Things Are Gonna Change

Every morning of the eleventh grade, I woke up at six in the morning to get to school for my first class of the day. But it wasn't just any class. It was my least favorite subject, English. I had never been a fan of English. Luckily my teacher Mr. M was great and got me and the rest of the sleepy students through what could have been a long and awful year.

Mr. M was just a cool guy. He hated the stuff we were doing as much as we did. He assured us that after we got through the required reading we would get to the good stuff. Mr. M told us things are gonna change around here. He kept his word.

After the exam on the required reading, we did things in class that we had never done before. While other teachers gave their students more Shakespeare to read, Mr. M gave us things that were entertaining and that we could relate too at the same time. He gave us Edgar Allan Poe's collection of stories. We read the The Raven in class and then watched The Simpsons episode that parodied it. How many teachers can you say would show The Simpsons in class? Not many! We got to read Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs. Even though it took place many years before we were even born, he showed us how not that much is really different when it comes to family. It is probably the most interesting lesson I've ever had in an English class.

Mr. M wasn't your typical English teacher. He wouldn't mind taking a minute to tell a joke or tell us about a good movie or concert he just saw and then he would find some way to make it fit into something we learned earlier in class. It's hard to explain how this class would have been if there was some other teacher in charge. But I can confidently say that his energy and humor made that class. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to learn from him. He made me enjoy English for the first time and I thank him.

-- Rachel Unterricht