Thursday, March 13, 2008

365x13: (Mr. Hummer: As a part of the miniseries "The Teachers")

Mr. Hummer was the English teacher for grade ten and eleven. He retired when I went into grade twelve, which depressed our class to no end, though the days that he would come back and sub were great. It is hard to say what made him such a great teacher, except that he believed that each of us was capapble of greater intelligence then we were showing, and would inspire and/or mock us to it. He would call us by our last names... "Miss Brown or Mr Johnson".

In addition, he made Shakespeare interesting. We would all read the play aloud, and he would explain to us what it all meant, and point out the dirty jokes. (Shakespeare was a dirty old man, there were a lot). And yet when we watched Othello on VHS (those were the days) he ran to the library, stopped the movie, and fast forwarded past the love scenes.

He would always joke that as he was retiring, he didn't have to bother to teach us anything, as he could not be fired. He was the one who mocked all the vally girl lingo (like) out of my vocabulary.

He was our favorite teacher.

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