There is a tradition, out here in the Blogosphere, to ask five questions on Fridays and get as many people to blog their answers as possible. One good place to look at this is the Friday Five community on LiveJournal.

I’m not sure if Gina was acquainted with this tradition when she wrote The 5 Who Changed My Life, but she followed wonderfully in that tradition.

Gina is a schoolteacher who took time to reflect on the five schoolteachers who changed her life. Following that example, let me add my five to the list.

So, let me start off with Mrs. Murphy. Mrs. Murphy taught kindergarten. I believe that all of my siblings had Mrs. Murphy for kindergarten as did, I suspect several generation of people in the northern part of to town I grew up in. She exuded kindness, the sort of kindness that is so lacking today.

Mrs. Plucinski was my second grade teacher. Like Gina’s second grade teacher, Mrs. Pluncinski taught me, and others in the class, about taking care of pets. I had a pet hamster, which I named after her.

My fifth grade English teacher was Mrs. Bernard. She encouraged me to write, and I am ever grateful to her for that.

In ninth grade, I had the opportunity to study Latin with Mrs. Marshall. It was her last year teaching. She was a strict but caring teacher. She loved Latin and encouraged all of us to love the language and study hard. As my daughters go through school, one of the things that I most hope they will learn is to love learning. Mrs. Marshall helped me to learn to love learning.

Well, that’s four. For my fifth, I am going to cheat and lump several teachers together. Mr. Case, Mr. Neiman, Mr. Ebert, Mr. Bopp, and probably a few others were young high school teachers in the early to mid seventies. I had been told that at least a few of them became teachers as a way of avoiding the draft. They all had a certain rebellious streak in them, which I carry with me today.

So, those are my ‘five’. Anyone else care to write about their favorite five school teachers?