I attended 3 schools in my life and I still can name every teacher for every subject, but when I think my schools I always recall only two of them. They were so memorable and I'm pretty sure every my classmate still remember both.
The second in my list is a History teacher from Simferopol school #23. She literally enforced us to read books. I do remember my first lesson with her.
She appeared in class, congratulated us with a new school year and stated:
- Dear students, we would study the Middle ages all year. I'm pretty sure you were taught to read in elementary school and you should read your history books about our course at home. Here, on school lessons, we would discuss Servantes, Shakespeare's heroes, we would discuss Newton, Copernic. Honestly speaking, memorizing historical dates is a pretty boring thing, but understanding when and what happened in our country and Europe at the same time would give you deeper ideas how our world was developed.
I'm very glad her for providing methods for observing things and all our world from different angles - from literature, science and even from mathematic points.
But my the most memorable, the First one, teacher was a Russian Literature teacher from school #27
She never got any pedagogical education but she was a retired actress in her 60. She stood in the middle of our class room with closed eyes and ... acted. Every her lesson we sat without breathing, afraid to lose any her word. It was a really amazing.
She constantly broke lessons plan because she could decide that a new modern poem is better than the next chapter of Evgeniy Onegin. She acted every her movement and she lived in every her role.
I was really surprised when I met her in my last visit home city after 30 years from our previous meeting. Strong back, high heels, bright makeup and the greatness of the queen:
- Оксаночка, конечно же я тебя помню. Ты была в моем спортивном классе. Рыбка, как ты?(спортивный класс команды по плаванию, поэтому я - "рыбка"). (- For sure, I do remember you. You were in my sport class. How are you?)
It was a really amazing thing to meet her and the more surprising thing about - she still worked with kids, but then she taught acting in our local theatre. in her 90, btw