When I was in 6th grade

I had a Language Arts teacher named Mrs. Blair.  She was also my Social Studies teacher.  She has left quite an impression in my mind.  I think 6th grade was the year when my English got much better and my writing skills got better.  That was also the year that I learned a lot of grammer.  As I went through the rest of my schooling, I keep finding myself remembering her every time I see spell your and you’re wrong and than and then wrong.  She really forced us to get all those things straightened out in our heads.  I am thankful to her for my English and grammer skills being where they are right now.  I know not everyone has been this fortunate. 

I remember we used to do journal entries in her class, where she would write up a topic on the board and we had to write down our answers in a little black marbel book.  Sometimes, she would just put "free write" on the board and we had to write down whatever came to our head.  She said if you reallly couldn’t think of anything, then you should just keep writing " i can’t think of anything" on your paper until you think of something to write about.  I found that I did a lot of my best writing on those "free write" days.  From then on, I have used that technique to write most of the papers I have needed to write.  I am not an outliner.  I usually just start typing anything that comes to mind that is relevant to the topic and let myself get ideas.  Once I have enough meat on the paper , I start to organize it.  I usually end up cutting out the whole bit I had written and starting on a new page with the more organized thoughts after.  She said that while no one can really teach anyone to write, there are certainly techniques that can be ‘taught’.  This was one of them.  And it worked for me. 

I have a feeling that most people who think they are not good writers or struggle with writing never had a course or teacher like this. And it is unfortunate.

Mrs. Blair was also my social studies teacher.  In that social studies class, we learned about Egypt and the middle east and we had a field day where I wore Indian clothes to it.  She encouraged us to make flash cards of our reading materials and notes and I used to keep up with it on a day to day basis.  She would do random checks to make sure that we were keeping up with making our flash cards and one day she checked mine and I had everythin on my cards up until the day before’s class.  She was so impressed with me that she gave me a yellow "I am impressed" card to show to my parents.  I was happy 🙂

I went to a mediocre middle and high school, but I feel like I had a very good experience.  I feel that my foundation was built to be strong because of the works of these few teachers.  I think it is more important for kids to go to a mediocre school with good teachers than to go to a ‘top notch’ overly competitive school with mediocre teachers.  I think at a young age, it is more important that the school build confidence in children than for the school to be in a school that is considered to be one of the best or most competitive around.