Put your hand up if you ran from doorbells, hid behind pant legs, and avoided eye contact with grownups as a shy little kid.
Brothers and sisters, if your hand is up right now, you are not alone.
Yes, mute as a mouse, quiet as a cat, I was a short, snotty, bedhead-smeared ghost of a child until about eight years old.
That was when I was head-yanked out of my turtle shell by a cotton-white, curly-haired, crinkly-smiled teacher who pushed me every single day. For some reason Mrs. Dorsman cared, she just cared, and she had me reading to the class, talking out loud, and practicing my cursive on the blackboard.
Sadly, when I was 10 years old my family moved away and we completely lost touch. But the little germs of ideas she planted in me rooted deep and grew slowly as the years bumped on and on and on and on…
Yesterday morning I woke up and found this in my inbox:
— Email message —
From: Stella Dorsman
Neil, I just read the article in the Star this morning about your interesting life and upcoming book. I just need to know….are you the Neil Pasricha who was in my grade 3 class at Sunset Heights P.S.? If so, reading about you has been my truly awesome moment for today. I have been retired for ten years, but always remember my good students and hope that some of the emphasis I placed on writing skills eventually paid off. Please confirm your identity!
Best wishes,
Stella Dorsman
— Email message —
From: 1000 Awesome Things
It’s me! It’s me!
Mrs. Dorsman, you did indeed inspire and encourage me. I remember our class fondly! You are a fantastic and passionate teacher and I’m sure you encouraged thousands of students in your career. I count myself amongst the lucky! Thank you for calling my name on your attendance list outside the doors on that cold morning after Labor Day.
Neil
— Email message —
From: Stella Dorsman
Neil, SO HAPPY to hear from you…..and you’re old enough to call me “Stella” now! I also remember your Sunset Heights class as one of the highlights of my career…not all classes were as much fun.
I will indeed check out your book….I’m very proud of you…Stella
—
Well, we’ve all got those teachers who plant seeds inside us. Maybe it’s the baseball coach who leaves you on the mound after giving up some runs, maybe it’s the language teacher who helps you with that stutter after class, or maybe it’s the college professor whose inspirational talks fill you with the power to follow your dreams.
When Mrs. Dorsman picks up a copy of The Book of Awesome I hope she reads all the way to the Acknowledgments buried in the back and finds the tiny little note waiting there just for her.
“Special thanks to Mrs. Dorsman for pushing me out of my shell in third grade.”
AWESOME!
The Book of Awesome is hitting shelves now!
Sign up for an awesome spam-free email every day.
What an incredible… rather: AWESOME story! I’m 40 years old now, and I have several teachers who have had an incredible influence in my life. I think of them often — with gratitude. I love what Mrs. D wrote: “and you’re old enough to call me “Stella” now!” AWESOME.
My inspirational teacher was my accounting teacher in high school, Mr. Rielly. If you entered his class seeming troubled you left with a smile or at least encouraged. He took extra time to just talk to us, he also made teaching memorable, fun, and he just cared.
I’m currently writing a piece for my blog on teaching and how important this is. Such inspiring stuff for educators to read!
Would you mind me adding an excerpt to the blog? Totally and fully credited because I think (definitely now, after reading your interview with GALA!) you are awesome.
Most awesome awesome ever. My eyes are tearing.
I know I am that teacher to some kids too.
They made me cry more than once telling me how I inspired ans influenced them. And I hope I can continue to do so.
Mrs. Debbie Looney was the teacher who saw my potential even as a poor 5th grade student. She went out of her way to be sure I had the school supplies and clothes I needed to be a good student but also so that I wouldn’t stand out as a homeless kid. She made me feel good about myself becuase she never pitied me and told me I could do what ever I put my mind too. I graduated with honors and went on to college because she beleived in me. Debbie Looney…awesome.
Your most awesome post, yet. As an Children’s Museum educator, writer, and formerly awkward kid, this was incredibly touching :) Keep up the good work, and congrats on your Awesome Book publication!
My “Book of Awesome” came in the mail yesterday. I had pre-ordered it on Amazon.com MONTHS ago, and had then promptly forgot about it. I guess that’s what you get for getting older. That is, if you can call 27 old.
