A Memorable Teacher

by Elena T

As a new and developing educator, I think of the teachers I have had along my educational career on a daily basis. In particular, finding myself in a middle school, I can’t help but recall Mrs. Bice, my middle school ELA teacher. Mrs. Bice was not just a teacher, she was a mother, a friend, a counselor, and a policewoman. She followed my class through sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, adapting and changing as we did. This is only the beginning of what made her unforgettable.

On the first day of sixth grade, I was greeted at the door to Mrs. Bice’s classroom with the flash of a camera bulb. “Your parents will appreciate this,” she said, adding “you will be a very different person on the last day of school.” I recently found this snapshot, which was mounted the following June alongside an additional, updated photo. She was certainly right; sixth grade is a time of incredible physical, social, and emotional change. The photos reveal a very limited glimpse of this tumultuous experience. Small reminders of my own time in middle school help me to put my students’ current reality into perspective.

Mrs. Bice’s influence in my life was extracurricular; She did not just focus on what we were learning, but how we learned and the process of personal development we were experiencing. A foundation of her classroom expectations centered around The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven Covey. Not a single day has passed since that I haven’t thought of the concrete reminders it provided, from “be proactive,” to “begin with the end in mind,” and even the ever-challenging “sharpen the saw.” These habits guide my daily life as a adult, and I thank Mrs. Bice; what greater gift can an educator give? Many teachers get so overwhelmed with the “content” and the “test” that the process of teaching and learning can become stunted. Mrs. Bice never let this happen in her classroom. As a teacher myself now, I think that she realized that the risk was worth the reward. Spending time teaching us process skills such as time management and collaboration were ultimately beneficial to both teacher and students, despite any lessons that might have been taken away from contractions and appositives.

On a related yet more tangible note, Mrs. Bice also instilled in me a love and respect for grammar. I credit her and her weekly “word bank” writing assignments for my endless vocabulary, impeccable spelling, and confident mastery of conditional statements and comma usage.  As a writer and a person, she believed in me, and made me believe in myself. I am forever grateful.