This is a short excerpt from my autobiographical paper:

I had a lot of inspirational teachers, but one that always stood out in my mind was my grade one teacher. He was the embodiment of fun and creativity. In fact, it’s thanks to him that my imagination is as big as it is. There was one thing that he always did that made my grade one experience so memorable. He told us stories. However, his stories weren’t regular stories. We called them “chart paper stories”. He was a very artistic man and he could draw extremely well. He would flip to a clean piece of chart paper while we all sat down on the mat and then he would begin. As he told his stories, he would draw them onto the paper. What made it even more special was that he would include us in the story. We would be the characters. He would let us make the decision when we came to a fork in the road. He engaged us. One I remember in particular was about our class exploring a mummy’s tomb. I ended up stealing a truck. We would sit there and laugh at all the ridiculous scenarios our class got into as he drew them on the paper. He made a difference to every child he taught. My mom even remembers come of the chart paper stories she was told when he taught her. By engaging us, it made each moment memorable. So much so that I still remember it twelve years later. This is how I want to teach. I want to nurture my students’ imaginations and engage them in the learning. I want to be able to give students memories that will last them twelve years. I want to care about my students as much as he did. I have so much respect for the way he taught me, that to this day I still can’t call him by his first name.