The Teachable Moment Project

Michigan Radio
5 min readMar 19, 2015

“What’s the most memorable thing a teacher has said to you?”

#learningtoteach

We asked you:

“What’s the most memorable thing a teacher has said to you?”

The Teachable Moment Project collected remembrances from you of the teachers in your life.

By intentionally leaving “memorable words” open to your interpretation, we heard from you about teachers who inspired you, as well as teachers who derailed dreams.

We've divided your responses up according to these themes: encouragement; life advice; teacher humor; career advice; succeeding in spite of a teacher’s words; sexism toward girls and boys; teacher burn-out; words that were, well, just mean; and teachers who were tough, but fair.

It’s clear that after many years, teachers’ words have a huge impact on who we become and how we see ourselves.

Here are some of the words and deeds you remembered.

Notes: some submissions were edited slightly for length, but grammar has been left as submitted, for the most part.

Encouragement

Life advice

Teacher humor

Tough, but fair

Career advice

Succeeding in spite of a teacher’s words

Sexism toward girls and boys

Cruel to be kind? Maybe not.

Teacher burn-out

The Teachable Moment Project is part of our education series, “Learning to Teach.”

Listen to the series at michiganradio.org.

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