To the Teacher Who Changed My Life 感恩吾师.docVIP

To the Teacher Who Changed My Life 感恩吾师 　　Neal Tonken taught me English in 10th grade. He changed my life. He died last week. I don’t remember what he taught me about how to start an essay， but that’s the way he would have started it. 　　He was clear and direct in his writing. Our first day of class in 1984 was his first day too. He’d been a lawyer and chucked1） it all to teach. He brought a bag of bread， a jar of peanut butter， and a jar of jelly. He asked us to describe how to make a sandwich. Then he read our instructions out loud， following along literally， placing the jar on top of the bag of bread. We’d forgotten basic elements like removing the bread from the bag or taking the lids2） off the jars. 　　“Dear John， How nice to hear from you，” starts a letter he wrote me in 1991. “Don’t choose law.” Direct. Clear. My letter that prompted his response was the opposite. It was a mess of perfumery and words stacked on top of each other. If it had been an email， it would have triggered his spam filter3）. I’d just gotten my first job as a secretary and mentioned in passing4） I might try to either write or go to law school. His response was advice but also an example. 　　I’d written that letter to thank him. I learned later that lots of students had done the same. “My interest in literature and learning started in your class，” I wrote. I can’t remember much from high school―too many sports concussions5）， maybe―but I can remember when that interest in learning arrived. After Mr. Tonken died， I thought maybe I’d imagined it， so I excavated6） the 30-year-old copy of Pride and Prejudice from my shelf and looked at my notes inside. 　　I wandered lonely as a cloud7） in 10th grade. I wrote computer programs and played computer games and sports. My report cards from that period show that I glided8） along with only the mildest interruptions from applied effort. “John： Who are you？ Where were you？” read the remarks next to the “unsatisfactory” grade I received from my upper sch