10 inspiring teachers: as nominated by our readers

It wasn't until after I had left uni that one of my old teachers had the greatest impact on me. Through the sixth form we had had run in after run in, we did not get on.
I qualified as a teacher in the same subject, and I wanted to tell him. His response was 'we have a job going here...'

In a funny way that meant more to me than anything after our long term clashes in the classroom.

On a serious note, Maureen Clarke, geography. Showed an interest in me, not just me in her classes.

I'm also going to take this as an opportunity to praise what an amazing job a friend of mine has done in his first year as a teacher (a few years ago now).

Graduating with a 1st from a top university in maths, he was really keen to go into teaching. Got a placement at an inner city london school as a teaching assistant and ended up working with the dyslexic special need children.

One in particular year 9 girl had been written off as a hopeless case as she just couldn't seem to do even the most basic questions, no matter what past teachers had tried, and as a result she was a very disruptive and aggressive classroom influence. So after working with this girl for a few weeks my friend began to notice a pattern in her work.

So he took home all of her work from the last year and spent a weekend examining it. He found out that far from being terrible at maths her dyslexia meant that the numbers and symbols etc appeared to move for her on the page and therefore the questions she was answering were the not the ones originally written down.

On working out this set pattern, he then rewrote all the next weeks lessons and low and behold the girl suddenly was getting the 'right answers'. By the end of the term she had been moved up to the top maths set and her attitude had complete turned around.

I like to tell this as a good story of how a teacher going the extra mile can really change a students life. Without him, theres a good chance the education system would have written this girl off and despondent and dropped out. Instead she went on to get good GCSE's and an A at A level maths and further maths before going on to University.

Mr Whitehead, my French teacher in Secondary school, was an OK French teacher, but dry in his delivery, too strict, and we all feared him as a result.

He was physically appallingly co-ordinated, and overweight, but nonetheless put himself forward for the staff v 6th form football match at the end of the year. He wasn't a flashy player like the nippy English teacher Mr. Beacon, but he was solid and lumbering.

At first my mates and I wanted him to fail, but as the match wore on and he weathered the jeers from us all, we actually found ourselves admiring his persistence, and ended up cheering him on madly as he thundered down the wing to snatch a the winning goal. That's how I remember it, anyway.

What I learned was that you shouldn't let anything hold you back if you want to do it - certainly not the sneers of those standing on the touchline.

The next Monday in class he was still horrible to us.

Having been repeatedly dissuaded from applying to Cambridge by my head of year, who had an enormous anti-Oxbridge bias, my history teacher overheard me talking about whether I was going to drop any of my AS-Levels at the end of Year 12. She said 'Well you'd best keep history if you're going to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, which you should definitely be thinking of.'

After being told for months that there was no point, for her to present it as something that I ought to be doing gave me a lot more confidence. And she was right because I got in and did well.

"Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall," screamed Phyllis Davis, clasping her ample, angora-clad bosom with one hand while holding her well-thumbed copy of Macbeth in the other.

An unforgettable moment from an unforgettable English and history teacher who transformed the lives of all those her talents touched - a nugget of pure gold buried in the unlikely soil of an overcrowded and underfunded secondary modern school during the austere post-war years.

Her infatuation with her chosen subjects was as infectious as the Great Plague - which, with other seminal events and characters from the nation's past, she brought vividly to life - proclaiming loudly while she paced the wooden boards of our classroom as if it were the stage of the Old Vic.

She selflessly fanned the smallest literary spark, scrawling encouraging marks in red ink across our essays and reading her pick of them out loud as the authors sat and blushed with ill-concealed pride.

It was Miss Davis who formed the unforgettably named Spondon House Parent Teacher Junior Dramatic Society and commandeered the canteen for performances of the period plays that flowed from her fertile imagination on to the pages of school exercise books.

We dutifully swapped our grey flannels for Elizabeth doublet and hose and dirndl skirts for Georgian ballgowns, made our own scenery and lighting, and performed on a home-made stage of wooden pallets donated by a local brewery at the behest of our indefatigable producer/director/writer/prompt and general dogsbody.

With school days almost over, Miss Davis stepped in to save me from becoming factory fodder. She persuaded my hard-up mother to let me stay on for an extra year so she could coach me to become the first secondary modern school child in the county to sit GCE 'O' Levels in English as an external candidate..

The gamble paid off. I scraped through the tests and my ever-resourceful tutor bullied a local newspaper editor into granting me my first break in a journalistic career that was to last a lifetime.

To my undying shame, I never did properly thank this wonderful lady for the flying start in life she gave me. Along with the old school, she is now a part of the history which so fascinated and inspired her - and us.

I earnestly hope, dear Miss Davis, that this belated and inadequate little tribute somehow reaches you - and that, in assessing its merits, you will be as generous as always with that red-ink pen.

