Hey Pandas, What Was The Best Teacher You Ever Had?

Mr. Palmer. Strict as hell. Had us do short one paragraph research reports on everything from Punxsutawney Phil to Jim Crow Laws to Julia Child. And we had to source all our work. And this was before the internet and we would have to trek to the library to get the information! To this day, I remember odd facts —both important facts and trivial ones— because of those assignments.

Mrs. Pavlisko, 10th grade English. She was awesome. She went out of her way to give opportunities to all of her kids and she genuinely cared about all of us. One day I came to class crying because me and my boyfriend were breaking up. She pulled me aside and gave me a hug (back in the day, mid 90's) and she told me that if I wanted to talk that she would listen and that if I needed a library pass for that period she would let me go. Then she got in her desk drawer and pulled out a blue puff ball and handed it to me and told me "This is a warm fuzzy. Whenever you are upset or sad, just hold this in your hand and know that you are special and someone cares about you." I still have that blue puff ball to this day.

My high school art teacher, Ron Durham was was an ominous, burley, rock and roll cowboy. He taught two Art 2 classes with about 25 students each, and was a real hardass. This was apparently to weed out the kids that took Art as a blow-off class. It worked! There were 22 of us in Art 3 and 8 in Art 3 Pottery. There were 12 of us in Art 4 and 8 in Art 4 Commercial Art. He taught the gambit and knew his stuff. He ended up being a great friend and mentor who really cared for the craft and the student. He also had taught prisoners how to drive semi-trucks on a work program, created a scholarship for minority artists, was on the board of directors at the local art museum, and had a doctorate degree in the Arts. R.I.P., Mr. Durham. You were the best!

My grandad. He showed me how to hunt, fish, fix cars, etc. He helped me with my homework even when he didn't know what was happening either. Also he is pretty much a grandpa to all of my friends to this day. They all still call him grandpa. He is sweet and kind to everyone. ⚠️To the lady at the store that was mean to him⚠️ He was nice to you and smiled at you even though you were a total jerk to him. He cried when he got home because you really hurt his feelings. I will find you b***h, and you better pray.

Mrs. Bennett in 7th grade. My mother had been gone for about a year but we hadn’t told anyone. She was just so kind and caring, probably to everyone, but she filled a huge void in my heart.

(I’m french-born) Madame Giordani, Y1. No nonsense such as jolliphonics or anything like that with her; well it was 1974 so they didn’t exist anyway… just write letters, then syllables and repeat them.. with her method I was able to read before Christmas 1974 (1 term in the year. No I wasn’t clever. She was b****y good, that was all.)