“The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods.” -Margaret Mead

“The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes, and leads you onto the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.” -Dan Rather

Who was your favorite teacher? Why?

I sometimes ask this question during the mind warmer phase of workshops. I love hearing the stories teachers tell about their favorite teacher. Mine? Her name was Mrs. Kraul. She was my 6th grade reading/language arts teacher.

Why was she my favorite teacher? It was the way she thought “outside the box” and encouraged all of her students to do the same. Instead of making us do round-robin reading to comprehend text, we wrote and recorded plays, commercials, and T.V. shows that were our interpretations of the stories we were reading. I’m giving my age again, but the only technology she had available was a cassette recorder. We didn’t care! We just like doing something different!

Mrs. Kraul believed that poetry expanded the mind and made you a better person. That meant that every month we studied different types of poetry and then wrote some of our own. Every single one of my poems was posted on a wall for everyone to read. One of my poems was published in Seedlings. I was part of a book publishing party. I read my poem out loud in front of a huge crowd. At the age of 12, I was convinced that I would grow up to be a poet. (I’m still a poet for my family…)

What Mrs. Kraul taught me about grammar in 6th grade helped me make it through college. One day she drew an ant and a hill on the board. She asked us to think about everything that the ant could do to the hill. “Go up the hill, down the hill, around the hill, in the hill.” By the time we finished the list, we knew what a preposition was. Because Mrs. Kraul used physical movements and chants to teach us the parts of speech, I made it through Advanced English Grammar in college.

Mrs. Kraul was one of my strongest inspirations for becoming a teacher. Every year, before my students walked in the room I sat in each of their chairs. I tried to think like Stephen Covey, Jay McTighe, and Grant Wiggins and “begin with the end in mind.” The end I wanted? I wanted my students to think that coming to class was the very best part of their life. I wanted them to pray not to be sick. I wanted them to learn more than they ever thought they could.

And, one day, when my students are asked, “Who was your favorite teacher?” I want them to answer, “Mrs. Tabor.”

I know it’s March and there are only a few more months of school, but it’s never too late to begin with the end in mind. What do you want your students to say when they leave your classroom on the very last day?

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist, and that there are as few as there are other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” -John Steinbeck