my teacher changed my life essay

The teachers who inspired us, and even changed the trajectories of our lives

Rita Pierson leads off TED Talks Education, our first televised event, which will air on PBS on May 7. Photo: Ryan Lash

Rita Pierson is the kind of teacher you wish you had. An educator for 40 years, she is funny, sharp and simply has a way with words — so much so that today’s talk feels a bit like a sermon.

“I have had classes so low, so academically deficient that I cried. I wondered, ‘How am I going to take this group in nine months from where they are to where they need to be?” says Pierson, in this amazing talk . “I came up with a bright idea … I gave them a saying: ‘I am somebody. I was somebody when I came and I’ll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here’ … You say it long enough, it starts to be a part of you.”

Pierson’s talk will open our first-ever television special, TED Talks Education, which airs Tuesday, May 7 at 10/9c on PBS. It will be an exhilarating night, featuring talks from educators and innovators with bold ideas, plus performances from host John Legend. Set your DVRs and read lots more here »

In honor of Rita Pierson and TED Talks Education, I asked the TED staff: who is that one teacher who just really, truly influenced you?

“The teacher who changed my life was, serendipitously, my English teacher for kindergarten, 7th grade and senior year of high school. Ms. Barbato taught me how to write eloquently (I hope!), and she had this unexplained faith in me that really galvanized me as a student. What she taught me stuck with me through college and beyond.” — Olivier Sherman, Distribution Coordinator

“Mr. Eric Yang was only in his mid-twenties when I had him as my AP government teacher, but he was unforgettable. He was the first teacher I had who made keeping up with current events mandatory, forcing us to read news sources on our own time and not just from the textbook. He exuded discipline, and that was contagious.” — Thu-Huong Ha , Editorial Projects Specialist

“Mrs. Bailey was my English teacher. I loved her. I was the younger sister of an already very successful big sister, and that was a cloud over my head too. She held my hand and brought me into the sun with her love of the English language. She recommended books just to me, she made me feel special and I just couldn’t get enough of her. I went on a school trip to Amsterdam with her and she brought her husband, who was an artist. She changed my life.” — Juliet Blake , TED TV (who executive produced TED Talks Education)

“Mrs. Mendelson, my 8th-grade English teacher. This was my first year living in the U.S. I think she set the stage for future learning and she’s the main reason I have such good English right now, both written and spoken. So, thank you, Mrs. Mendelson.”  — Ruben Marcos, intern

“I still recall how awesome my 6th-grade teacher, Mr. Fawess, was. Middle school in general is basically Hades. I was extremely small, super nerdy, and had a unibrow, asthma and glasses — plus I left school once a week to take classes at the local high school. I got picked on a lot. Mr. Fawess came up with all these ways to take my mind off that — he talked to me about bullying and how to let things roll off your shoulder and gave me books I could read outside of class. He got me thinking about college early and what kinds of subjects I was most interested in. I consider myself lucky to have had such an inspiring teacher. If only he had discouraged me from dressing up as the skunk in our annual school play.” — Amanda Ellis , TEDx Projects Coordinator

“Robert Baldwin’s class ‘Essay and Inquiry.’ Every day: Walk into class. Sit down. Look at the handout on every desk. Read it. Start writing. Class ends — stop writing. Every day. Except Wednesday, when we’d put the desks in a circle and everyone would read something they’d written. The prompts were everything from simple questions like, “What’s your favorite memory of trees?” to readings from Rachel Carson or W.B. Yeats or Orson Welles. It was a whirlwind of ideas, and the constant writing forced us to wrestle with them, and (tritely but correctly) ourselves. It was like a boot camp in thinking. People I know who took, and loved, that class went on to some of the most amazing careers. Every time we get together, we gush about the quiet, unassuming, force of nature that was Mr. Baldwin. He would have hated that last sentence, because the metaphor is strained. But he also taught us to ignore authority, so I’m writing it anyway.” — Ben Lillie , Writer/Editor

“Mrs. Lewis, my 5th-grade teacher, read to us every week. She made us put our heads on the desk and close our eyes and then read wonderful stories to us: The Golden Pine Cone , The Diamond Feather .. . It made our imaginations come alive.” — Janet McCartney , Director of Events

“My junior high school science teacher, Dr. Ernie Roy, with his outsized laugh and booming voice, was one of my very favorite teachers. He demonstrated to us how important we were to him by making what were obviously personal sacrifices on our behalf: when the lab needed equipment, we knew he had purchased some of it on his own; when we couldn’t get a bus for a field trip, he took a few of us in his own car (something which could have gotten him into quite a bit of trouble); and when a big science fair deadline loomed large, he opened the lab every weekend to help us with our experiments. At a point in my life when I didn’t have a lot of guidance or positive role models, he taught me a lot more than science; he taught me, by example, the power of sacrifice, discipline and self-respect.” — Michael McWatters , UX Architect

“Dr. Heller, my 10th-grade social studies teacher, taught me that passion is the key to learning. I had never met anyone from kindergarten to 10th grade that matched his raw passion for the  meaning  behind historical events, and it was so contagious.” — Deron Triff , Director of Distribution

“Rene Arcilla, a professor of Educational Philosophy at NYU, changed the way I think.  Prior to that class, I hadn’t truly been challenged about what *I* actually thought — much of my educational life was about regurgitating answers. Rene was the first teacher who asked me questions that he/we didn’t know the answers to. Realizing that I had to actually provide the answers from within myself, and not look to an outside source, was very difficult at first. It was a muscle I had to build. I owe a lot of who I am today — and even this job — to the introspective, critical and philosophical thinking I learned from Rene’s classes.” — Susan Zimmerman , Executive Assistant to the Curator

