This year has brought us back to the homework table. Middle school means “study halls,” and for a while, it meant that I wasn’t seeing any homework at all. However, a plethora of extracurricular activities and other school activities has taken over study hall time, and I’m grateful that the homework has started coming home again. My kids? Not so much!

I’ve always loved school and homework and consider myself well-equipped to handle most subjects. Finding the patience to deal with my temperamental, frustrated kids is the real homework challenge. The kids have complained before that when they ask for help, they end up getting six more lessons related to the subject matter at hand, but I don’t view this as a bad thing, and for the most part, homework time is just another chance to spend some time together as a family.

We’ve had some of our best conversations over “solve for x” or “underline the subject and circle the predicate.” It’s how I’m most likely to find out the little details of what happens in their day. As they remember a lesson, they remember something that happened during that class, or something funny a teacher said.

Just the other day, G commented that one of his teachers is his favorite. I was surprised to hear this, because she teaches one of his least favorite subjects. “She explains things just enough. She doesn’t waste time going over them and over them and over them,” he said. I laughed because that nails G’s learning style to a T. He is a “do-er” through and through. You can talk at him and explain things until the cows come home, but until he gets his hands on them and works through them on his own, nothing will sink in.

Intrigued by G’s assessment, I asked if other kids in the class seemed to be bothered by her not explaining things more. He answered that she always takes the time to walk around the room to see if kids need more help, and if they do, she helps them one on one.

“She’s a really good teacher, Mom, she gets it,” he said. I have a feeling that if school scheduling were up to G, he’d go in, learn the minimum, and move on to the important things, like fishing and his chickens.

A few days later, different subject, and G again announced that this teacher was a favorite. This is the first time ever that G has male teachers, and I will say, the novelty of that alone is making them “his favorites.” One of them teaches his favorite subject: math, and the other teaches his other favorite subject: science. (Science will always be G’s favorite because of the off chance that something might explode.) His reasoning this time was much less insightful.

“They’re just funny, Mom, and class is fun. I don’t know,” was the answer I got when I asked why they were his favorites.

G’s musings got me thinking about my own “favorite” teachers over the years, and I have been fortunate to have many. I owe my career to my science teachers over the years, starting with Dr. S and Mr. G in high school. Hands-on laboratory experiences are what made me love science, much like G. I was lucky enough to have truly great English (or language arts as the kids are calling it these days) teachers all along the way. By the time I was a senior in high school, I thought I was a pretty good writer.

I already had a weekly column back then, highlighting upcoming school events for a community column. Then, Mr. N’s red pen came along. He shredded every single word of every paper I ever wrote and made me question everything. I shed more than a few tears over that class, but even now, I follow his methods and can hear his voice in my head as I edit my writing.

All of this was too vague for G. He wanted a hard and fast favorite.

“The best teacher you ever had!” and he wasn’t going to be satisfied with any waffling or picking two or three for different reasons. It wasn’t hard for me to make the call: Sixth grade, Mr. K, my last year of elementary school.

Mr. K was the head teacher of our elementary school, as well as the disciplinarian. From first through fifth grade, if you had to deal with Mr. K, it was probably because you were in trouble. Mr. K was an imposing figure. Tall, slender and always impeccably dressed, I confided to my mother that I imagined him mowing his lawn in his suit. Up to that point, I could never recall seeing Mr. K crack so much as a smile.

I can still name all the provinces and capital cities of Canada thanks to Mr. K. I learned the most basic laws of economics in his class. I learned how to dissect an earthworm, and his instructions for using a light hand carried me all the way through my senior year of college when we had to perform surgery on a live rat. As I sliced into the rat’s jugular, it was Mr. K’s voice I heard reminding me to wield the scalpel carefully.

What I really learned from Mr. K, though, was that the most challenging route may not be the most fun, but it will be the most rewarding, and in the end, the most satisfying. I also learned that Mr. K did in fact smile, especially when we did well or grasped something difficult. I also learned the value of a dry sense of humor.

Mr. K knew that he was preparing us to move on from the sheltered life of elementary school and into the big, bad world of the middle school, but he was also preparing us for the world beyond school. He cared about our manners and how we treated each other. Mr. K was the first teacher to break up my little enclave of besties. Previous teachers had been only too happy to sit us together. We were the smart kids, the well-behaved kids. We’d earned it. Mr. K broke us up and sat us next to kids that we’d never have chosen to be friends with, the “bad” kids, the kids who struggled academically, the kids whose parents were never around. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I learned a lot about empathy and understanding thanks to that seating arrangement.

I’m tickled to hear about G’s favorites, although keeping up with the current favorite is tough. I know how important it is to kids not to let down the adults who believe in them and motivate them. I hope he has many, many more favorites in years to come, and a few not-so favorites, too, so he learns to deal with adversity. And, Mr. K, if you’re out there, this is a long overdue “thank-you” for being my favorite.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.

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