A great teacher’s lesson can give you goosebumps and if you’re lucky, mindbumps too.
Marlene was my English Teacher and Choir Director in High School. She was everywhere. If your jacket smelt like stale cigarette smoke she would let you have it. In the classroom, she shined some light into your lazy, dormant, misunderstood, overactive, apathetic or whatever-other-state your adolescent mind might’ve been in, and actually got you up in front of the class to act out a scene from Orwell’s 1984, guiding you to draw connections between your reality and Orwell’s fiction. In choir, she led diaphragm strengthening exercises and taught us songs in a dozen different languages, once again, guiding us to drawing connections.
She tended to different spaces that allowed learning, growth and positive escape. She had high expectations and high energy. Sometimes she could be downright mean. She cared for you and took her job of helping you grow very seriously. She taught to your complexities. She had the ability to figure out what you needed and a fine-tuned ear for hearing the beauty and potential in your particular voice. If it was a roar, she showed you the merit of a whisper; if it was whisper, she encouraged you to roar.