My Favorite Teacher

My Favorite Teacher

Rewind about three years. A shy kid, named Paul, just transferred to a new school, and he is having a crummy day. English was always his worst class. He expected this year to be no different. When eighth period came around, Paul met Miss Katie Conlon. That was the start of Paul’s love of English.

I’m Paul, and Ms. Conlon isn’t my teacher anymore, but she is still someone I go to for help with my college preparations. Freshman year I hated English, but she helped my figure out that I had a talent for it. I was a math student and an artist, doodling pictures in my sketchbook every chance I got with only a pencil and my creativity. Ms. Conlon showed me that I could create a world of my own with words as well as lead. During our study of poems, Ms. Conlon had us submit an original poem for publishing in order to receive extra credit. I wanted to raise my grade so I decided to do just that. To this day I’m unaware if she knew that I had that creative talent, but when she got the winners who would go on to be published, my name was counted among them. Sadly, I didn’t appreciate what I could do with words until the year was almost over. However, fate decided that this wouldn’t be the last time Ms. Conlon would guide my pen.

My junior year I had made it into the English honors course and would take Literature AP. Imagine my shock when Ms. Conlon showed up on my schedule for that class. It was her first year teaching that class, and had not even had the chance to find out how to teach the course. Amazingly, she thrived in that challenge and it ended up being a class I couldn’t wait to go to each day. I’m not going to pull punches; we were a horrible class that year and tormented her to no end. She never let us gets to her though. I was amazed that she kept that friendly smile on her face the entire year. That year we got an assignment that helped me see that my limits in creative writing were non-existent. We wrote a short story centered on an assigned literary device. On the day it was due I read my Story in front of the class, and they responded with thunderous applause. When I glanced over at Ms. Conlon, however; her smile told me that she expected as much.

Currently I’ve written over 200 comic scripts for my father’s company and I’m working on my own fantasy novel. Without Ms. Conlon I probably would still hate English. She awakened my inner author and for that she will always have my eternal gratitude.