Writer's Block: Back To School

Borrowed from shonn:

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My year 10, 11, and 12 English instructor/Independent studies supervisor. Mrs. Z was both my primary English instructor for three years as well as my supervisor for the Year 12 IS project. As the senior drama instructor, she can also lay claim to the oddity of having me take her senior year drama course without having taken any other theatre courses, or the fact that I didn't have lunch on the days where I did have her class [English, French, Drama, Physics, Calculus -- yes, I was dumb for squishing courses this way]. :)

A marvel with a blue pen, she'd take forever to return assignments back to us, but every comment that she managed to squish in between the double spaced lines was important; and more so, she taught analysis and evaluation by looking at our own writings and thoughts.

The first teacher since year 4 that actually took the time to go through nuance and subtleties, she managed to break my bad habit of circling around a subject without ever reaching the subject matter itself. (Yes, one of my earliest report card comments included an observation from a teacher noting my skill at this...)

She taught me about expressing ideas fluently; but more importantly, she not only marked my forty-two page test answer booklet on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables but actually pointed out other aspects of my answers that she thought that I could have expanded upon. I'm not sure how many other teachers would have been willing to read that many pages when the rest of the class was striving to write as little as possible for this literature midterm. :)

Although it's been many years since I've had a chance to take her classes, the lessons she imprinted on my mind are indelible. I sometimes wonder what she'd say (or not) at the poetry that I have left.