The Impact of a Good Teacher

I bet all of us, no matter our age, can still remember a handful of teachers from our childhood that stood head and shoulders above the rest. For one reason or another, these educators were more than just the average classroom teacher. They made a lasting impression on our lives that we still can recall and feel even as the decades roll on.

This past week, my father died unexpectedly, and it was a shock to the entire family. He was getting up there in age, so it might be tough to believe when an 83-year-old passes on that it would be a surprise. But he was in relatively good health and was even outside doing yard work the day before.

Dad retired as an educator around the year 2000, but he had been teaching high school science and had coached just about every sport possible for close to 35 years.

Even with the COVID restrictions in place for the visitation (the only immediate family was allowed at the funeral because of the current requirements), there was a steady stream of people coming through the line offering their condolences and sharing memories what my dad meant to them.

It was interesting to hear from people of all ages, telling me how my dad transformed their lives by how he led his classroom. Men and women, some that had entered retirement themselves, informed my family of how he motivated them to be the best they could be. Now don’t get me wrong, some also shared how strict he could be and the detentions they served, but it seemed they had made peace with those detentions a long time ago and did not hold any grudges.

In fact, I never did quite too well in his class. Science was probably my least liked subject at the time. Plus, it might have been one of those cases where the child just does not learn all that well from the parent for one reason or another (some of you parents can sympathize after trying a bit of homeschooling during the quarantine). I definitely could have benefited from a tutor, such as the ones that iAchieve offers. We now provide online remote tutoring to all over the country.

Surprisingly enough, when it was time to take the ACT, I surprisingly did well on the science section. It might have been more luck than anything else. Or maybe I learned more than I thought in my dad’s class. (In any case, taking some ACT Test Prep tutoring, like what is offered by iAchieve, could have come in handy back in the day.)

Don’t Wait Until It Is Too Late

As much as we enjoyed hearing how my dad made so many positive impacts on his former students’ lives, there is something that would have been even better. He would have loved hearing all of this himself over the years. Even though his memory was not always on point, it seemed he never forgot a former student. He may not have remembered their names; he still recalled their faces and how they did in school.

Teachers can often get the short end of the stick. Sometimes it may seem we only hear the negative and not the positive. I am confident that if you reached out to former teachers who made an impact on your life, they would be very grateful to know that all of those years spent in the classroom were well worth it.

Inspiration From Classic Television Teachers

More Than the Classroom: The Teacher’s Wider Role

Always in Demand: Teaching as a Profession