The Way We Were Wednesday

Three of my high school teachers have died in the past few years.  When I was in high school, I thought of them as older and so much more mature, the reality is a couple of them were just 4 or 5 five years older than I was.  I was 18 my senior year of high school, a couple of my teachers that year were barely 22. They had finished high school a year younger than I did, went straight through college in 3 or 4 years.  No wonder one of my high school teachers married a student the summer she graduated from high school (it was a scandal in small town America.) 

Looking back at it, most my teachers were just kids.  It was a rural school district, that didn't pay top dollar.  It was a place that new graduates got there first teaching job - after a couple of years most of them found better paying jobs and moved on.  Some of them stayed, they liked living in a rural area, in very small town America.  A few saw teaching in a rural area as a mission, a calling.  I recall one guy who taught for a couple of years.  His family owned an international commercial construction company, he drove a Porsche. He was very idealistic that teaching in a rural area was his lifetime calling.  If not for a fatal fall climbing in the Swiss Alps one summer he would likely have stayed - buoyed by a family trust fund. 

The way we were was young, surrounded by very young teachers.  

What do you remember about your teachers?