the shoulders of giants

today i was cleaning out my pre-mission emails and i ran across an assignment i wrote for my arabic teaching methods class two years ago. i don't know what the assignment was supposed to be, but i wrote about many of the teachers in my life that made me who i am today. i do stand on the shoulders of giants. and you can read about some of them here. :)

Mrs. Kelly: Mrs. Kelly was my teacher in the Gifted and Talented program at my elementary school in Texas. Although I remember few specifics of what I learned in elementary school, Mrs. Kelly was one of my favorites because she recognized the potential of each of her students. It might be easier to see potential in GT because of their advanced learning and personal drive, but I will always remember her for recognizing what I could become and pushing me toward that. My mother still tells me what Mrs. Kelly said about me so many years ago: "I want to see what Breanne does with her life, because she is going to do great things!"

Brother Anderson: Brother Anderson was perhaps my all-time favorite teacher. I could say many things about him, but the two I will choose to highlight are his care for each of his students and his brilliance. He was my high school seminary teacher, and I was going through a lot of hard things at the time. I turned alot to my favorite seminary teachers for guidance, and Brother Anderson was one to whom I knew I could talk to and he would offer real solutions to my real problems. I respected him more than perhaps any other teacher I had because he was brilliant, and especially brilliant about his subject matter (the scriptures and supplementary material). I truly believe he had the Book of Mormon memorized. Because he knew so much, when I asked him doctrinal questions he would show me where the answers were in the scriptures, teaching me how to find answers on my own. He inspired me to 1. memorize the Book of Mormon (it really is on my list of active long-term goals) and 2. be an ANES major.

Mrs. Cross: Mrs. Cross was my English teacher during one of my "life-crises"--not my mid-life, but a crisis nonetheless. I credit her with inspiring me to be an English major. I loved her class because she made us think critically about everything that we read. She stretched us to our capacity and then helped us see that we could do more. We read Hamlet, and to pass the test we practically had to have the thing memorized--but it is still my favorite work of Shakespeare because I know it so well. I prepared for her class not because it was so hard but because she made me want to excell--not just in her class but in my English major as well.

Matt Grey: Matt Grey was my first religion teacher at BYU. It was a summer term and a freshman class, but Brother Grey did not let any of that stop his enthusiasm for the scriptures. His enthusiam was unmeasureable--and he talked faster than anyone I had known to get all the information in! A close second after Brother Anderson in inspiring me to be an ANES major is Brother Grey, who graduated in that himself from BYU. When I heard the major was going to open the following Fall semester, I told Brother Grey that I was planning on majoring in it. He immediately took me to his office and gave me lists of classes I should take and some of his favorite professors at the university, all of which have become some of my favorite professors.

David Seely: Brother Seely was a reccommendation of Brother Grey, and I will always be grateful I took Old Testament from him. He would always bring up tangents about the OT/ANE in class and then say, "That would make a great master's thesis!" He taught me to reach beyond what is immediately available in the text and actually think about what you are reading. I went to his office several times to talk to him about Jerusalem (I was preparing to go to the Hebrew University), and he even wrote my letter of recommendation for my Hebrew U application (while he was teaching on a study abroad in London, no less!).

Dana Pike: Dr. Pike has been my teacher for a couple of classes now. There are two things I will mention about him: first of all, he pushes our scholarship to a new level. I feel that he is quite demanding for his classes, especially the ANES ones, but I am starting to understand that it is worth it. He demands us to practice real scholarship--not just get the assignment done, but actually think about it, and he structures his lessons around seeing what we learned from the reading/what we think about it/etc, and especially he makes us think about controversial issues within our major and how we are going to deal with these things in grad school/throughout our lives. And secondly, he is the ANES coordinator, and he cares about each of the people in the major like they are his own children, making sure he attends their presentations, supports their efforts at scholarship, and cares about their personal problems. I have had personal interaction with him a number of times, and it is clear to me that he truly cares--even though he is just my professor, he is willing to listen to my complaints and offer counsel when necessary.

Paul Peterson: Although Brother Peterson was not actually my teacher, I worked for him for a year before he retired. Brother Peterson impressed me because he was always looking for ways to improve his teaching, even though he had been teaching at BYU for about 40 years. When I began working for him he was teaching a graduate class on Christian History, and he would often run his ideas for class by me to see what a student's perspective was. He was also committed to lifelong learning and asked me every time I met with him if I was learning as I was working for him. If I thought the work was boring and wasn't learning from it, he wanted me to do something else--and he always apologized when he had a copy job for me to do! Brother Peterson has passed away now, but even at his funeral his children spoke of how he was committed to lifelong learning.

Well, there you go. I have had some awesome, awesome teachers. And maybe one day I will teach too...