On the first day of high school, my social studies teacher approached me as I entered the room and gently placed her hands on my shoulders. She looked me in the eyes and slowly asked, "are . . . you . . . the . . . new . . . E-S-L . . . student?"

She actually turned out to be a very nice lady and it was (is still?) a very (very, very) white school district, but still . . . .

Anyway, by second semester she would sometimes ask me if I wanted to teach the class. I think part of it was because she couldn't get me to stop talking.

Another social studies teacher told me that I would someday be a teacher and it turns out she was right, even if I'm trying to become something else.

In general, I had a pretty positive experience in school, though I remember teachers always going easy on me and letting me do pretty much whatever I wanted. I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, particularly because I've always learned the most from teachers who didn't just challenge me, but actively went out of their way to kick my ass. Now, I recognize how much extra effort that must have been, but I do value that effort much more.

I think that's why I often pushed my own students fairly hard and also why I stressed the importance of acceptable English pronunciation too. I've found that people will quickly look beyond appearance if one sounds like a local, or at least not "too foreign".