Becky Henderson/ 7th & 8th Language Arts/ Garland McMeans Junior High

I have had a lot of teachers that held a special place in my heart but there is something about this one teacher that I am going to write about that makes me jump of happiness to ever have known her. I went into her class expecting to not like her because I was new to the class compared to the rest of my peers and I actually loved my last teacher so I was pretty upset to have been moved. I thought I would have a rough start. I will be honest though. I was overjoyed by the end of the year for making the choice to move into this class because I ended up loving every moment of her teaching .

Ms. Henderson was and still is my favorite teacher ever and she taught me 8th Grade Language Arts. She has made a positive impact that I could never put into words at McMeans Junior High. She made our class awesome just by being in it. I have always enjoyed writing and reading but the way she taught it made me look at books and even my own writing in a new angle that I had never thought of before. I even found a style of writing that I still stick to today. I always looked forward to this class and I enjoyed every single unit we did solely due to the way she taught them. I have to appreciate here how funny and passionate she was about every topic we covered. The amount of work she put into each day was evident just by her teaching but she often took things to a whole new level. I remember how she would take even the most boring ideas to wildly interesting and funny things that one could never forget. On the other hand, there were often some groans from the students, especially when essays were mentioned, but we all secretly loved her method of teaching. She was always motivating and encouraging us to try our best and I always noticed how quick she was to help a student that was struggling in the class.

The thing that I appreciated most about her was her understanding towards students. I was always a shy person in general, but that didn’t get me out of a single presentation with absolutely any teacher. It wasn’t the same with her though. She never forced me or anyone else to talk in a class discussion but she always took the time to get to know us, even if it meant personally sitting with us outside of class. I don’t remember giving a single presentation in her class either. I remember making a presentation about a book that we read but she chose to grade it by reading it rather than forcing us to present. I appreciated that a lot because I knew that meant she had to put in more work, yet she chose to do it out of her kind nature. I will be honest when I say that she was one of the only teachers that really understand my shyness.

Ms. Henderson puts grades into our assignments because she was required to do so but a few of her words always stuck with me and that was to work hard but not kill ourselves studying for one test. I think she said that before the end of the year and those words meant a lot to me because she was one of the only teachers that didn’t stress the importance of good grades but genuine learning. She was also always cheerful and talked to us as though we were adults that had the capability to think and make mature decisions. There was no one in that school who ever left that class feeling as though they were not respected for their decisions. She made everyone feel like we had a choice, no matter what we did and she often made sure we felt like we were given different options when we were learning too. We were always encouraged to pick our own books for the parallel readings and she would always give us small prompts in the morning that often talked about deep issues that were affecting the world. She would then talk about those issues with us after reading through all our opinions. It was one of those things that made the class so amazing for me.

She also had a fun and creative side to her and it was obvious by just entering her classroom. She had quotes and poetry that was written by her students all over her wall. She also encouraged us to read widely, instead of sticking to a particular kind of genre. I have to especially give her credit for enjoying books that were often aimed at teenagers. I often heard her passionate comments on how much she loved so and so book and it makes me happy now because most of my teachers recommend against reading books that are aimed at teenagers. Ms. Henderson, though, often saw the positive side of the genre and would always talk about how awesome the genre was. I have read some books just based on some of her recommendations and I absolutely adored those books. I also loved the unique projects she would give us which were so much fun. I remember so many of them like the butterfly project which focused on creativity and went so well with what we were learning at that point of time. I especially loved the children’s storybook project where we had to write a short story that was printed into a small book and then the books were donated to one of our neighboring elementary schools. If I talk about her fun side, I could probably go on forever. I had one of my fondest memories in that class on snow day which was a huge deal at my school because we never get snow. It was amazing of her to take us out so that we could play in the snow and she even let us have one more day to finish the assignment that we were supposed to have turned in that day. I don’t know a single teacher who would do all that for her students. I had to write this for her and I feel like this is the least I could do for such a great teacher. Thank you for all you do, Ms. Henderson :)