The Admirable Instructor by Kendahl

The Admirable Instructor by Kendahl - July 2014 Scholarship Essay

She is average height, platinum blonde hair, walks with her feet outwards like a duck, and wears scrubs most school days. Who is this strange woman? Mrs. Black. My Human Anatomy and Physiology teacher. She has been such an inspiration to me and I admire her. You might be wondering what makes this essay stand out more than the rest of the essays that are being written. What makes this essay different is the person I am writing about. Mrs. Black has had a huge affect on my attitude and outlook towards education. I used to think that going to school was dull and uneventful. She has changed that. I now believe that school is not a nuisance, but a joy. She has done everything from making learning interesting and fun, to staying for hours after school to help students, to spending her own money to throw class parties at the end of each semester.

First, let me convey how much Mrs. Black has made me change my attitude toward learning by making it fun. That was half the battle. B.H.B. (Before Having Black) I thought going to school was so boring. My teachers did the same things but just about different subjects. Worksheets, boring lectures, English, Math, History- all the same. D.B. (During Black) our class did so many hands-on activities it was the greatest. We got to do so many dissections, projects that helped us with what we were learning and our class even went on a field trip to a cadaver lab! Our projects and dissections made learning so intriguing, I remembered how enjoyable getting an education could be. I vividly remember the dissection we performed on a pig heart. We only had the information we learned from class, and a diagram. I don't know if you are aware of this, but a heart looks completely different from a diagram. Mrs. Black made every student feel comfortable with doing the lab, and she helped anyone who needed help labeling. Other teachers I know would just make their students do it and give no help at all. She also made people laugh to ease the nervousness that was lingering in the air. Mrs. Black has made learning pleasant and made my ideas of how much school was a pain, disappear.

During the beginning of the second semester, three classmates and I were formed into a HOSA Bowl team. HOSA- Future Health Professionals is a national student organization that promotes career opportunities in the health care industry and enhance the delivery of health care to all people. HOSA Bowl is a quiz bowl-type of competition where teams of three or four people use a buzzer to buzz in and answer questions ranging from the history of medicine, to medical terminology, to all the human body systems. We practiced harder than and longer than any previous teams had. Mrs. Black had given up her own time that she could have been spending with her family I might add, to help our team prepare. We practiced over 40 hours. That's a lot of time she could have been spending with her loved ones. Instead, she chose to spend it with us. To help us be the best we could be.

On the last day of each semester, Mrs. Black would throw us a party to celebrate the end of a lot of learning. As everyone knows, teachers don't make that much money. They make less than they deserve which is tragic. There was no money in the budget to have a party, so Mrs. Black used her own money to throw us a party. She was going through a tough time. Her husband had just lost his job, she was the only one earning an income, and she has a three year old son. She shouldn't have any money to spend on anyone but her family, but she somehow managed to throw us two great parties. I happened to overhear her talking to a student about the party and she said she had spent hundreds of dollars on food for her classes. It is unbelievable to me how she pulled it off. She must have magic powers. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

I used to think that education was tedious and slow. The honor of having Mrs. Black as a teacher has reversed my whole attitude of education. I think that education is a luxury that not everyone gets to experience. Especially with a teacher as wonderful as her. She has made school exciting and I can't wait to further my education by going to a university and then hopefully graduate school to become a Physician's Assistant. I hope that once I complete my education, I will be fortunate enough to become half the woman she is today.