Did a teacher ever say something to you that stayed indelibly etched in your mind?

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

My 4th grade math teacher called me stupid. In front of the whole class. I remember the look on her face, how ashamed and embarassed I felt.

Her statement couldn’t have been further from the truth….if only she knew…. What a bitch.

On a positive note, I remember another teacher when I was a senior in HS asking me what I wanted to become….I told him what I wanted to do and he said that sounds great….but what about this….? Essentially he was pushing me to aim higher…..I said well only really smart people can do that….

He laughed and said, you are in advanced classes, at the top of your class….you are going to college. Who exactly do you think becomes that…?

Huh. Suddenly, right then and there, I was on a different path….I am what he said I could become…..

Thank heavens for GOOD teachers.

I had to learn a second language in junior high due to a move. Mistakes and all, I had written a short story for my literature class teacher’s homework. Just hoping it would be legible, readable – okay – the teacher read it out loud to the class, and returned it to me with a smile. On it, she had written in bold red ink: beautiful!

I confided in my teacher about college and my home life, and how I never really feel like I “belong there”, and how I want to move to England to live with family there because I feel like I fit in the society better.

He told me “Katherine, you need to find your own England, wherever you are. There is an England wherever you go. Unless you realize that, you won’t ever be happy.”

Not directly to me, but one day while I was skipping class to go hang out with some girls at a different school, my Math teacher told the rest of the class that I could be really smart if I just applied myself.

The fact that he bothered to say that to a room full of kids while I wasn’t there definitely stuck with me.

You set your own limits, you choose how far you want to go and who you want to be…

My economics teacher told our class we’d be the first generation of Americans not to match the standard of living of our parents, as a whole. He told us to look away from the growing trend of living on credit and accepting it as a “normal” lifestyle everyone eventually adapts. We were told of many things that are happening and his words and teaching have helped bolster me through a few very rough spots in my life. He also told us in America, you can re invent yourself over and over. It’s true, I am a believer.

After explaining that I’d done poorly on a test because I was so busy with extra-curriculars, my biology teacher in high school had this gem for me: “You need to learn how to say no or you’re going to end up pregnant!” He was completely right that I don’t know how to say no, I remain over-booked and over-worked to this day.

(But I’ve managed to avoid pregnancy thus far!! Although that’s not exactly impressive since I keep sleeping with girls…)

“What I really learned in law school was where to look it up!”, The Great Ms. Wallace

Yeah, my high school biology teacher, Larry Lach, told me, “You have the vocabulary of a fifth grader and you’ll never amount to anything.”

I was sports editor of my high school newspaper. The advisor and I rarely talked.

At the end of the year, he wrote in my yearbook, “The newspaper would have never made it without your tremendous effort”.

That remark, written 47 years ago, still remains.

@loser It amazes me that we not only remember these things, but very often cannot forget the first and last names of the hateful teachers who have hurt us. Perhaps you should give yourself a different username.

my old art teacher used to say “a little dab’ll do ya” when talking about gluing things together…

i hate that.
its etched into my mind forever.

My high school physics teacher would taunt us at the blackboard with, “Your ignorance is astounding!”

I auditioned for a choir when I was in high school, pretty much on a lark. My friend talked me into going with her for her audition and said I should try out too. The teacher, Mr. C., asked me to sing America, the Beautiful for him. Afterwards, he said, “You have potential.” That’s it. That’s all he said, but it changed my life—seriously. I didn’t even know I could sing. I made the choir, auditioned for All State and got in, played Maria in our high school production of Sound of Music, and pretty much came out of my shell. Those experiences gave me the courage to go forward with all sorts of things in my life. The words of a teacher are powerful.

“Don’t be sorry; be right.”

“My father always told me, ‘Lighten up. It only gets worse.’ He was right.”

“You’ll do great in college, if you make it there.”

Everyone else’s response are so inspiring (or depressing) but mine is just silly and I will never forget it.

My ancient history teacher is the kind of woman who always goes off on tangents and leads the whole class in interesting discussions that often have nothing to do with the subject she’s teaching. One day, we were talking about Benjamin Franklin and his time spent in France and she said, “Benjamin Franklin had sex with more women in France than you can shake a stick at.” It’s not poetic, it’s not inspiring, it didn’t change my life, but damn it cheers me up when I think about it. :)

“Be a Leader”

I was always slacking off in class and my teacher would always get on my case and i would always get in trouble for not paying attention when the kid next to me was flat out alseep and snoring, one day it was the last straw he yelled at me in class and i commented back saying why am i always the one gettin in trouble when i have a better grade than most kid in the class (i had like an 80 as oppsed to the kids with F’s and low 70’s) he told me to go out in the hall, i was pretty sure i was going to be in big trouble and get sent to the principals for yelling at him in class, he came out a couple of minutes later and said he gives me a hard time because he knows i could do so much better and i have been half assing it through his class and he he knew i had been doing the same for other classes (i would do my HW for the next class in his class) and that regardless if the other kids listened or not they still didnt have much potential. so he told me to
“shut the hell up pay attention stop going through my life half assing every thing and try to make something of my life.”

after that i got a 95 for the semester in his class and on one of his tests was the only kid to make a 100 (which isnt saying much)but still made me and him very happy. :)

He didn’t say this to me but he left it as a comment on an essay I wrote. The assignment was to write about ourselves (so that he could get to know us more). I wrote a portion of it about how I liked to keep to myself as a child and my teachers would always urge me to participate and play/interact with the other kids and how I’m always trying to be more social and outgoing. I don’t remember what he wrote exactly, but it was something along the lines of, “What’s wrong with being antisocial? It is a personal choice, not a character flaw.” That has always stuck with me. Now I’m not shy, I just prefer to keep to myself. Nor am I lonely because I do approach people that interest me and I don’t push away people that come to me. But in general I just don’t like to be social. I guess it’s always stuck with me because he gave me the OK and push that I needed to be who I was. I stopped trying to be an outgoing, social butterfly because that’s not who I was and I was so much happier for it.

I was in a boarding school, literally “old school”; upperclassmen (Jrs. and Srs.) had certain privileges that weren’t afforded to lowerclassmen. Upon joining the ranks of upperclassmen, one of the teachers told us that any privilege brought with it responsibility. It stuck with me so strongly that I used it with my own kids.

@Yetanotheruser Peter Parker learned that, too. :-)