Jeni Ann Flores

He was as handsome as ever. The soft round face of the little boy was gone, but I recognized that striking jaw line and the naughty twinkle in his eyes. “Of course, Mrs. Flores,” he answered in a deep voice as we hugged. I had asked him whether he still remembered me. Very few boys remember their kindergarten teacher. Donovan (not his real name) was one of my most interesting students. He was a wiggler, constantly moving and not paying attention. He showed intelligence but struggled with reading. He threw himself completely into whatever he was doing. One time I found him all by himself surrounded by markers. One eye had black circles and the left arm was also black. When I asked him what he thought he was doing, he stuck out his tongue. It was green. While I scrubbed his face and arms I threatened him with all sorts of bodily harm and warned him of a future so dark and dreary if he every did this again. I should have known better. I was less focused on Donovan’s unique qualities ...

This is the true story of Mary and Robert (not their real names), as told by a teacher. Robert walks slowly, dragging his bag through the hallway. He often gets into trouble for playing or fighting along the way. He disrupts the class by making a smart aleck remark as he enters. Mary was the same. She gets in trouble in the hallway for ‘accidentally’ bumping into somebody, taking their things, saying hurtful things. She goes to her chair quietly but when she gets there students will complain that Mary bumped their desks or took their pencil. “I’ve had these same kinds of students before, and they grew up to cause even more trouble in the school. The school even had to call the police at one time because of a fight caused by my former student whose antics had escalated to something worse,” the teacher said. “I knew I had to do something. They cannot just go through our system without anybody caring enough to reach out to them and help turn their lives around,” the teach...

Most Memorable and Effective Teacher Survey Part 1 Describe the K-12th grade teacher who most influenced you. Where did this teacher teach?_____________(country or state) At the time you were in this teacher’s class, about how old was he/she? 20’s 30’s 40’s 50’s 60+ Grade your teacher taught:____________Subject (if applicable)____________ Teacher gender: Male Female Please answer the following to describe the teacher who most influenced you. You may use sentences or phrases. Please use the back if you need additional space. 1. Describe your most memorable experience/s with this teacher. What happened? Where and when did it happen? Why do you remember this experience/s? 2. Describe other characteristics that you found effective in his/her teaching, such as classroom activities, teaching strategies, relationships, classroom arrangement, etc. 3. If you could meet this teacher now, what would you say to him/her? 4. What advice would you give to teache...

Please participate in a survey as part of my thesis project. The survey will ask you to recall a teacher who has made the most important impact in your success today. You will also be asked to rate the most important characteristic of an effective teacher. Depending on the richness of the data, I may decide to write a collection of stories about memorable teachers. Please indicate your name and contact numbers if you are willing for name to be used with your story in future publications. Otherwise the story will be used anonymously.

     Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “Outliers,” tells the story of two geniuses. Chris had an IQ that was off the charts. At 16 he read Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica . He had a perfect SAT score even if he fell asleep at one point during the the test. At 15 he could play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix. But today he lives on a farm, working on solutions to complex problems, but “almost none…had ever been published.” His “one in a million mind” has “yet to have any impact on the world.” Robert was a genius just like Chris. He was studying physics and chemistry by fifth grade. At nine you could ask him a question in Latin and he could answer in Greek. Later he would lead the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear bomb that ended World War II. His full name is Robert Oppenheimer.      Gladwell tells about Lewis Terman’s study of geniuses. Terman found that out of 730 geniuses studied, only 20 percent were A’s (the ...

My fifth grade English teacher. I can still see her in my mind’s eye. Spry. Intelligent. High pitched. Diagramming sentences. It was the thing that made her eyes sparkle. It was the thing that made her seem lighter than air. She spoke of it as a young maid of her new beau. She would walk the small platform in front of the classroom and start with a simple sentence, and a simple structure. Before our eyes, the sentence would take on a life of its own, become more complex, and blossom with modifiers, adverbial phrases and participles. Chalk in hand, she would write at a dizzying pace. Vertical lines and horizontals lines, connectors and ladders and diagonals, going here and there, this way and that. Finally, the denouement, the climax of her rapture, her opus: a line for each word, a word for each line. This teacher gave me a glimpse of a world that was ordered or orderly. And this order was a good thing. It was not only a good thing, it was cause for jubilation. She taug...