“Mr. Downey — 7th- and 8th-grade Humanities. Still the hardest class I’ve ever taken!  I’d credit Mr. Downey with helping me think more expansively about the world. Right before 8th-grade graduation, he showed us Dead Poets Society , and on the final day of class we all agreed to stand on our desks and recite ‘O Captain, my captain.’  It was all very dramatic and I think there were tears.” — Jennifer Gilhooley, Partnership Development

“I took my first painting class my sophomore year of high school and fell in love with it. My teacher, Ms. Bowen, told me I could use the art studio whenever I wanted to, and gave me access to all kinds of new paints and canvasses. I spent almost every lunch period there for a few years, and regularly stayed in the studio after school ended. One day, Ms. Bowen told me that a parent of a student I had painted expressed interest in buying the painting of her daughter. After that first sale, I painted portraits of kids in my school on a commission basis, and continued to do so for the remainder of my high school experience. Thanks to Ms. Bowen’s mentorship, I felt empowered to try to make money from something I was passionate about and loved to do.  Here  is one of the paintings.” — Cloe Shasha , TED Projects Coordinator

“I had a chemistry teacher, Mr. Sampson, who used to meet me at school an hour before it started to tutor me when the material wasn’t clicking. That was the first class I had ever really struggled with, and he made this investment to help me get through the material — but more importantly learn that I could teach myself anything.”  —Stephanie Kent, Special Projects

“On the first day of my Elementary Italian Immersion class, I asked to be excused to use the restroom in English. Professor Agostini kept speaking rapidly in Italian as I squirmed in my seat. Since she seemed unclear about my request, I asked her again to no avail. Finally, I flipped through my brand-new Italian-English dictionary and discovered the words, ‘ Posso usare il bagno per favore .’ Suddenly, she flashed me a smile, handed me the key, told me where to go in  Italian , and pointed to my dictionary so I could learn how to follow her directions. Even though I only studied with her for one semester, I will never forget that I emerged from her class knowing intermediate-level Italian.” — Jamia Wilson, TED Prize Storyteller

“My history teacher in high school, Mr. Cook, challenged us to think hard about what happened in the past and directly related it to what was happening around us. He gave us ways to try and predict what could happen in the future. He was the first person to make me take ownership of what it meant to be a citizen and the social responsibility that came with that. Because he taught ‘World History’ rather than a regionally specific class, we learned extensively about other countries, and I am convinced he is the reason that I went abroad to Ghana in college and I am now still an avid traveler today.” — Samantha Kelly, Fellows Group

“The professor who taught me Intro to Women and Gender Studies my sophomore year of college completely changed my framework for thinking about human relationships within a hierarchy. She brought coffee and tea to class for us every morning to congratulate us for being so dedicated to learning as to choose an 8:30 a.m. class. When I emailed her to say I’d be out sick, she sent me a get-well e-card. And when, in a fit of undergraduate irresponsibility, I simply failed to do an assignment, she wasn’t the least bit mad — instead, I received a phone call from her a week after the end of the semester informing me that, because I’d done such good work, she couldn’t bear to give me the B+ I numerically deserved. It was incredible to see how fully she lived the subject she taught; the philosophy of compassion and equality.” — Morton Bast , Editorial Assistant

“My high school photography teacher, Susan Now. I’m convinced that the support I got from Susan got me through high school. Two years later, when I was freaked out about transferring colleges, I, without hesitation, called her for advice. She made me feel comfortable and challenged me to speak up and be confident with expressing myself as a student. So valuable!” — Ella Saunders-Crivello, Partnerships Coordinator

“Cliff Simon, one of my college professors, taught me that wisdom is the greatest pursuit, our skills and passions are transferable, and that fear will only ever always hold us back.  To this day, he’s a great mentor.  We’re now great friends, and I even officiated his wedding ceremony.” — Jordan Reeves, TED-Ed Community Manager

“My 10th-grade biology teacher spoke and interacted with me like I was a grown-up individual and not one of a batch of ‘kids.’ He made us all fascinated with the subjects he taught because he spoke to us not at us. I always worked hard to match that capacity that he saw in me. He was only in his 50s when, a few years after I graduated, he died suddenly of a heart attack. Lots of sad former students.” — Ladan Wise , Product Development Manager

“Stephen O’Leary, my professor and mentor at the University of Southern California, showed me that the quality of my thinking could be directly traced to the quality of the authors I referenced in my bibliography. This realization motivated me to both seek and challenge everything I have read ever since. This habit likely played a part in me finding myself so passionate about being a part of TED.” — Sarah Shewey , TEDActive Program Producer

“My high school art teacher was equal parts smart and silly, and always insightful. Mr. Miller showed a bunch of restless seniors that art class wasn’t just about memorizing which painters influenced which periods. Instead, he taught us that art was — at its core — an exciting way to touch both the head and the heart. Mr. Miller took our  class to the Met in New York one warm spring afternoon, a trip I’ll never forget. Great art, he told us, was about great ideas, and not simply the pleasing arrangement of color, shape and form. Thank you, Russ Miller.” — Jim Daly, TED Books 

“Mrs. Presley, my 1st-grade teacher, advanced my reading skills to full-on chapter book independence … and for that I’ll be forever grateful! But the most valuable gift she gave me was self-esteem. At my school, we’d bring a brown bag lunch with our name written on the bag. I always wanted a middle name like the other kids, and this daily ritual made me feel the lack. I must have let my mom know, because she started to write middle names on my bag. At first it started: ‘Marla Ruby Mitchnick.’ Then ‘Marla Ruby Diamond Mitchnick,’ and then ‘Marla Ruby Diamond Violet Mitchnick,’ and so on. Mrs. Presley never skipped a single syllable — she just read it straight through, and I felt like a beloved and fortunate person with a beautiful name, surrounded by wonderful friends.” — Marla Mitchnick , Film + Video Editor

