teachers, part 4

 This is my final blog about teachers.  There have been so many great ones in my life that I can't write about all of them, bur here are my last three - all high school teachers:

Mrs. Wetter, my English and French teacher was also the school librarian.  I was allowed to spend many blissful study hall hours in the library "assisting" her.  I did put books back on the shelves in their correct places but I also had plenty of time to find fascinating books to read.  The book I remember best, possibly my favorite of all times, is "A Town Like Alice" by Neville Shute.  It was originally published in the US with the title "The Legacy."  If you have never read it, you really should.  I have a copy you can borrow.

Mr. Dupont, the art teacher for all twelve grades in our school system.  In my senior year I chose to take art instead of physics because the physics teacher had been my chemistry teacher the year before and he was terrible.  When Mr. Dupont discovered that I really loved art and wasn't just there for an easy option, he arranged for me to shadow him in some of his elementary classes.  That's when I realized that I didn't want to teach English or math (those had been the fields I had been trying to decide between) I wanted to teach art.  I did graduate from college with an art special degree, qualifying me to teach art in all 12 grades.  Thank you Mr. Dupont.

Then there was Mr. Briegel.  When I look at his picture in the yearbook he looks very young, but, of course, at the time, we thought he was old.  He was our history, social studies and government teacher, and made the subjects very interesting.  In his youth he had polio so he wore braces on both legs and walked with crutches.  This did not, in any way, limit his ability to control a classroom. However, during my senior year, some of my less mature classmates (boys of course) tried to play a nasty trick on him.  They put a tack on his chair, knowing he couldn't stand up quickly. In my defense, I didn't know anything about this until the next day.  He came in to the classroom, sat down on the tack and proceeded to teach the class as always.  The next day he told us that he had discovered the tack stuck in one of the wooden pieces of his brace when he took his pants off that night.  The boys were disappointed that their trick hadn't worked but Mr. Briegel thought it was pretty funny.