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Posted: 4/19/2016 4:20:35 PM EDT
Mine was my economics professor.
I didn't realize it at the time, but he was quite the free market capitalist. By the end of the class, TINSTAAFL was a common acronym. He displayed the entire gamut of economic views, from socialism to anarchy. We spent some time on FA Hayek and Ludwig Mises. The entire class was on PowerPoint, and the tests were simple if you were paying attention. What got your grade was critical thinking. He wouldn't flunk you if you supported socialism - you just had to explain factually, using numbers how it was superior. By the end of the class, I think most of us learned a lot. So, who was your best teacher (and why)? |
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My dad.
If you mean limited to a school setting, that would be my high school honors teacher. |
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gym teacher. dude was boss at badmitton and really taught us the fundamentals of dodgeball.
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Very cliche but my football coaches/teachers in HS. A very influential group of genuine, compassionate, smart, serious, thunderous men. There was a line between player/coach and you did not cross it. I learned so much from them. Very thankful I didn't have dipshit dads and uncle Rico's.
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My high school history teacher, who was also the principal. He was just about to retire by the time I had him as a teacher, and he didn't give a damn about being PC.
He also hated leftists with a passion. |
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Jay Schweitzer
High School Physics chemistry and life lessons: -how to break into cars -how to hot wire cars -how to make thermite -how to safely make explosives -how you want as few engines in your life as possible Amazing what one can learn from a 3rd generation farmer that taught to support his "farming habit" RIP Jay -thank you for pushing me even when my older brother never took it seriously |
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My CAD/drafting teacher. Did three tours in nam with 25th ID 3/4 cav. He would stroll up to the weight room while the football team was lifting and he'd start pumping out one armed pull ups.
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Mr. Vaune
My high school history teacher back in 76. My dad was a hard working hard playing Irishman that only made it to the eighth grade. He taught me every thing I needed to know about hard work, the outdoors and drinking. Mr. Vaune taught me the value of an education. I put pops first but you Mr. Vaune are a close second. RIP the both of you. |
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It's a tie between Ms. Anne Goff (who I believe still teaches at Sac State) and Mr. Dan Toomey.
Anne Goff got me interested in staying with language, and actually learn shit about translating. She also indulged my ridiculousness in class, and from time to time made fun of me. She's also one of the only teachers who tolerated me making fun of her from time to time. That class was fun as fuck. She also found unique ways to make class interesting. She's a French teacher. That class is the reason I didn't drop out. She helped turn language into a mechanical subject for me, and gave me learning resources that I could use on my own. She was a free lance translator, and I believe still was at the time she was teaching. Dan Toomey taught about "intelligence/information management" at American River College, and he made that class. He always had these interesting exercises for us to do. He kept the class fresh, and kept us on our toes. He didn't teach us how to think critically, as that's something you can't really teach, but he damn sure got us used to doing it, and encouraged us to be creative with our theories, and how to keep the chaos of our thought processes organized, and effective. He still teaches as well, I believe. I still use his techniques. He formally worked with the FBI, and DHS, but had since retired. He had us work some of his old cases to see what conclusions we came to. Can't say enough about either of 'em. |
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Sister Matilda , the nun that beat the fuck out of me in third grade , Ive hated penguins ever since !
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Mr. West, my woodshop teacher. I seriously doubt he is still teaching with how pc everything has become.
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None of them. I couldn't name one my teachers if my life depended on it.
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A PhD in linguistic anthropology during undergrad. One of the brightest and most analytical individuals I've ever known.
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Either my political theory professor as an undergrad or my dissertation advisor.
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easily a college professor i had.
farm boy from arkansas, had an epic beard, payed his own way though college, then flight training and flew professionally for many years. had some heart problems that disqualified him so he became a teacher. the absolute hardest classes i took were his and i always felt behind the curve no matter what i did. grades from him were not the best but the classes i learned the most in. he taught me some ground classes for piloting, and, most memorably, economics of air transport where we broke down airlines to their simplest economic level. he didnt just talk about airlines though, he taught the whole spectrum of economics. To force us to understand, he even had us to a simulation to maximize profits. really showed how capitalism worked as we competed with our classmates. he is one of the only educators that i actually respect and only cared about teaching students. Oh and even though he was gay, he leaned 100% libertarian and didnt like ANY democrat policies(except maybe gay marriage). didnt stop him from doing anything. amazing man and hope our paths cross again some day. there is still more to learn i know he can teach me |
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I'd say a tie between my high school biology teacher or my high school dual enrollment calculus teacher.
Both Mr. Guice and Mrs. Crum were absolutely awesome. They perfected how to teach their subject materials, they were kind, and even when they got into us as a whole you could tell they were pushing us to be better students than we thought we were. They are who I want to emulate when I teach and interact with students. |
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Mr John Bennett Math, Science and Photography Teacher. And he was a good friend. He past away in 1993. Every time I develop a roll of B&W film I pause to honor him.
