A+ Teachers

     So, coming to the end of higher education (this phase anyway) I thought I'd take a moment to point out a few of the more memorable, more influential, and more better :) teachers I've had the privilege to be under. As I've had many, many purely awful ones (like my current Stats teacher...) the good guys stand out all the more!  Hopefully, some of you out there have had some of these great people in your life too, or maybe had some of your own.
     Just a note: I'm not limiting my selection to academic school. Some of the best teachers are in your churches, your workplaces, or just hanging around waiting to share their wisdom.
     Starting off my list is the teacher I had the longest, and who probably taught me more than anyone else, on subject or otherwise. Ms. Terrena Kyle, my piano teacher of nine years. Let me just say, you can't sit next to this lady for half an hour, every week, for that long without falling in love with her and her family. I think I almost felt like another one of her grandkids by the time my senior recital came around. She always challenged me to want to be better, to play that harder piece, to accomplish my goals even if I had to work for five years to do it. Haha that's a true story there. I worked on one huge piece for five years! And I could probably still play it from memory to this day. Since I've been in college I tried to find another piano teacher, but I've realized that my piano experience was WAAAY above average and that normal people just don't compare!
     Next, I want to throw one out there that everyone who was in youth with me will giggle at. Mr. Red Turner. Yes, that man taught us hoodlums in Sunday school for years. I think he can relate every single thing in the Bible to farming or MSU sports, which make pretty good metaphors for life if ya wanna know. He genuinely wanted us all to grow up into amazing, Godly people, and took time to help us do it. Still does, in fact. Every time I find myself next to him at church, he never fails to ask about my school, how life is going, just keeping up with all of us. Funny story, when I was a senior and announced that I was going to MSU, Mr. Red was so excited someone was finally going to be a bulldog that he bought me my first cowbells as a Christmas present :)
     Next in my lineup is an actual educational person. Okay, so Ms. Terrena technically taught English, but I don't count that since I didn't even go to that school. Anyway, my cousin Gail Morton is the art teacher at my high school. When it came time for me to pick classes for high school, I was kind of on the fence about what to take. She told me to take art, and that I wouldn't regret it. Well, she was right. I took every class the school offered, and bullied the principal into offering more, so I could have art every year. I still can't draw a line, but I know that I'm always going to be an artist. As I got up in high school, Ms. Morton and I started talking more on a one on one level, just chewing whatever fat came up. I spent pretty much every break in her classroom, and a lot of afternoons when I had early dismissal. Ms. Morton has some of the strangest and most interesting views on the world, but they're views that I greatly benefitted from hearing and that made me think a lot about my own opinions. Now that I'm in college, I kind of kiss some of the quirky advice I used to get! Sometimes the best thing in the world is a different viewpoint.
     Last, for this blog anyway, and by no stretch of the imagination least, is our superwoman math/Sunday school teacher Deb-o. I'm pretty sure that if Debbie Stepp can't do it, it literally can't be done. Seriously yall, this woman is a driving force! In high school she taught us all algebra, trig, and how to sell a million bars of candy every year. After I graduated I got lucky enough to have this lady as a Sunday school teacher. How she puts up with our craziness, well, we'll just call it love :) unless its those three cups of coffee every morning haha! Since we're a missions Sunday school class, we're constantly on the move planning some event or trip. I don't know how she does it without a computer, but Deb-o finds some of the coolest places for us to go, and we never get lost more than once or twice a trip :) I think after so much time together, we all just became one big family, with Deb-o as the Mama at large. We have informed her for several years now that she's not allowed to retire from us; we're all just going to get keep moving up and get old together!