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Author
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Topic: What school teachers influenced your life that made you what you are?
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?"
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Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 04-23-2003 06:58 AM
All my teachers influenced me in a way, of course, but most of them in a negative way. When I was a small kid, I was curious about everything. When I left school, I had lost interest in a lot of things due to horrible, unmotivated, and often very unfair teachers. It then took me a while to find interest in many subjects again. My mother is a fashion artist, and she taught us to draw and sketch when we were children, but our arts teachers made us fill huge sheets of paper - quality didn't matter, they just wanted the paper full and then all kids got a "3" (=American "C") anyway. I have never taken a pencil in hand since if not for writing.
But there were also very good influences, especially the physics teachers we had, one of them was an actual research phisicist who had worked at the Max-Planck-Institute and decided to go to school teaching to help kids understand physics.
The single most positive influence however was my Latin and Greek teacher. I studied Latin for 7 years. And while it is very difficult and sometimes enormously frustrating, it has really helped me a lot in my life. Latin may be a dead language now, but if you understand it, you can easily understand and learn many other languages - higher English with all its Latin-based vocabulary included. He also knew how to make it interesting by linking the texts we read to the historical context and explained how European culture evolved from these sources. Right now, I am on a short vacation in Rome. Everything is very easy for me here, because if you know Latin, Italian is no problem at all for you.
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Don Bruechert
Mmmmmmmmm, bird!
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Posts: 340
From: Manitowoc, WI, USA
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 04-23-2003 08:35 AM
In common:
(Fundamental) Frank Granitz was still around Bill "Moe" Molinski was the Principal Claude Zoch fixed my ass a few times....
I would add:
Bob Ayers, PE Who had a positive influence
Bill Twichell, PE Who made a significant difference in my life, and crom whom I had heard the term "clusterf**k" long before Clint Eastwood ever said it, and who also extolled that some of my classmates were so stupid they would stick their foot in the urinal and think they were taking a shower!
Ed Coffin, Vice Principal, who also kept me in line
and Hugh Foster, English, who had an interesting outlook on life!
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Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 04-23-2003 02:58 PM
I'd have to say Charles Jewell at Donelson Jr. High in 1981, and Mr. McWilliams from DuPont Senior High from 1983-1985.
Mr. Jewell was a "shop" teacher, but really sparked my interest in mechanical drawing.
Mr. McWilliams was the Graphic Arts and Mechanical drawing teacher at my High School, and really helped my start the developement of my career as an Architectural and Engineering draftsman.
The guidance councelor at my High School told me that I should not explore any career in drafting, Architecture or Engineering... because of the math required. I guess she never realized that almost 20 years later, I'd have a degree in Architecture, worked for an Architectural firm for 3 years, been with the Engineering firm I'm at now for 13 years... and I've YET to use any trigonometry, calculus or statistics!! That's what we have computers for.
I learned more from Carrie Ea***** (Sophmore Cheerleader) than any of the teachers!
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Rick Long
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 759
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 04-25-2003 01:35 AM
Paul's original post dealt with tribute to our middle and high-school teachers that influnced our lives. To be sure, there were some exceptional (and unfortunately not-so-exceptional) teachers in those years, many of which to which I am quite grateful.
I am of the opinion, however, that the basics of what we are today, what we beleive, what we find acceptable, our basic moral core is instilled within us when we are at our most indefensible age, that of early childhood (say up to about age 8-12). Some of the basic priciples instilled in us (honesty, religion, perception of right and wrong, ect.) were stamped into our brains during this period, some of which can never be removed or radically changed.
As we grow older and develop a sense of logic and, thus judgement, however, the black and white of our youthful beleifs fade into shades of grey. There is no absolute right or absolute wrong, just divisions on a scale.
Our teachers in life were not only found in school, but in the playgrounds, in the streets, and on the job. They took the form of parents, friends, bullies, supervisors, ect.
We dont, after all, stop learning once we leave school. In fact, the opposite is true, we have only begun to learn.
With your kind permision, therefore, I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to one of the men who was a mentor to me in my early days as a technician, my supervisor, Elmer Beatty of General Sound, and Theatre Equipment, Toronto.
It was Elmer Beatty who taught me to think as a technician, in a logical pattern. He taught not only in the shop but in the field as well.
Well known for his expressions such as an oil-felt pad being "dryer than a cow-turd in August" or a shaft being "sloppier than a prick in a widow", it was he who taught us the pride in our proffession; that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right.
He might not have known every faucet of the particular technology on which we dealt with, he had the communications facility to suggest possible cures to problems we had, as well as asking difficult questions (I suspect in order to decern how much we actually knew about the subject). He never followed the company line but often argued with them on our behalf.
One of the hardest days of my life was when I had to tell him that I was leaving to go work for the competition. At his funeral, our buisness agent remarked, very accruately, that "his men would follow him through hell". RIP Elmer, you earned it.
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