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NPR is starting off a series titled "50 Great Teachers" and is starting with Socrates:
We're starting this celebration of teaching with Socrates, the superstar teacher of the ancient world. He was sentenced to death more than 2,400 years ago for "impiety" and "corrupting" the minds of the youth of Athens.
But Socrates' ideas helped form the foundation of Western philosophy and the scientific method of inquiry. And his question-and-dialogue-based teaching style lives on in many classrooms as the Socratic method.
Most of us have been influenced by our teachers, and some of them may have even been great ones even if, unlike Socrates, they toiled in anonymity. So, I ask this question: Who were (or are) your greatest teachers, why, and what did you learn from them that made them so great?
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:08AM
For me, my greatest teachers were great not because of what they were teaching in their classes but because of the other things I learned from them.
In high school, my Spanish teacher and Honors English teacher for one semester Dr. Werner (yes, he had a Ph.D.) taught me that it's okay to be eccentric and express to others the love of learning. He essentially taught me how to be human.
In grad school, there was Dr. Crowley who taught me how wonderful libraries are. However, it was a two-way relationship. He mentored me in libraries; I mentored him in the Internet at a time (1993-4) when it was not commonly known. I got to see the wonder on his face as he learned about all the possibilities that immediately occurred to him.
But I think the teachers I appreciate most are those who recognized my intelligence, that I was unlike nearly all the other kids in school, and allowed me to be myself. As many people here probably understand, it's hard to be the smart kid in school sometimes.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.