“I signed up for Journalism 1 in high school having no idea what I was getting myself into. Marcie Pachino ran a rigorous course on the joys of telling other people’s stories and on the extreme responsibility that comes with reporting news that might otherwise go unheard. She was kind and inspiring, but wouldn’t hesitate to give you an edit of an article that simply read ‘Ugh’ in big red letters. The key: you always knew she was right. I went on to become a journalist professionally and, in all my years of writing, I’ve never encountered a more demanding editor.” — Kate Torgovnick, Writer (the author of this post)

“Professor Stephen Commins completely changed my  learning experience at UCLA. He pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could accomplish as an undergrad, and having him as my research professor improved my quality of education tenfold. I’ll never forget in my last lecture with him, he left our class with this piece of advice: to work on poverty domestically before attempting to help those abroad, because you aren’t truly a development professional until you have done both.” — Chiara Baldanza, Coordinator

“My high school English teacher Veronica Stephenson went above and beyond to allow me the opportunity to dive into theater and acting in a very underfunded arts community. She saw passion in me, and engaged it by spending a lot of her own time and effort to help me pursue something I loved. I learned so much from her and got more personalized experience than I probably would have from a more arts-focused curriculum due solely to her faith in me.” —Emilie Soffe, Office Coordinator

Now it’s your turn. Who is the teacher who most inspired you? Please share in your comments.

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By 2019, something remarkable had happened—what I consider to be one of the most important things humanity has ever achieved: In under three decades, child mortality was cut by more than half.

Out of My Shell

Remembering Blanche Caffiere, who took me under her wing when I was 9.

Three very strong women—my mother, my maternal grandmother, and Melinda—deserve big credit (or blame, I suppose) for helping me become the man I am today. But Blanche Caffiere, a very kindly librarian and teacher I’ve never written about publicly before, also had a huge influence on me.  

Mrs. Caffiere (pronounced “kaff-ee-AIR”) died in 2006, shortly after reaching her 100 th birthday. Before she passed, I had an opportunity to thank her for the important role she played in my life, stoking my passion for learning at a time when I easily could have gotten turned off by school.

When I first met Mrs. Caffiere, she was the elegant and engaging school librarian at Seattle’s View Ridge Elementary, and I was a timid fourth grader. I was desperately trying to go unnoticed, because I had some big deficits, like atrocious handwriting (experts now call it dysgraphia) and a comically messy desk. And I was trying to hide the fact that I liked to read—something that was cool for girls but not for boys. 

Mrs. Caffiere took me under her wing and helped make it okay for me to be a messy, nerdy boy who was reading lots of books.

She pulled me out of my shell by sharing her love of books. She started by asking questions like, “What do you like to read?” and “What are you interested in?” Then she found me a lot of books—ones that were more complex and challenging than the Tom Swift Jr. science fiction books I was reading at the time. For example, she gave me great biographies she had read. Once I’d read them, she would make the time to discuss them with me. “Did you like it?” she would ask. “Why? What did you learn?” She genuinely listened to what I had to say. Through those book conversations in the library and in the classroom we became good friends.

Teachers generally don’t want to burden their students with extra reading beyond the homework they’ve assigned. But I learned from Mrs. Caffiere that my teachers had so much more knowledge to share. I just needed to ask. Up through high school and beyond, I would often ask my teachers about the books they liked, read those books when I had some free time, and offer my thoughts.

Looking back on it now, there’s no question that my time with Mrs. Caffiere helped spark my interest in libraries (Melinda’s and my first large-scale effort in philanthropy) and my focus on helping every child in America get the benefit of great teachers . I often trace the beginning of our foundation to an article about children in poor countries dying from diseases eliminated long ago in the U.S. But I should give some credit as well to the dedicated librarian and teacher who helped me find my strengths when I was nine years old. It’s remarkable how much power one good person can have in shaping the life of a child. 

This year signaled the start of a new era. Here’s why I believe next year is an opportunity to shape the world’s next chapter for the better.

It’s part of a new approach to teaching America’s least favorite subject.

In the second episode of my new podcast, I sat down with the founder of Khan Academy to talk about how artificial intelligence will transform education.

Washington State Teacher of the Year Dana Miles uses bus schedules, coffee orders, and dinner recipes to teach her students about self-advocacy.

This is my personal blog, where I share about the people I meet, the books I'm reading, and what I'm learning. I hope that you'll join the conversation.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Teacher — How My Teacher Influenced Me

How My Teacher Influenced Me

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Published: Nov 15, 2018

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The holiday gift from a teacher that changed my life

“It would be my gift to you,” my first viola teacher said to my mother when she offered to teach me weekly lessons for free. I don’t know what prompted Mrs. Milliken’s suggestion. The camaraderie among the teachers at the public elementary school where Mrs. Milliken taught orchestra and my mother taught fifth grade meant that teachers always looked out for each other and knew each others’ children by name. Mrs. Milliken knew I had been playing viola for two years in my school orchestra. But the generosity of Mrs. Milliken’s gift hinted at something deeper than just politeness. Maybe it was the wig on my mother’s head, freshly bald from chemotherapy, that made her want to reach out. Maybe it was the way I dug through the recycling bins in the orchestra room at my junior high after school, hungry for extra music to practice in the days before sheet music could be downloaded online. What neither Mrs. Milliken or I could know at the time was that her gift would forever alter the course of my life. 

My first lesson took place after school in a storage room at the elementary school where Mrs. Milliken taught. I was so excited that I rushed past my mother’s classroom without even dropping off my backpack as soon as I arrived at the school. At 13 years old, I was taller than Mrs. Milliken, but her presence seemed to fill the room. Her short black hair framed a full face of makeup. She favored suit jackets with shoulder pads and always dressed like she’d just stepped gracefully out of a vintage fashion magazine. Full of energy, she seemed capable of anything except sitting still. My eyes widened when she placed a thick stack of sheet music on the music stand in front of me. 

“I’m sure a lot of this is below your level,” Mrs. Milliken said, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. 