The headteacher at the sixth form that I will be boarding at in August inspired me. He'll be retiring this year. I visited his school (it's a school for deaf students) last year in October with no hopes of getting in because the local authorities refused to fund my place. He looked at my predicted GCSE grades (I have just finished at a mainstream secondary school) and told me that I would be coming to his school to complete my A Levels, and told me, "Don't dream that you're coming to [school name]; believe it!". I spent the rest of the day crying in happiness. His actions have inspired me and I hope to be able to help deaf people as he has helped me.

And the deputy headteacher at my old secondary school who always encouraged us and gave us hope. He told us that each one of us had the ability to do something phenomenal, had a wonderful gift and that we had to believe in ourselves; and that grades did not decide whether we were gifted or not. He is one of the sweetest teachers that I've had.

I still remember the day my English teacher, Mr Wilson, put aside the curriculum and simply read to us from Hemingway's Death In The Afternoon for a whole lesson.

It was inspiring and liberating at the same time, because, not only did he communicate a real love of literature to us, but he fueled and sanctioned whatever streak of anarchistic rebellion might be lurking in our hearts.

For many years I avoided reading Death In The Afternoon, although I went through a stage of devouring pretty much everything else by Hemingway, for fear that it might not live up to that wonderful memory.

A few months ago, I decided to get a copy and see what I had been denying myself.

It is rubbish.

Two @ Hemel Hempstead School

Mr.James Chappelow - History. A man from a modern extreme poverty background but with a sense of self and of the value of his work that let him rise above pride. When teaching our A-level course on Victorian history he would tell anecdotes about what it was like to grow up in the 70s in the bottom of British society. It fleshed out for us the suffering of the serf of the mediaeval era or the labourer of the industrial revolution in a way still loaded with meaning after 20 years. Everything we learned of his personal life - as rumours always circulate about teachers - showed him in a good light.

Mr. A.R.Ford - Chemistry. An entertaining and witty speaker whose personality belied the somewhat old-fashioned appearance he had. He somehow had the ability to find exactly what sense of the meaning of a thing wasnt clear to any individual pupil and then flesh it out in glorious colour by some off the cuff comparison.

He also once gave an assembly - a rare thing for him - in which he discussed a situation that had arisen during the war, when a crippled bomber was incoming to a coastal base and had announced its intention to ditch just off the beach rather than risk the runway. He discussed the plans being made, the careful advice being transmitted to the pilot on sea conditions and winds.. and the decision of one RAF mechanic to start swimming out into the bay, to be in position to help the surviving crew from the aircraft as it sank.

Something went wrong - either a misjudgment of conditions or being right in the path of the landing, and the mechanic was lost. His body was never recovered. Mr.Ford went on to discuss how this guy whose part in the war would never have been remembered in the official histories had done something totally unexpected of him and beyond the call of his duty because he felt nothing else would be a useful thing for him to do then. He discussed the posthumous decoration for bravery - but also the fact that life is complicated and not every brave act has a benefit to society, and that we should understand that heroes dont always triumph, but not let it stop us.

"Thank you for listening so patiently", he said. (We were spellbound). "It meant a lot to me", he continued.

"And I'll always be proud of my father for what he did"

We rose to our feet to applaud. Some, wiping our eyes.

When i was in year seven my mother (a wheelchair user) was made redundant and my dad was unemployed due to a severe motorcycle accident a year before. I was caring for both of them and my younger sibling. We were due to go on an history trip but i didn't have the £10 the trip cost. A few days before the trip my history teacher rang my mum and asked why we hadn't paid yet and my mum explained that we had no money coming in at the moment. The teacher said to sign the permission slip anyway and she'd sort something.

the next day the teacher grabbed me at break and handed me a £10 note. "just give it back to me in class with your permission slip. You're one of the best historians for your age I've ever met and if anyone deserves to go on a trip right now it's you."

I seem to recall bursting into tears all over her...

My history teacher was a quiet, middle-aged, Welsh Phd graduate who was awkward and couldn't control a class. We had to call him Dr Wager which seemed strange to us as we didn't understand at the time a Dr could be more than a physician, such was the dull, stolid, collective ignorance of our cohort.

I had him for three years from 13-16. In the first two years I messed around with the other fools in the class, trying and often succeeding in getting a rise from him. The usual stuff; locking him in the cupboard, hiding his briefcase, talking in class. He would ignore us at first, continuing to talk over the rising noise until finally he lost it and went for one of us little bastards in a spit flecked rage. We loved it.

But in my last year of school something happened. I think I realised that if I didn't knuckle down I'd fail my exams so I and a friend shifted our seats to the front and began paying attention.

Dr Wager was at first wary of our new enthusiasm, often glancing at us as if waiting for the practical joke to materialise. But after a few weeks, realising he had a keen audience he took to the task and imprinted on me and my desk mate his deep fondness for 20th century history. Referring to his ancient, yellowing notes and countless badly videoed episodes of The World at War he made history real to us. How many of us can say we are passionate about what we do? I think he can.

I passed my exam with an unexpected A grade. 24 years later I still can clearly recall sitting on those wooden school chairs underneath his long, hairy nose listening as Dr Wager taught me the relevance of history.