Anyway, I get home from work yesterday and my feet are dragging. It’d been a long day. I open up my mailbox and I see that friendly brown cardboard box smushed inside. I see the return address is from Amazon, and I immediately know what it is. It is now sitting on my coffee table, ready for me to pick it up after I finish this message.
I guess this is all just a long-winded way of saying that I think you, your website, and now your book are utterly and completely AWESOME!
Gotta love “That Teacher”
Mrs. Bonguard, Lake Wilderness Elementary School, Maple Valley, WA.
I had her not for just 1st grade, but 2nd as well. Now THAT, my friends…
Is Awesome.
I’ve wanted to be a teacher since THIRD GRADE after Mr. Kronke showed me just how amazing the career could be. I live in NJ so right now all the school are losing most of their state funding and do not have money to hire anyone new, but it’s still a dream of mine to be THAT TEACHER for someone.
<3
My Teacher was Chris Harris.. a shaggy hippy dude with John Lennon “Granny” glasses…I hated science until I met him and he turned me onto the Beauty of Biology, the Coolness of Chemistry and the Far outness of Physics. Sadly, he died of cancer way too young…If there’s a heaven, I imagine that I’ll run into him and he’ll say, “Yo, Mike…this is Rick Feynman…we’ve been having the trippiest conversations about stuff, man…”
I’m not a teacher but that post still made me tear up a little. Awesome.
I can only hope to be that teacher for atleast one of my students.
amazing!!
Glen Lederman’s UNIX and Script Programming class (COMP CO853). WHere do I begin… I might as well start from the beginning to give you the full picture.
The first time I took this class was in the September semester of 2006. I was in semester 5 of the program. I did very well on the first few assignments. I would get 100% or close to it every time. The reason for this was because the assignments were all Perl. We would make a Perl program and hand it in. This worked well with the lectures because they were almost completely about Perl, and during the labs it was all we talked about as well. When it came time for the midterm, however, I was shocked by a mark of 13%.
The reason for this was not because I didn’t study, far from it. It was because the test was almost completely based on UNIX and the VI editor we program in. The 13% was from the 15% of the test that was actually on Perl which was our near exclusive topic until then. We were not warned of the content, and no practice (inside or out of the classroom) was given to help prepare. Nearly all of the class failed that midterm and needless to say I withdrew because there was no recovering from that.
Fair enough, next time I’ll be ready I thought. Fool me once shame on him, fool me twice… well, I wasn’t expecting that to happen. So, in a semester of makeup classes (about 4 including this one) in January of 2008 I decided to try my hand at this course again (being one of the last I needed). This time I kept a keen eye on this course in particular. I knew Glen was going to do that to the class on the first midterm and I wasn’t disappointed in that regard.
While I was writing the test, however, I noticed the numbers of the questions were odd. They went from 3 to 8 then back to 6 before 10. I had studied UNIX and VI pretty much to the exclusion of all else. Every command he covered in class and all the ones from the notes. The test, however, was for the most part on something else entirely. He would combine several UNIX commands together for a single mark (one of which I got 0 on because I spelt “trail” instead of “tail” in one portion of it). He also had UNIX commands on there I had never seen. I ended up with 34% on the test. More than double my previous attempt, but still abysmal.
I later found out that the tests for this class (along with all the PowerPoints, Notes, Assignments, etc) were originally written by Wayne Collins. This made sense seeing as I remembered many instances where Glen had found an error in an example he was unable to fix and was often asked questions about the functionality or usage of fairly basic commands which he could not answer. A familiar string of failures filled the class this time around but other students aside from myself started to ask some good questions; Such as when he taught some of the material he put on the test. After an entire class of discussion he awarded back 15 marks (out of 80 I believe so about 19% of the test) to the entire class for questions students solidly proved he had not taught the material for. There were certainly more in dispute, but he vaguely pointed to obscure mentions to the rest and left it at that.
Even though it didn’t look good, I decided to stick with it this time around and see it though. Who knew, maybe I could recover from that mess and if I got a combined 60% on my tests I might even get a good mark from all my perfect assignments. I made sure I talked to Glen far in advance of the final this time. I compiled tens of typed pages from notes to assignments to detailed lists of UNIX commands etc. I then brought this to Glen and asked if I was missing anything. I wanted to be sure I had all the right material in front of me when I studied to make sure I had the best chance of passing.
