Teacher Appreciation Week 2014: Our favorite teachers

Program Consultant Bryan Ouellette and his favorite teacher, Ms. T.

It’s teacher appreciation week, and we would like to thank all of you teachers out there for all the hard work you put into changing young lives every day. To show you all how much we appreciate what you do, we decided to share our stories about our own favorite teachers from when we were in school.

Bryan Ouellette Explorica Program Consultant	“Teachers have always been near and dear to my heart. But my favorite teacher would be my music teacher, Ms. T. I had her as a teacher since I was in the 5th grade. She taught me everything I knew about music. She taught me how to play the piano and sing both in choir and competitively. Her patience, tenacity and love of music are something that I will be always grateful for. She has played a great part in the way I have become today. She is kind of like a second mother to me. Ms. T is someone whom I will never forget and also someone I will always look up to.”
Sheila Moynihan Explorica Program Consultant	“My British Lit teacher from sophomore year of high school, Mr. King, was infectiously passionate about books and poetry. It didn’t hurt that he was wickedly funny, too—his classes were always as entertaining as they were informative. I loved the way he challenged us to become better writers—’it needs TEETH,’ he would say, encouraging us to make compelling arguments in our papers. Thanks to Mr. King and his 10th grade English course, I became a confident writer and voracious reader.”
Sabrina Enriquez Explorica Program Consultant	“My favorite teacher was Mrs. Was, my Speech and AP English teacher in high school. She pushed me to try things like debate and other speaking competitions that I feared, but actually did well in.  She was a bit off the wall in how she taught, there were never textbooks in her classes, and she always fell back on Jeopardy as the reason we needed to know so many random bits of information, and it worked.  She truly cared about her students and went beyond the subject matter at hand to help us grow as individuals.”
Catherine Lessard Explorica Program Consultant	“My favorite teacher refused to let us speak in English during class. If we didn’t know how to say something, we had to describe it in Spanish or she docked points off of our grade. She was determined to make us learn and it worked. I went on to study Spanish in college and it has come in handy over the years. Thanks, teacher!”
Cara Bolin Explorica Program Consultant	“I will never forget Mrs. Kapp from 5th grade. She decided to become a teacher after working as an accountant for 20 years, and her passion for educating children was evident in everything she did. She used to have the “prize” drawer where she bought fun little things (with her own money) that we could pick from if we got 100% on a spelling test or answered a particularly hard question correctly in class. Man, I was such a sucker for glitter pens!”
Laurie Donovan Explorica Program Consultant	“In my last year of high school, I was enrolled in a Classics-focused program. Our teacher, Mr. Gibson, was a new teacher with a very young family, yet he decided to take on the additional work of planning a Greece trip to enhance our learning. I know he struggled with numbers and the trip almost didn’t happen, but he persevered and we went ahead with a smaller group. That trip is what opened my eyes to the world and made me into the global citizen and travel addict that I am today, and I am eternally grateful to him for that experience!”