This morning Iza asked me a question – “Which one of your teachers do you remember the most?” To my blank stare she added “It’s Teachers Appreciation Week, you should write something about one of yours”.

Over my career I was subject to countless (one could argue futile) attempts to educate me by tens if not hundreds of different teachers. Most of them I could not remember for the life of me. But I do remember a handful. Those few that somehow stayed with me through the rest of my life. Coincidentally those are the same teachers that at the time I severely disliked and were at the very bottom of my ‘favorite teachers’ list.

Like my Polish language teacher, who in her, what seemed to us 90s, but in reality probably 50s, was so strict on any grammar and spelling mistakes that we were scared to even get in that room. But who also surprised me by praising my unusual approach to an essay she assigned us to write. She taught me that I shouldn’t worry about independent thinking.

Or my math teacher who insisted to treat us as adults throughout our high school, allowing us to choose whether we wanted out parents to even talk to him (and you’ve probably guessed it, my parents were never bothered having to come to school for any reason) with all the good and bad that can only come from that.

And last but not least, my English teacher, who was so adamant that we have to learn foreign language that most of the class became finalist in regional foreign language competition and two spending year in US in exchange program. Comes in handy every day.

Those were the most dreaded teachers back then. I didn’t like to go to their classes, I disliked the amount of material they had us to learn and despised the discipline…

Today…. Today I wish all of them were like that.

This week is Teachers Appreciation Week. Slow down, reflect for a second and say thank you to your favorite ones. And double thank to the rest of them.