Quote:
Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer
Today my favourite English teacher in secondary school visited our store. Even after 18 years he still recognised me. He was the only teacher who himself showed his enthusiasm of reading for fun. He was always telling us about the books he'd read. He was also the one teacher who didn't mind it if you wanted to read a book that wasn't on the school's reading list as long as he had read it himself or was interested in reading it. He was the one who motivated me to read in English.
I told him this and that he's the reason I now have a 100+ book a year reading habit. He really liked hearing this and he told me that was the reason he was always telling us about the books he read and the fact that it made me a reader was worth the effort.
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I've had one such an English teacher as well.
He let me read whatever I wanted, even Lord of the Rings, which was despised by all other English teachers, along with all other fantasy and science fiction... or anything that wasn't Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or works from the Victorian era, for that matter.
"As long as you're not going to tell me: This happened, and then that happened, and then they did such and such, and then.... That's crap. I know the stories. I want to hear character descriptions, weak points they have, strong points, plot devices, what you liked about the book and what you didn't and why, what sources the book is based on, if any.... that sort of thing."
He was the one who was my inspiration of studying as an English teacher. I've met him in my home town a few years ago, about 10 years after I left high school, and I had to tell him I became a software engineer because 'they' kicked me out of English university.
He: "Idiots. You were one of only a handful of students I ever had who had a fair shot at a 10 out of 10 in the final exams. Why did they kick you out?" (Ended up at 9.3, so 9 out of 10.)
Me: "My pronunciation was too Dutch for them."
He: "Fools!" (And at this point he got really angry.) "Your pronunciation is fine, and whatever is wrong, can be fixed by having a few vacations to the UK. I'm sure there was some sort of other reason.... What education did you finish?"
Me: "Computer Science / Software Engineer."
He: *sigh* "Maybe it's just as well. I'm glad I won't be teaching much longer. I look forward to retirement."
If *THAT* man was looking forward to retirement, teaching must have become really, really bad after 2000 at that school.