English credit. In addition to his teaching duties, Griffin was the faculty adviser for the school newspaper. Now it must be understood up front that Mr. Griffin bore a remarkable resemblance to Robert Vaughn, the popular TV and movie actor. That was altogether fitting because Griffin was something of a performer himself. Mr Griffin's lectures on Keats, Coleridge and Rossetti were especially powerful and emotionally presented by a man in whom the true fire of literary expression burned. We spent a good portion off the term on Shakespeare, naturally, as he is the cornerstone of literature regardless of which side of the Atlantic Ocean you studied on. Griffin had a philosophy about the correct approach to Shakespeare's plays. If you had a lot of fun with it, then you would be interested. If you were interested, then you would realize what the Bard was trying to tell us . Our teacher would exaggerate the characters in reading the lines, often pausing to poke fun at the play's expense. Often Mr. Griffin would have several of us up front before the class to do some of the same. On a few occasions, he would have us write essays about the authors and their works as we moved through the year. Once, the assignment was to write something that might have come from the pen of one of the greats we were discussing. I chose Wordsworth and created one of the finest pieces of writing I would ever put pen and ink to. I would go on to write other essays and term papers but nothing as inspired as that piece. Griffin spoke to me about it after class one afternoon and was very complimentary of the effort. I think that it stood out because Griffin had taught me to FEEL it and not just write it. Unfortunately for us all, it was this fine man's fate to die young as his hero Keats had done. His career had been a brief shooting star that burned brightly but too quickly was extinguished.

I had Frank McCourt for English/Creative Writing my junior year at Stuyvesant HS. Later in his life, he became famous as the author of "Angela's Ashes," "Tis," and "Teacher Man." He had a wonderful brogue and wry sense of humor.