I stared at the inscrutable mess of black lines and dots on the top page of music. It was by far the most difficult piece I’d seen since I’d started playing the viola two years earlier. Sensing my nervousness, Mrs. Milliken smiled gently. Then she began to explain, note by note, until the squiggles on the page finally made sense.

Mrs. Milliken and I met once a week in the storage room for over two years. Our half-hour lessons stretched into hour lessons, then hour-and-a-half lessons. She taught with a sharp eye for technique, insisting on a perfect bow hold, good posture and flawless intonation. I practiced every day to meet her high standards, which propelled me to the top of my orchestra class, to the top of my school and eventually to the top of my region. Mrs. Milliken celebrated with joy when I achieved my goals. She came to every Region Orchestra concert I performed in, showering me with flowers and cards when I stepped off stage. She was as generous with her words of encouragement as she was with her time. “I’m proud of you,” she said so many times over the years, until her words began to imprint themselves in my mind.

“I’m proud of you,” she said so many times over the years, until her words began to imprint themselves in my mind.

As I advanced at the viola, Mrs. Milliken sent me to study with a different teacher. In the close-knit classical music community, I saw her often at concerts, where she always took time to give me a hug and tell me how much she enjoyed the performance. I sat on stage before the conductor emerged, looking for her in the audience and nearly always seeing her. 

By high school, I squeezed in two hours of viola practice around homework and hours of household chores. During the year in which my mother was sick with cancer, I had begun folding the laundry for our family of six, helping cook dinner and washing dishes after dinner. My mother had long since recovered from cancer, but my share of the household chores increased as I grew older. In the community I was raised in, it would have been as strange to see a teenage boy washing dishes as it would have been to see a girl changing the oil in a car. Evening after evening, I stood at the kitchen up to my elbows in soap suds, thinking of the homework I hadn’t yet begun as my brothers watched TV or played video games. I started to believe that my value as a person was no more than the chores that I performed. 

Playing the viola became my voice when I felt I had no voice at home. My music teachers and classmates treated me with respect. They listened when I spoke or played viola. My love of classical music blossomed. I connected to the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms in a way I couldn’t connect to my family. This music written hundreds of years ago reached through time to capture the emotions I struggled with in the present day. When people think of classical music, they picture stuffy symphonies, rich people in tuxedos and elitist attitudes. What they should picture is me as a teenager: struggling but determined, in love with the beautiful sound of the viola, and seeking a safe place where I could be myself. 

During my senior year of high school, I auditioned for music conservatories and was granted a scholarship to a school in New York — well over a thousand miles from my home in Texas. The instrument I loved had become my ticket out of my hometown. The next fall, I boarded a plane to New York with my viola and a giant suitcase. As I looked out the window at my hometown shrinking beneath me, my favorite Brahms sonata played in my head. 

Seven years and two music degrees later, I moved to a different city in my home state. Each week, students carrying musical instruments step into my office. I teach them proper bow holds and posture. Like Mrs. Milliken, I know that kindness and high standards produce good musicians and happy children. I’ve sent six young violists and violinists to college so far. Three of them earned full scholarships because of their auditions. Some of these students have become the first in their family to graduate from college. A few of them have already returned to our local music community as orchestra teachers to help the next generation of music students. One of my greatest joys has been growing from the child who needed a hand into the adult who can offer one.

One of my greatest joys has been growing from the child who needed a hand into the adult who can offer one.

More by Meghan Beaudry

• How adopting a three-legged dog helped me accept my own disability
• This is what it's like to have aphasia and struggle to find the words

In one of my first performances since the pandemic, I played a Haydn quartet with some colleagues. As I walked off the stage, my heart still pounding, I noticed a familiar face in the audience. She wore the same style suit with shoulder pads. Her hair had faded from black to salt and pepper, but her smile remained the same. “I’m so proud of you,” Mrs. Milliken said as she hugged me, and in an instant, I was again that young girl searching for belonging and finding it in music.

Meghan Beaudry (she/her) is a writer based in Houston and is currently working on a memoir about surviving brain inflammation. 

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How My Teacher Changed My Life in High School

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To the Teacher Who Changed My Life

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Neal Tonken taught me English in 10 th grade. He changed my life. He died last week. I don’t remember what he taught me about how to start an essay, but that’s the way he would have started it. 

He was clear and direct in his writing. Our first day of class in 1984 was his first day too. He’d been a lawyer and chucked it all to teach. He brought a bag of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly. He asked us to describe how to make a sandwich. Then he read our instructions out loud, following along literally, placing the jar on top of the bag of bread. We’d forgotten basic elements like removing the bread from the bag or taking the lids off the jars. 

“Dear John, How nice to hear from you,” starts a letter he wrote me in 1991. “Don’t choose law.” Direct. Clear. My letter that prompted his response was the opposite. It was a mess of perfumery and words stacked on top of each other. If it had been an email, it would have triggered his spam filter. I’d just gotten my first job as a secretary and mentioned in passing I might try to either write or go to law school. His response was advice but also an example.

I’d written that letter to thank him. I learned later that lots of students had done the same.  “My interest in literature and learning started in your class,” I wrote. I can’t remember much from high school—too many sports concussions, maybe—but I can remember when that interest in learning arrived. After Mr. Tonken died, I thought maybe I’d imagined it, so I excavated the 30-year-old copy of Pride and Prejudice from my shelf and looked at my notes inside. 