He told me that 40% of the final test was on Regular expressions and that he would not make us a sample test to work on (perhaps because he didn’t write the real test either) nor would he comment on my study notes but he did say x% will be on Perl, x% on Unix etc. Now if you don’t know anything about Regular expressions I will tell you they are considered by some to be an art form. They take years to learn and use comfortably. We spent one class covering them.
Needless to say I did not do well. Glen’s entire class did poorly (save for those who had previous knowledge on the subjects) and he belle curved the class to keep under the radar. I did not have a high enough mark for his curve so I failed. I found out later when I worked at the math department that his class was in (at the time) the top 5 highest failure rates in the entire college. Something like 40% of all his students in the class failed. Surely if he had not curved the marks he would be in contention for the number one spot.
I have tried to take this class two or three times since then, and have been told it is either not running or canceled (such as last September) because not enough students registered. This September I specifically requested from both my program coordinator (Kristin Bolstad) and the night school coordinator (Dennis Angle) that the course be available because it is now the very last thing between me and my diploma. I was told by Dennis “We are expecting this course to run”. I was happy for a couple days until I got a message on my phone saying the course was canceled. I was furious and told them both that it was “absolutely unacceptable. I am trying desperately to finish this class and move on with my life and it is ridiculous that Mohawk still cannot provide me with the opportunity to finish my diploma in THEIR OWN timeframe!” They then started the course the next week, and contacted all the other fifteen or so students but “forgot” to tell me. I found out 4 hours before the first class and luckily made it on time.
I have been watching Glen like a hawk since then. I have made sure I write down every command he even mentions in any language or environment. I even keep track of his mistakes each class, which I can list some excerpts from. Highlights include:
• He was unable to use the help to effectively find information on the substitution command (wasted 5 minutes)
• He was unable to load or use the vimrc example file which we are suppose to include in all our work
• Once he finally got it open this file included at least 1 command (ruler) he did not know the purpose of or even what it did
• Unix starter notes had a syntax error on line 2 he could not fix (a student later pointed out his error and fixed it for him)
• He did not know what the –l option on his ls (a very common) command did and even after checking the manual he still couldn’t tell us
• A link to info worth 25% of the 1st assignment was broken
The list goes on and on. Keep in mind these are only observations from this time around. I wish I kept such detailed records of previous attempts at this class. From my observations this class was clearly originally designed by Wayne Collins and then never touched by Glen, only administered. He clearly does not know all of the material in the course. The way he runs this class, it is nearly impossible to pass unless you have previous knowledge of the course. For example, our assignment one was due at the end of week three (in which he was teaching if statements). To do the assignment you must write HTML to a file dynamically using Perl and a UNIX command and visitors can see the results in an HTML page. File Input / Output, a topic absolutely integral to your successful completion of this assignment, is not even touched until week four (our class tomorrow).
Glen would have happily not even touched the Unix starter and VI introduction notes (which were on the course page as being part of weeks one and two) unless I sent him the email I sent him the day before week three saying “I was wondering when you were planning on going through the Unix Starter and Using Vi notes with the class. The lectures have been nearly all about Perl so far and seeing as the midterm is only going to be about 15% Perl maximum it seems crazy to skip over those lessons. Please spend time on these subjects comparable to their weight on our mark to give us the best chance of doing well on the midterm that is quickly approaching.”
Each of the midterms and finals in his class are closed book. No notes, help documents etc. are allowed. Memorization is usually not required in my program but be he relies on it in order to make his tests “tougher”. He is then unforgiving on his marking, even in light of the fact we are working completely from memory.
For the life of me I cannot find a reason why we should not be able to bring our notes to the tests. In a modern day, real life situation there will never be a time when access to the internet or to reference material is not available so to what purpose does depriving us of these on the test have? A true test of a software developer is not his memorization of the syntax of a given language but his ability to apply problem solving techniques in any language required. It seems unfair to expect us to memorize the majority of the commands of both VI and UNIX plus the syntax of the entire Perl language to pass his test.
In the end Glen Lederman is a horible teacher and shame on Mohawk College for ever putting this doofus in front of a classroom of students.
