re: Why was your favorite teacher/coach your favorite?

My favorite teacher wasn't my favorite teacher while I was in school. She taught history and was really tough. She gave out a bunch of extra assignments, but was very thorough and brought in a bunch of outside the textbook knowledge, information, and details to her daily lectures (which we mostly not in the book, and had to be handwritten down). One example of outside the box teaching, for late 20th century world history, she made us learn word-for-word the Billy Joel song "We didn't start the fire" and taught us every event that he sang about.

She taught me all the way through middle school, then somehow left the middle school and got a job at the high school I was zoned for, so I had this lady for 5 years of different state, world, and American history classes. I hated it while I was in school, but looking back at it as an adult, I really appreciate the effort she gave. It really makes you appreciate it when you have other teachers that don't teach at all, and just read word for word from the textbook, and don't know enough about the given subject to be able to provide different examples to help you better understand the subject matter. Like the Pakistani calculus professor I had in college that could barely speak English and couldn't go beyond the definitions in the book and would get pissed if you asked questions. It also helps you appreciate it when you see the crap history textbooks that are out now skimming over a bunch of the important parts to focus more an DEI bullshite. So where ever you are today Mrs. Johnson, here's one for you, you tough old biddy.