QotD: World Teachers' Day

In honor of World Teachers' Day today, tell us about a teacher who had a positive impact on your life.

Mr. Kotary. He was one of my Computer Science professors and he was probably the best teacher I've ever had. Ever.

First of all, he knew what he was talking about. Teaching was a part time gig for him. His full time work was running a business that actually programmed stuff in the real world. So not only did he bring in a lot of theoretical and syntax knowledge, he also had practical real world knowledge that pretty much every other teacher I've ever had during my college years lacked.

Second, he also knew how to teach. He made every lesson entertaining and informative, always taught us something useful and backed it all up with interesting exercises in the lab allowing us to take that knowledge and apply it to a practical problem. He was also known for inventing words. For example, the { was the gazoompie-scoop. Added to the entertainment factor.

One of the best things he did though was to challenge students that he noticed were having an easy time with the standard assigned homework. At one point he gave me a little extra task. We had to design this program that would find it's way out of a maze, which I did (I actually had it done the afternoon after he assigned it. I had a moment in class where I realized exactly what had to be done and planned the whole thing out while he was describing it) and then he gave me a little extra thing, where one of his students had done a program with a GUI and he wanted me to modify it so that it not only found the way out of the maze, it found the best way out.

All my teachers need to be like Mr. Kotary. He knew what he was talking about and you could tell he loved teaching. I learned more in the two classes I took with him than every other class I took in college so far combined.

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend