Because She Said, "Haha, whatevs. I think mostly I will be known as the teacher who dressed really weird."

There are teachers, and then, there are teachers. We can go through and name all our teachers from Kindergarten until we started changing classes, and maybe we can connect a face to a subject to a quirk, and maybe a name after that. Perhaps we remember a teacher for an epiphany we had because of them. (Geometry freshman year, I had my epiphany about sine functions because she actually explained the relationship between a circle and a wave. Mind. Blown. ; English 7th grade, she read my poetry and explained I didn't have to define my pseudonym. It wasn't every day she read a student's entire binder of collected works.)

There are the teachers whose lessons follow us the rest of our lives--the teachers we know we couldn't have lived without. I get to speak with three of such teachers fairly regularly, and unsurprisingly they are all band teachers. I lived, ate, breathed, led, followed, or got out of the way for seven years. Three of the most important, pivotal years of my life were guided by two of these band teachers. I think they may have been pseudo-parents. The third picked up where these two had to leave off because I moved out of state--this third one picked the exact same marching show the other teachers had chosen. This third one met the first two at a convention and brought me back a note written on a napkin or drink coaster or whatever had been available. These three people were leaders of very large families, and I was not only a student but a child of theirs. Whether they know it or not, they helped raise me.

And then there are the teachers that turn us into teachers. The teachers that shaped and molded us into the next generation of knowledge-holders, of Givers, whose skills we can only hope to emulate into a similar level of mastery.

One of my favorite teachers, and a cited reason I teach, was probably certifiably batty. She wore 50s dresses, costume jewelry, and heels every day. She had tape on the floor for the position of the desks and a green grading pen can wherein if she could put her red pen in, she knew one was missing. She had this series of assignments called Photo Physics (science teacher, of course) where we had to provide a pictorial representation of various physical concepts. "Something in the shape of a coil or spiral", "Where 1/3 of the photo is sky", etc. and we had to write a proof, for example, how we measured the linear length of said coil/spiral. She exploded potassium in class, always dressed up for spirit days in a "I can't wait to see what she is wearing" kind of way, and always signed yearbooks with a proper comment. 

A teacher I adopted as my academic advisor and personal counselor dedicated a few minutes at the beginning of every class to a piece of pop music from every era. Evita, Ace of Base, Buffalo Springfield, Harry Chapin... He passed out the lyrics and told us why we should think this piece of music was important. He only taught one class--the rest of the time he was a school counselor. He made us feel worth his time. He never changed our seats even though Ann S. and I (Ann W.)  were on the same line from his desk so if he pointed and said "Ann" we didn't know if he was talking to her or me. Oddly, I can't remember his last name, but I know his first name. I called him from my new school when I moved to Michigan, because my life was still falling apart and I didn't have anyone around that I could trust to talk to about it.

I have a sketch of a teacher hanging a houseplant from the ceiling. She bought her first house, won a Ellen Degeneres look-alike contest, and had us bring in CDs so we could study poetry. She broke us into groups so we could write poetry, write a newspaper, edit each other's work. She made us write letters to each other recommending books instead of book reports. She gave me my first and only grade-point-relevant B in all of public school (6th through 12th). She understood me when I was devastated by the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird because it wasn't good enough. She cried when she read us The Bridge to Terabithia. 

Whether you dance, dress weird, or are just plain weird, it will just be a vessel to remember the things you teach. I can recite the periodic table, Charles' Law & Boyle's Law, I can define a function, I can create a newsletter. And I know how because they taught me how. Furthermore, I use their exact explanations, their exact definitions, their exact lesson plans. Because it works. It worked for them, for years, and it's working for me. It doesn't fail. At least, I'm pretty confident it won't fail. It hasn't so far.