Hi Neil,
I don’t know if you remember me but I went to Sunset Heights as well and was in your class. I came across this blog after seeing you one morning on Breakfast Television. I was half asleep when I thought I heard your name but wasn’t sure. So I woke up and kept watching and sure enough it was you. Congratulation on your book!
After reading this blog I found myself looking back and remembering all the teachers that made a difference in my life and helped me along the way. You never seem to realize how important they are to you until you get where you are going in life.
jan gerrick, ftw.
Oh, I loved reading this! So Awesome, indeed!
My awesome teachers were a huge reason why I became a teacher. :)
Mine was my 4th grade teacher…who I just saw the other day…SHE REMEMBERED ME!! She had things called cookie books and they were named after different cookies(sugar, peanut butter,etc.) and when we finished these books she’d make us the best cookies ever that were the size of my head!! It was great, and, the best thing, she still used the dunce cap!! It was great to see her though and when i saw her not too long ago she was getting ready to go home and make those cookies!!
SERIOUSLY AWESOME!!
My awesome thing – today I went to water my plants but no flow from watering can. Was it blocked as usual by a leaf? Took the spout off, only to discover a sleepy young snail making such an effort to work its way out of the spout! What a place to sleep. The watering could wait…
The first time i came across “The book of Awesome” I was at a book store in Victoria and as soon as i saw the title i knew i was about to read something truely awesome. I could honestly relate to every single one of the awesome points. It totally made my day. Needless to say i bought the book and shared it with my family. I loved it so much in fact that i ended up buying it for 3 of my friends and then they ended up doing the same thing for their friends.
This book really shows how its the simplist things in life that are just pure awesome.
Thank-you Neil for bringing these little joys to my attention.
Neil,
This is the best regards you can pay to your teacher! Hope I become as successful as you are to repay my dues to mine!!
ey por favor pongan el libro awesome 2 teacher book pliss con las respuestas para hacer mis tareas
Mr. Cathcart!
Lol and you still didn’t call her Stella. :P
It took me back to my primary school. When I was a pupil I often made troubles. I admit I’m not a good student. Funny.
Mr. C’s Grade Three class, made me love Writing and such, plus, He had a puppet named Alistair, with big goofy eyes, floppy hair and a silly squeeky voice that made me look forward to Math. Oh yeah, That class was something, and now I get to be a student teacher for that very same class and teacher, It’s soooo much fun~!
I was as shy. Grade 3, Mrs. Cambell’s, the greatest!
The dawning of the women’s lib movement, Grade 6 Dolly Hopkins and Grade 7, Ms. Yvonne Hart-up. All awesome! There were many in junior high, but we’re talking elementary I think.
And thanks for sharing the email letters from your awesome teacher.
To all those who care to give a care with heart~ thank you~ you literally saved my life!
God Bless.
Mach Sie weiter so work.i will Rückkehr often.
Ms. Rain :) now known as Mrs. Groves :) kindergarden was my favorite! I graduated high school recently an was at the river with a friend and she swam up to me and asked me if I remembered her! I couldn’t help but do a happy dance :)
Her name is Ms Holliday, she is the best teacher ever. In so many ways, she even let me touch her phone. And when I’m in grade 10, I will be her co-op student. Plus, I wanna go back and teach there, so when I’m like 22 she’ll be 36. So only 9 more years. It will be funny to call all my old teachers by their first names. :D
Hi there, everything is going nicely here and ofcourse every one is sharing information, that’s actually good, keep up writing.
Oh my goodness… I was so shy as a kid my classmates and some family members thought I was mute. Mrs. Freeman, my 5th grade teacher took the initiative to get me help outside of class, she just really cared :’) If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have gotten the courage to begin speaking by myself in grade 6, when I was 12 years old. I mean I still struggle in speaking today, at 17 years old, but I’m still working on it and I can’t let it get me down. Thank you for sharing this! Thanks Mrs. Freeman!
There are many ways to create a truly memorable and beautiful baby
shower cake, and it is important to consider this special desert carefully.
● If the soon to-be-parents are expecting twins, then implementing the mirror image idea for centerpieces will work just fine.
Hence baby shower gifts meant for the baby are more common.