I wandered lonely as a cloud in 10 th grade. I wrote computer programs and played computer games and sports. My report cards from that period show that I glided along with only the mildest interruptions from applied effort. “John: Who are you? Where were you?” read the remarks next to the “unsatisfactory” grade I received from my upper school work program. “If the Upper School Office was, in fact, your Work Program Assignment this semester, it’s news to us here in the office!” Teachers did not react well to my posture. In middle school a math teacher responded to my good-faith effort at an answer by scoffing: “That’s like me asking you what color the blackboard is and you responding, ‘Fast.’ ”

The pages of Pride and Prejudice don’t look like they belong to the same kid. They are heavily underlined in red pen. There is writing in the margins. Mr. Tonken had made literature an adventure, throwing open trapdoors in the text in class to help us understand what was really going on. Actually, mostly he pressed us to do that for ourselves. This was not a class in which information was ladled over you. He expected you to go get it. He once asked who had read a poem we’d been assigned more than once. When no one in class raised her hand, he kicked us all out and told us not to come back until we’d read it at least twice.

He made you want to figure out what was happening in those books so that you could get as excited as he did, but you also wanted to see his reaction when you’d figured something out.

I wasn’t quite sure how to do this. Stories were just a series of events to me. But reading that Penguin edition of Pride and Prejudice in my third-floor bedroom, I finally figured it out. There was a lot going on behind all the walking in and out of drawing rooms. I got so excited, I read the 38-page introduction, which we had not been assigned.

In class on Monday, I was ready to deploy my revelations. The conversation started, and all the usual smart people spoke up. I didn’t quite know how to contribute—I did jokes and mumbling, not genuine observations. I wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how. And time was passing. When talk turned to blushing, I seized my opening. While reading the introduction I had underlined this passage: “it is perhaps not entirely irrelevant to note that Norman O Brown, following Freud, suggests that blushing is a sort of mild erection of the head.” I laid this knowledge on the class. 

Mr. Tonken looked at me like I had just spoken in Swahili. Was it that I had spoken at all? Or was it that I had chosen this particular piece of knowledge to make my first sortie? It didn’t matter. He was delighted to have another person in the conversation. I never left. His handwriting was the first other than my parents’ that I could recognize, because he wrote on my papers with such attention and care. He noticed that I somehow had come alive and wanted to make sure that flame didn’t go out. Thirty years later, it hasn’t.

But that was not Mr. Tonken’s greatest skill. A year or so ago in a conversation about my kids, he said, “Every student should have an adult they can tell their shit to.” (I can hear him say, “If that’s the word he used, that’s the word you  must  use.”) That’s the role he played in the two years after I had left his 10 th -grade class. He was an ally, a co-conspirator, and the conversations were wide-ranging. It was important to have a restaurant that always had a table for you, he advised. His declarations always had the same cadence—the first part was spoken in a normal tone, and then he emphasized the words of the second part like he was putting down rivets.

Most of all he testified to the messiness of life. In high school a lot of people are trying to fix you and improve you and elevate you. Neal Tonken listened and affirmed that things were confusing. Because he loved passionately, spoke loudly (and occasionally out of turn), and found life overwhelming in both beauty and frustration, he understood what you were saying. What I was saying.

He did all of this without letting us off the hook. I got a C-plus each semester in his class. I might have been newly alive but I was messy, and it was no good to be alive if you couldn’t make something of that passion in a way that makes sense to other people. “His work suffers from lack of personal discipline and attention to detail,” is how he put it.

He had high standards and expected us to meet them. But we wanted to. He did not have much time for BS. In the tributes after his death, classmates remembered his comments when they tried to sneak something by him. Dan Manatt, now a documentarian, tried to loaf by with a paper on The Great Gatsby that used a lot of fancy words to cover up that he was winging it. “There’s much less here than meets the eye,” wrote Mr. Tonken. Sam Thomas, now a novelist, did the same thing on a paper. “This is pure fluff. If it weren’t well written it would be an F. D.”

After I moved back to Washington, Neal and I became friends. We celebrated his marriage and his 50 th birthday. We had long dinners with our wives until the other tables were empty and busboys got grumpy. (This is why you need a restaurant that tolerates you.) He talked about his wife, Jancy, as glowingly as I had my crushes in high school, only his lasted a lot longer. He railed against one thing and another and he praised his current students for all the doors they were opening for him to the wonder and joy in the world. We’d lose touch for a few years and then meet up again with long hugs, mutual confessions of regret.

The last time I talked to Neal, I ran into him in a restaurant across the street from Sidwell Friends, where I went and which my kids now attend. I was with other parents about to go over for a meeting about our kids, and he was with fellow teachers. He’d retired by then after 29 years of teaching, and he’d been sick. I didn’t know. We stood arm in arm and said some things loudly and with a lot of laughter until he had to go home to rest. We promised that when the election was over and I was off the road we’d have another dinner.

Every time I saw Neal, I wanted to thank him. I often did. As I held his hand in the hospice bed a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t restrain the impulse until I thought he might wake up and tell me to knock it off. On my last visit, I was there with my friend Julia, who had been in that 10 th -grade class and had a similar bond with Neal. Our senior year the two of us had taken him out to lunch to say thanks. Time telescoped very quickly in that room with just the three of us. He could only say our names. We sat on his hospital bed and couldn’t say much more. I was shaken and sad and felt vanishingly small—like in high school. I could have used someone to tell my shit to. 

Another student, who had graduated almost 20 years after I had, drove straight from Ann Arbor when she heard the news. She brought her Norton Anthology of Poetry . She came into the room to read him letters that were just arriving from students who heard he was ill. A special inbox had been set up, and it was filling rapidly. She read letter after letter from students who weren’t just recalling events from his class but how he had changed their lives too. The room filled up with grateful souls.

That was Neal’s last lesson. That example. To let us see life in that rich tally—an accumulation of gratitude deserved and expressed. I got a chance to thank Neal, and it makes me think of other teachers to whom I am grateful—Bonnie Mazziotta, Sally Selby, Juan Jewell, George Lang, Ellis Turner, Susan Banker, JoAnne Lanouette, Harold Kolb and Anthony Winner. I carry with me what they have given by their instruction and their example. Perhaps you have teachers like that in your life. Write them. Be clear and direct. Tell them “thank you.”

