A Teacher Who I Really Admired

I recently got accepted into the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) that I will take in Malta, hopefully, this fall. The test involved many difficult exercises. One of them was to pick one of three topics and write an essay. This is the one I wrote:

Mr. Frank Sullivan was my English teacher in both 9^th and 12^th grades in high school. He was strict, he was funny, he was smart and he was encouraging when he wanted to be. He was also a gay man-the first gay man I ever encountered. I owe my writing career to Mr. Sullivan, which is interesting because I was terrified of him at first.

As an assignment once, he had us read the first Sherlock Holmes story I ever read in my life. It was called The Adventure of the Dying Detective. To get us to pay attention to detail, he gave us pen and paper and instructed us to draw Holmes' and Watson's sitting room at 221B Baker Street. He asked us to place the dining table, Holmes' cloak and deerstalker, the famous Persian slipper in which Holmes kept his tobacco and Watson's medical bag, among other things, in their proper place in the room. After we finished drawing, he made us reread the story and then draw the sitting room again. There was, as he speculated, a big difference between the first and second sketches.

I say he "made" us write, and "made" us read because no one would really do it at that age (in America) unless we were coerced. I can't remember what he would do to students who didn't comply. But I think it was something pretty bad, though. Luckily, I wasn't one of them.

I was 14 when I read my first Sherlock Holmes story. By the time I was 16, I had read the entire "Canon"-56 short stories and four novels. Mr. Sullivan never knew I read them.

I remember Mr. Sullivan jumping on and off his desk in the classroom, and alternately playing the parts of Romeo and Juliet when we started the play. I don't exactly know what his point was for that lesson, but I sure do remember how funny it was.