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You know I feel robbed.
I had more than one teacher pretty much march us right down the path of liberalism and we were so young, that we didn't even know it. 1990, the first gulf war breaks out and my jr honors english teacher basically took an entire class period to convince us all to be conscientious objectors if a draft was re-instated. We were all 16, 17 years old, young, influential and we just ate it up. She wasn't the only teacher who did this, but she's the one who took the most time to tell it. A lot of other teachers didn't take sides or lecture us, but this one did. Fast forward to today and I'm kinda pissed about it, because that warped my perception of the world till I turned 23 and started coming around the other way, but at that age, my options of what I was going to do in life had changed. 25 years later, I'm kinda pissed about it. Some of my old high school friends are so liberal, I can't stand to talk to them. One's a defense attorney for "my baby didn't do nothings" and the other is a global warming researcher for NASA. Those were the people I hung out with and it scares me. I truly didn't know shit about people at that age. I mean we were good kids who got good grades and stayed out of trouble, but holy shit, my friends are loons. My daughter is now 11 and she tells me how her French teacher and social studies teacher lectures her on global warming and I have to intercede and provide her evidence to the contrary and leave it up to her to make up her own mind without forcing her. So far that strategy has been successful, but school is a damn brainwashing machine. |
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8th grade math teacher. He was a full time teacher who was also our state representative (R), and he loved to work in basic economics and real world application to class. He turned on a lot of light bulbs and made kids who otherwise wouldn't give a shit about Algebra "get it".
He's still kicking around here, and still in politics, but I think he's bound to be pretty old these days. |
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in highschool (I think jr year) I had a health(basic human biology and sex ed) teacher that was interesting once the health portion of class was through.
guy was giving out crazy ideas like "the government doesn't fear anyone till they speak of freedom" the health portion of the class was seriously like 3 weeks.the 3 months or what ever after that it was random movies and then discussion, along with many other ideas. guy never came across as being slanted one way or another, critical thinking logic and reason were always strong points. don't remember much about herpies but the intense discussions about drug legalization after trainspotting I still remember. |
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Mr. Tate, my high school history teacher
10th and 11th grade, and a quarter teaching economics in 12th grade Government. He was the solid conservative in a department staffed by fellow travelers. Wore a suit every day too. |
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Mr. Light, 4th Grade Teacher, old Canadian lumber jack missing a thumb.
Good man who all these years later I still remember. |
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12th grade Government and Personal Finance teacher, Mr. Cerva.
His class was required of all seniors. You were required to pass with a C grade or better or you did not walk with the class. Students DREADED taking that class. Mid term and final exams were said to be the hardest of all the classes in that small school. Amazingly, his class came easy to me. NOTHING about the class was so difficult for anyone with at least a little common sense & the ability to read. The class broke down into three parts though the year. 1) Learning to budget a household, balance a check book and fill out a 1040 form. 2) Understand the multiple levels of our federal government and a basic understanding of the Constitution. 3) Basic investing - in 1977, that was pretty much limited to bank CD's, stocks & bonds. I followed two of the most basic things he taught throughout my life. 1) Invest in good quality companies that pay a reasonable and sustainable dividend. 2) Don't buy a house that is more than 1.5 times your annual gross wage. |
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History professor in college. Well respected in academic circles, adopted by a Southern peanut farming family, and the most hate spewing Yankee son of a bitch I've ever met.
I battled him daily, and he swore I'd never graduate. Got a 500/500 on our exit exam for graduation, and my 450 senior thesis paper I requested that the head of the department grade for an impartial grade. Our ongoing battle was well known in the department. I received an A and he turned red in the face. In the end I graduated and he quit to go try to see if he could brainwash kids at Georgia Tech. Fuck be upon him and his ilk. These NOVA implants don't represent my family. We founded the colony, shed blood for the Commonwealth, and I'll die before some Yankee carpet bagging fucks come in here and erase our history. |
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My high school Aerospace teacher, Mr. Toliver. I had the pleasure of sitting through three years with him between 10th and 12th grades in the 70s. Mr. T was old school. He was a WWII vet that flew B-17s over Germany and had quite a few stories to tell between teaching us meteorology, airframe and power plant basics and all the other stuff a growing space nerd needs. Just thinking about him as I write this is hard. They do not make them like that anymore.
Oh. He was a mean shot with a black board eraser too! |
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Helen Belious.
Sophomore High School English. Her influence had nothing to do with english,but rather a life lesson. "The measure of a smart man is knowing where to seek the answers to that he does not know. |
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Mrs. Dunn, fourth grade. "If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well". Carried that ethic the rest of my life, just retired last year.
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