A Great Kind of Teacher

I really enjoyed the story “Accomplice”. In my view, I think that Ms. Hempel was a good teacher. She cared about what her students were reading in class. I know that some of my English teachers probably didn’t put that much thought into what we were reading, but instead just following what they had taught for years. Ms. Hempel actually wanted her students to like what they were reading, and to identify with the story’s characters. It makes reading for class much more enjoyable when you identify with a specific character. It makes you want to participate in class, and class discussion is a very big part of English. I also think that the assignment for her students to write their own anecdotals was a very intriguing one. She had her own accomplice; someone who was looking out for her, and the fact that she assigned this project makes me think that she wanted to be her students’ accomplice. She wanted to know what her students thought about themselves, which really is an important part of supporting someone. I think that a big part of Ms. Hempel assigning this was the idea that she would have wanted one of her own teachers to know what was going on with her, and what she thought of herself before passing judgment on her assignments. I think that because she possibly identifies with her students makes her the best kind of teacher that you can have.

Ms. Hempel reads more like a person than a teacher for me. I still have the idea that many people have in high school, which was that the teachers didn’t have real lives, never left the school, and slept in their offices. I still have this idea, even though my mother is a teacher. I see Ms. Hempel as a person first, not as a teacher. Ms. Hempel has real feelings. She is stressed out by these anecdotals that she has to write, she loved her father, and she was nervous in front of a room full of parents. It made her a very real character for me. The fact that she has to take medication also makes her real to me. She has to have a little help to get through her day, but the medications don’t always help. They dull her mind and twist her ideas into something that she didn’t recognize. That makes her very real to me.

(Sarah Jaworowicz, Post 3)