Monday, May 4, 2009

Teacher Appreciation Week - Day One

This is teacher appreciation week, so in honor of that, I will be posting every day about some of my favorite teachers.
********************************************************
Miss Knaupp was my senior English teacher. I went to a mid-sized private school from 3rd grade through graduation and Miss Knaupp was the teacher everyone was afraid of. Not because of her behavior (she was very nice) but because it was a hard class! All the senior classes ahead of us had told us about Miss Knaupp.
Miss Knaupp was tough.
Miss Knaupp made you write big papers.
Miss Knaupp graded really hard.

And Miss Knaupp was in charge of graduation.

You see, at my school, because it was small, all the teachers had multiple roles. Miss Knaupp taught senior English, was the school librarian, in charge of the suspension room for those rare cases of In School Suspension, and handled all details pertaining to graduation. Miss Knaupp was organized, so everything always went incredibly smoothly, but looking back on it now, I can’t imagine doing what she did – organizing 56 fractious and snotty 18-year-olds, checking speeches, creating the senior slide show and making our graduation a great event.

As far as her class went, I had a relatively mild case of senioritis, so I don’t remember a lot of specific details about that class, but I remember that I sat right next to my best friend Sue. I do remember that Miss Knaupp had us read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. In case you didn’t realize this, Charles Dickens was paid by the word, so his books have a LOT of description and extraneous details. Miss Knaupp edited that book down to 206 pages for us and we read it in class during that year. That is now one of my favorite books and I still have that edited copy.

So thanks, Miss Knaupp….you were a great teacher.

2 comments:

Finding Normal said...

Aw, I love reading about great teachers! Isn't it amazing to look back and realize just how amazing they really were?

Pseudo said...

It's teacher appreciation week?