The Person I Admire Most

A Person I Admire (an Old Essay of Mine)

Among the teachers who have taught me through my school life, Teacher Helen is the one that I most admire. She was the English teacher of mine while I was in junior high. In contrast to some teacher's apathy, her vitality always refreshed the atmosphere in our classroom. Moreover, her enthusiasm and thoughtfulness still warmed my heart to this day.

Helen's charisma won everyone's appreciation soon after she began teaching us. As she was not the first English teacher of us, everyone had a skeptical eye on her in her first class. Sensing our doubts, she began the class with a guessing-people game. She asked us to write about our characteristics on a small piece of paper, which afterwards was read to the class for us to identify the person. We had great fun that day due to her ingenuity to grasp what we wanted. Afterwards, the contempt students used to hold in her was nowhere to be seen.

The energy and passion Helen possessed when teaching was unbelievable. With more and more days she spent with us, I noticed a distinctive quality of hers that truly amazed me. No matter what the weather was like and how she was feeling, she was always in high spirits when she entered the classroom, as if she was ecstatic to see us. Besides, she encouraged us to interact with her; therefore, the class was by no means serious and tense, but very enjoyable and inspiring.

Helen used clever techniques to arouse our interest in learning English. Quizzes are the indispensable element of a class, but Helen added them with her own illustrations to make them more fascinating. She also printed many handouts, adorned with her amusing drawings, to provide the information missing in the textbook for us. In short, she had the magic to transform something painstaking into pleasure. Furthermore; lots of English songs were introduced to us in her class. Whenever we started a new lesson, she would come up with songs whose themes or lyrics were related to what we were learning. The songs were so fantastic that everyone took delight in both listening and enhancing our vocabulary from the lyrics. Through her instruction, my love for English was reassured thanks to her.

The considerate cares out of class Helen gave us was moving. The third year of junior high was difficult to most of us, for studying was the only proper thing we could in order to enter a decent senior high school. Exhausted from the schoolwork, some students were extremely depressed. Helen perceived their low spirits and thus allowed students to go to her office and talk about their problems. Incredibly, she became the spiritual pillar of the class. Moreover, she also intervened in the disputes among students and acclaimed for us in every tournament at the sports meet. Aside from it, another unforgettable thing she did was writing a card for every student at Christmas. I was close to tears when she handed the card to me, for no other teacher had equal consideration as she did.

Helen has created the model of an excellent teacher to me. Her teaching skills and attentiveness are etched eternally in my mind. Now when I teach students, I strive for devoting the best of my patience and effort in honor of her.