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My 8th Grade Teacher Changed My Life

Like many students in my hometown of salinas, i just needed a small push to learn how to push myself.

by Arismel Tena | July 28, 2015

Forbes says my hometown of Salinas is the second least educated city in the U.S. According to a number of measures, it’s also one of the poorest places in California. But as a college student who grew up there, and still comes home every summer, I feel rich. I owe that feeling to being from Salinas, a small city amidst big fields with so many young people who are rich in culture and thinking.

When I was 10 years old, my two parents and five siblings moved from Mexico, where I was born, to the east side of Salinas. Many people from our hometown made the same move. We settled in a trailer park called Rancho Salinas. It’s a place with an abundance of migrant workers.

The move grounded me in a community of people with whom I was very familiar, but it also created challenges. Where did I fit in this new city? Where did I fit in America?

When I began school, I was slow to understand the importance of education; no one ever told me why I went. My parents, to their credit, insisted that I go and were supportive in the very best ways, but I had little idea of college, or why it was necessary. Education didn’t fit well with the kids of migrant workers with whom I was raised. These kids are considered, when they are considered at all, to be “gangsters,” and they’re dismissed by educators because of it.

The stereotype of Salinas as a place of shootings is partially true; there is violence here, and more than a few people I grew up with are no longer walking the Earth. But the “gangster” label carries a stigma, and, as a kid in Salinas, you can see and feel that judgment as a rationale for not investing in you. This alienates even young children. I think of a 10-year-old neighbor named Juan, who once told me that he didn’t want to go school anymore because the teacher wouldn’t help him; she made him sit in the back of the classroom and hardly spoke to him.

“It’s like I don’t belong there,” he said. Like many of his peers, his parents work all day in the strawberry fields, so most of the support he gets is from his friends. And when friends drop out of school, too many young people follow them.

The whole cycle is self-fulfilling. And it seems to rise from the central, exploitative fact of Salinas: The city’s richest industry, agriculture, relies on the city’s poorest people. It’s impossible to understand Salinas without thinking of migrant workers. Many people say the conditions for these workers have improved, but that’s not what I’ve seen growing up. I frequently hear stories from my uncles, strawberry pickers who have not been given a raise after working over 30 years. You hear of women being sexually abused in the fields, of men spraying pesticides during work hours (when such spraying is supposed to happen at night, when people aren’t out in the fields). And then there’s the simple reality that farm work is not easy; bending down for more than eight hours to pick berries is an exhausting task that only healthy, strong people can accomplish.

I wish that, instead of pushing workers too hard in the fields, Salinas was known as a place where teachers pushed all students in the classroom. Only the lucky students get pushed, I was one of them.

One teacher from Washington Middle School in eighth grade, Ms. Alexander, changed my life by enrolling me in a program called GATE for “Gifted and Talented Education.” On the first day of my GATE English class, we had to turn in essays and were assigned to read about six books—a completely different workload than mainstream classes. Students who were white and students who were born in America surrounded me, many of whose parents were doctors or teachers. Being exposed to this environment was challenging, but it also made me realize I could do challenging work—and that I had the potential to succeed.

With this small push, I soon learned how to push myself. I loved learning (though I wish we were assigned richer reading assignments in high school, with more meaningful books that would give light to the cruel truths of Salinas). The beginning of my senior year, I was accepted to UC Berkeley with a full ride. I am a sophomore now and debating whether to major in business or in the sciences. It has been a huge adjustment—a small city girl from a traditional (and conservative) Mexican family moving to UC Berkeley. I am a fish out of water, or out of strawberry fields, more accurately.

With my education, I have crossed a dividing line in Salinas’ strange social structure, between the wealth of South Salinas and the poverty of East Salinas. I wish that line did not exist, but it has been around for a long time, at least since Steinbeck, who, like me, grew up here. “Salinas was never a pretty town,” he once wrote. “It took darkness from the swamps. The mountains on both sides of the valley were beautiful, but Salinas was not and we knew it.”

But Steinbeck also said that Salinas was a rich place—the land was rich, and so was the sense of community. And that also is still true. It is why I love Salinas, and why I love to say I am from Salinas. It is filled with the most hardworking and humble people. It has many teachers, though not enough, who seek to educate everyone. It is rich in young people striving to make a better life. It is rich in cultures that together make up a lively city.

And it is rich in people who, for all their persistence, deserve better.

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Lessons learned and cherished: the teacher who changed my life.

A giftable collection of essays from celebrity contributors celebrating the great work of teachers or a teacher they admire, curated by ABC journalist Deborah Roberts. Contributors include Oprah Winfrey, Jenna Bush Hager, Robin Roberts, Brooke Shields, Octavia Spencer, Rachael Ray, Misty Copeland, and more. Everyone can name a teacher who had an impact on their life. Educators not only open our minds to new ideas, but they also help us recognize our potential and our passions. However, rarely do they get credit for the life-changing work they do, and often teachers have no idea how their work can influence a student all the way into adulthood. In Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed My Life , award-winning ABC journalist Deborah Roberts curates a collection of essays and musings from celebrity friends and colleagues alike that share how teachers changed them, imparted life lessons, and helped them get to where they are today.

More books by Andscape

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The Thing a Teacher Said That Changed My Life

Twelve indelible lessons that made an even bigger difference outside the classroom.

Often, the most important thing we learn from a teacher isn’t academic at all. Sometimes it’s a kind observation, a simple show of faith, or maybe a sly permission. Other times it’s a question that cuts right to the core. And once in a while, it’s just plain calling us on our sh*t. Now that the school year is in full-swing, we asked women across the country (plus a cohort of Oprah Daily Insiders and editors) for the lines that pulled them through or jolted them awake, both back in the day and ever since.

1. “Fate is like a carousel. If you miss your horse the first time—or the second, third, fourth, or fifth time—it will come around for you again.”

2. “you have to be brave.”.

