Poll: Two-thirds remember teacher who changed their lives

Or maybe all of those things.

Most people say they remember a teacher from their school days who made a difference in their lives, an AP-AOL News poll found. For many, that teacher connected with them on a personal level far beyond the class subjects.

“She took the time to listen to a student and ask questions and she really cared,” said Diana Jackson, a 57-year-old account manager from San Antonio. “She had no qualms if you wanted to stay after school and talk, it didn’t have to be about her class. The last day of school, I was crying.”

Almost two-thirds in the poll, 63 percent, said they remember a teacher who changed their lives.

Dolphie Potter, a mother of two from Jacksonville, Fla. who now works in sales, recalls being told by a school counselor that test results suggested she should go into a mechanical field.

Her world history teacher sensed this advice, on top of other pressures, had upset her. Potter, who had just lost her parents, was living with relatives, attending a new school and looking for encouragement.

“It’s only 10th grade,” the teacher told her. “Be what you want to be.”

“I was alone and the new kid,” Potter said. “He made me feel like I was not an idiot.”

Teachers often are remembered for lessons that have nothing to do with school subjects, said David Inaba, a 39-year-old resident of Riverside, Calif. He had a sixth grade teacher who made one class about bullying in the classroom.

“A little girl was getting picked on,” Inaba recalled, so the teacher used the rest of the school day to talk about the damage done by picking on a classmate. “She went out of her way to show us what people were doing to this little girl, that what you do affects other people. It made me stop and think.”

Almost half of those polled pointed to a high school teacher who changed their life. Some mentioned elementary school teachers, middle school teachers and college teachers. Women were more likely than men to remember an elementary school teacher who changed their lives.

Sharon Clark, a dental assistant from Florence, Ky., remembers an elementary school teacher who found ways to make each one of her students feel special. And she’s confident that good teachers like her aren’t getting paid what they deserve.

“They’re helping form the future leaders of our country,” Clark said. “A lot of children come from broken homes and are being raised by a single parent. They don’t get the attention they need, the help they need, the family is just not what it used to be.”

The effects of a memorable elementary school teacher were not evident until years later for Stewart Fletcher, a homemaker from Suwannee, Ga.

“She was kind, she was loving, and positive, and you were happy to go to school every day. She made everyone feel like they were successful and a winner. I just loved her, I grew up and wanted to be her,” said Fletcher, who for a time was an elementary school teacher herself.

The school systems sometimes have a hard time attracting the best teachers — especially math and science teachers — because they can earn far more money in other fields, said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in education.

“When women had fewer opportunities, they very often went into teaching,” Loveless said. “Many women today are going into higher paying professions like law or medicine who might have gone into teaching years ago.”

The AP-AOL News poll of 1,000 adults was taken Aug. 9-11 by Ipsos, an international polling company. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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On the Net:

Ipsos: http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com

Interactive poll results: http://wid.ap.org/polls/050816school/index.html