What made/makes your favorite teacher your favorite teacher?

A great intellect combined with a great sense of humor. The fact that he was handsome, and I was an 8th grade girl may have had something to do with it, too!

During my senior year in high school, I had Ms. Darke, who was probably one of the greatest teachers the world has ever known. Her class was British Literature, and she described it with the most accurate analogy I had ever heard applied to a class: We were about to enter Hell, but she would be our Virgil and, with any luck, we would make it back out. If there was a concept you couldn’t wrap your head around, or a connection you couldn’t quite make, she had this beautiful ability to give you a whole new perspective on it in only a handful of words yet never told you the answer right out. Insight she could provide, but she always insisted that you figured stuff out on your own. She was our guide, not our cheat sheet. Shakespeare, Romantic period poetry, and hell, even Howard’s End, ceased to be stuffy and boring when she taught the material, and I think this was primarily because she was so enthusiastic about it that it made all of us students intrigued, and curious and excited to learn about it.

His or her talent to teach.

I hade a teacher named Mr Drake, (wow thats close to Darke) Anyways, he was an amazing teacher because he didnt just teach us about what ever subject we were suppose to learn about, but he also went out of his way to teach us what respect and integrity actually meant. He could be a prick but I learned more from him than any of my teachers.
I also had an art teacher by the name Ms Young, She was just one of those people you could talk about anything with. I guess she was more of a friend than a teacher. It never mattered what was goin on with your life or in school, you could always look forward to her class.

Kindness, helping me to follow interests.

My primary school teacher started teaching me Latin because I was curious about it, invited me to tea so delaying the dread time of going home (loony big brothers and sisters).

dc,
kudos for a great answer…

Mr.MC….
I had the same experience in university with a professor who taught my “Masterpieces of Western Literature” course.
His command of the english language coupled with a brilliant ‘stage presence’ brought to life the works of Dante, Voltaire, Moliere, Dostoyevsky, Wilde, Shakespere et al…

Friday a.m classes were notorious for their ‘small’ size. It was more or less an unwritten rule that Friday morning attendance was unnecessary…..Yeah right…
Professor Buckingham gave me the incentive to drag my ass outta bed every Friday for his 8:30 class.
I never missed one!

The ones who gave me an “A”.

Debate Class, junior year of high school. I learned so much from Mr. D. He taught us so many things, but he said the most important thing, was to believe in yourself. That was reinforced with every lesson, through every single debate and even on our final day.

His class was hard, he had extremely high standards, but he was fair. I still draw upon the lessons he taught me, I apply them, often.

High school English teacher Mr. S. was brilliant, demanding, and very, very tough. He was absolutely clear about what he expected of students, and he was uncompromising. After school every day his classroom was at least half full of students rewriting and again rewriting their essays and expository themes until they met his standard for a passing grade.

He taught how to read, how to think about what you read, and how to write: everything from basic grammar to analysis to intelligent discussion to graceful, fluid sentence construction. And he didn’t hold back on opinions, either: if you delivered B.S., he wrote ”Junk” on your paper in heavy, dull pencil, underlined three or four times and sometimes tearing right through the page. I was his top student in my class, and I couldn’t even count how many times I saw ”Junk” written on my papers. It was a cold shock to vanity, but it was also a powerful lesson. The best part was that you could, with sufficient focused effort, turn your junk paper into something he would praise and read aloud before the class.

To this day his teachings are the foundation of my professional career.

my psychology teacher is just sooo incredible. he’s the funniest person i’ve ever met, and ends up going off topic for like at least about 15 minutes a day, but i have yet to open the text book to read/study for tests and have gotten no less than a C (that was one time, mind you) on a test. and his tests are challenging. he manages to tie in everything to the subject, and he likes his subject. i come out of his class every day in a much better mood than i walked in with, probably better abs from laughing, and a greater understanding of animals (people and otherwise). also, while he doesn’t press his views on us, he isn’t afraid to let his be known in an unobtrusive way. for example he ranted about the condition of the public education system the other day, and honestly i really have a drive to do something about it now (if i could figure out how, haha).