An art teacher told me that. She meant it about the creative process, but it became kind of a mantra to me while I was going through a difficult divorce. Getting through that, the very creative process of reinventing myself, was the bravest thing I’ve ever had to do. —Ali O’Neill, 49, Fairfield, Connecticut

3. “You don't choose a life path knowing where it will lead. You choose to keep taking steps that feel right, and trust that simply by moving forward you are heading to where you need to go.”

I was overcome with decision paralysis when I graduated college. Up until that point, the metrics and path to success felt absurdly straightforward. I was literally given a piece of paper at the start of each term outlining what was expected of me, week by week, and if I did what was on that paper, I would be given a numerical score confirming my achievement (as well as abundant praise). For the first time in my life, I had to decide for myself what “success” meant and how to achieve it. I was terrified. My professor helped me see that I wasn’t deciding, in that instant, what I wanted my entire life to look like; I was just deciding to make the next best steps with the information I had at the time. Eventually those steps would form their own path. —Charley Burlock, 26, Oprah Daily contributing associate books editor

4. “What are you doing?”

I grew up in a small, very poor town in northern Nevada. My family was okay until I became a teenager. Then I fell in with a bad crowd and stopped going to classes. At the same time, things got really rough with my parents. A month after I turned 16, I dropped out and ran away from home. I wound up living on the streets in Reno.

When I was 17, I heard about a program that helped you get job skills. I walked there. They said the most important thing I needed to do was get a high school equivalency diploma. While I worked at a daycare center (I’d always loved kids) and lived in a pay-by-week motel, I began to get my GED. It was a teacher at that night school—I wish I remembered his name—who asked me that question. I was so scared because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And I thought I was in trouble.

Instead, this teacher was trying to make me see that I was setting my sights for myself too low. He explained that because I’d tested out of almost all the classes I needed for the GED, I could begin taking classes at the community college. Right away. I thought he was crazy. I didn’t think kids like me went to college.

But someone believing in you is amazing motivation.

I quickly earned 64 credits at the community college and transferred to a four-year college. I majored in both early childhood education and human development/family studies. I got my bachelor’s degree, then my master’s degree. Soon, I got a job with the local school district running a program for teen moms.

I loved my job. But I think because I’d had to work so hard to get myself a stable home, I was always interested in real estate, too. During the Covid pandemic, a lot of Realtor classes went online, so I got my license. I thought I’d do real estate as a side gig—even when I wound up making a lot more money selling houses than I did teaching. Teaching seemed more stable, and stable appeals to me. But when the school district cut my program last year, I asked myself that old question: What are you doing?

I gave my notice to the school district and have been happily (and profitably!) selling houses full-time ever since. —Michelle Hammond, 41, Reno, Nevada

5. “Run your own race.”

Ms. Werley was a P.E. teacher at my high school who also coached track. She meant “stay in your own lane, manage your own goals, and remember competitors will peak at different times. Remember that the race is long, and that what is currently happening to your left and right is not a reflection of the end result. Stay in your own lane.” —Leigh Barrows Filippini, 57, Philadelphia

6. “I know you’ll get there.”

I was a wayward teen, behind in my schoolwork and skipping class. But my English teacher saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. She called my mom and, to my total dismay, arranged for me to go over to her house once a week to do my homework. At no time did she help me; she just sat with a gin and tonic tinkling in a glass as I studied. We didn’t talk much on those long winter evenings, but I do remember her saying, “I know you’ll get there.” Years later, I did get there, with two English degrees and a career as a journalist. I often think back to her faith in me during that fraught time and realize what a difference it made. —Rosie Hopegood, 37, Oprah Daily deputy health editor

7. “Did your carriage break down?”

I had a first-period government class my senior year of high school that I was always late for. Frankly, I thought making sure my hair was perfectly curled was far more important than anything I might learn about the separation of powers or whatever Mr. Neal was teaching.

One day when I swanned in, he asked me that question (in front of the whole class!) before I could even sit down. It wasn’t long after Princess Diana married Prince Charles. I think the whole world had watched her arrive at the cathedral in a carriage. All of a sudden, I saw how royally selfish I was being to disrupt class every single day.

I’d like to say I was never tardy again after that, but the truth is, I remained extremely concerned about how my hair looked. However, I got some perspective and was on time to class most of the time from then on. And, as I traveled into adulthood, I began to use that question as a kind of a personal maxim to motivate me to show respect to other people and get to places on time…most of the time. —Amanda Robb, 57, New York City

8. “If you get to a boring part, skip it.”

My fifth-grade teacher, Brenda Horvath, was vivacious, funny, and unorthodox. She showed us the movie Excalibur (rated R) when we studied King Arthur and played terrifying records portraying Aztec child sacrifices. She passed out chocolate-shaped soaps on April Fools' Day. And she always recommended books above our grade level, like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . I’m sure she said this line to us in passing, to squash a complaint during reading time. But for a rule follower like me, it was freeing. Mrs. Horvath, with her groovy shag haircut and bright pink lipstick, gave me permission to break the rules and stretch past my comfort zone. —Jennie Tung, 52, Oprah Daily senior director, wellness

9. “Start your stories local. You are an expert of your own neighborhood.”

Long before he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt was my creative writing teacher at Stuyvesant High School. Many of us students thought our own little worlds were boring—too boring to write about and definitely too boring for anyone to want to read about. But Mr. McCourt taught us that everyone’s story is unique and interesting. And if a story is told really well and very honestly, it will have universal resonance. He proved it by telling us his amazing stories, which were not about anything exotic, just things he was an expert in, what he had access to—which was poverty and teaching.

It was an amazing lesson—not just in how to write well, but in how to connect with all our fellow human beings.

In the years since then, I’ve published countless articles and essays, as well as six books. Though the stories I’ve told have taken me all the way to Antarctica, one way or another, most have started right in my own in neighborhood, right where I grew up. —Laurie Gwen Shapiro, 57, New York City

10. “Practice makes permanent.”

I was on the softball team in high school. At first, I thought I should save my intensity for game day. But after coach Bill Belt told me this, I started working my rear off in practice, too. My game days got a lot better, and the advice turned out to apply to a lot more than softball. As I grew up, I saw I could apply it to everything. It’s about understanding that there’s no use in doing anything half-assed. If you’re going to do anything, commit—and really give it everything you’ve got and do the absolute best you can. —Dena Hunter Valentine, 52, Eugene, Oregon

11. “Vary your sentence lengths.”

When my teacher first said this, I thought it was just writing-style advice. But over the years, I’ve learned—as a parent, a boss, and, yes, an editor—that if you allow yourself to get too long-winded for more than one or two sentences in a row, invariably your message will land as a lecture or screed. At best, people glaze over. Mid-case scenario: They tune you out. And, if you really blather on, you run the serious risk of provoking the exact opposite reaction than the one you wanted. When you apply the rigor of intermittent brevity, a.k.a. good pacing, there’s a much better chance that people will genuinely hear you, pay attention to you, and maybe even come to share your point of view. —Pilar Guzmán, 53, Oprah Daily editorial director

12. “You matter, and there’s nothing wrong with you.”

I was abused as a child. Badly. In a lot of ways. My safe space was with my grandparents, but when I was in the middle of 10th grade, my mom moved us away from them to the other side of town. I had to leave not only my extended family but all my friends and my first puppy love, too. Also, I had to go from a school that had mostly Black kids to one that was predominately white. (I’m Black.)

At the new school, I was like a walking sore—very withdrawn, depressed, a loner. To be honest, I thought about suicide a lot.

My history teacher at the new school was Miss Odessa Johnson. She was stern but kind. One day after class, she asked me about my life. Nothing too hard. Just like what I did after school. Over time, I wound up telling her a lot of what I was going through. She became a soft place in the chaos of my life. That someone like her cared about me kept me going, got me through to graduation when I could start my own life. That she thought I was important and okay—not bad in anyway—well, it became something I could tell myself. It became something I could believe. —Josette Penigar, 58, Fort Worth, Texas

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Teacher who changed my life

Teacher Life is unexpected experience, so full of surprises that nobody knows what will happen the very next moment, especially when you meet a person who has the ability to change your life in complete way. Most of us have met a teacher during our lifetime in school that made a difference and touched our lives in some way to make it better and to open our eyes for success. I remember when the first day of high school started. I was very nervous and stressed, scared to the point that I didn’t want to be at the school.

I had six classes that I had to attend that day. At the end of the afternoon, I walked in my last class and it was Social Studies. I usually don’t like this subject but the teacher started to change the way I thought about social studies. Her name was Mrs.. Jennifer Smith she impressed me the way she was confident, and she told us about her story from high school to college and the success that she gained over the years of studying also the fears that she had.

The bell rang, and the class is over. I stayed after class to talk to her about how I feel and how stressed I was about school.

She was very nice and she welcomed me. She said “I’m here for you anytime “. I introduced myself to her , and I told her how lonely I felt being in school and that I had no one to talk to which make me feel really awkward, plus that wasn’t everything I was afraid of.

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I was worried about my classes too because they seemed a little hard. We talked for about an hour. She was a very good listener. She gave me a lot of advice that I needed at that time, and she told me to come to her whenever I feel like I need someone to talk to. I came back home really happy and confident.

Everything I felt earlier had disappeared. My homework was perfectly done, and I was excited to start my next day of high school and meet Mrs.. Jennifer again. Years of high school was about to be over. Mrs.. Jennifer walked me to senior year even though I had one class with her. Through those three years she taught me a lot of stuff. She made from me a man for life, she opened my eyes for a bright future, and made me feel so special, but that wasn’t everything. When senior year started, I were in need of help and I went to her.

I wasn’t sure if I’m going right after I graduate from high school I will go right after to college and I really wanted to know if I did the right thing or not. She gave me the best words that actually convinced me to decide what I should do after graduation. She said “through the years that I knew you, I have always seen you as a successful guy that has good head on his shoulders, I want you to go to college and prove to yourself and to me and everybody that you will never fail or take a step back” Mrs..

Jennifer has changed my whole life, because of everything she did for me and that I actually listened to her advice. She played the part where I choose to attend college and look forward to be successful as I made a promise with her. Mrs.. Jennifer wasn’t Just a teacher for me, but she was like a mother who really cares about her son, and she wanted to see me in a good place all he time where I can find the happiness and Joy in my life. That’s how I see her in my eyes.

Maybe that could be Just a little about how I feel about her because she is indescribable person to me. I will never forget the experience that I had with her and what she taught me through high school years. Sometimes people appear in our lives suddenly, and they flip it upside down. They change us for better ones, and that’s what Mrs.. Jennifer did for my life. I couldn’t be more thankful than any day in my life for having her. She shaped my life in Just a way that should be shaped.

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A teacher changed my life

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The Teacher Who Changed My Life

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56.3. the teacher who changed my life essay by nicholas gage.

56.3. How does Miss Hurd affect both Gage's understanding of English and his appreciation of his origins?

From the text:

"I was soon under Miss Hurd’s spell. She did indeed teach us to put out a newspaper, skills I honed during my next 25 years as a journalist. Soon I asked the principal to transfer me to her English class as well. There, she drilled us on grammar until I finally began to understand the logic and structure of the English language. She assigned stories for us to read and discuss; not tales of heroes, like the Greek myths I knew, but stories of underdogs – poor people, even immigrants, who seemed ordinary until a crisis drove them to do something extraordinary. She also introduced us to the literary wealth of Greece – giving me a new perspective on my war-ravaged, impoverished homeland. I began to be proud of my origins."

The Teacher Who Changed My Life

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