Tell us about your best teacher ever-or your toughest, or your worst. What distinguished this teacher from the others you've known?
A great teacher provides his or her students with more than an education. My 11th grade AP US History and current AP Government teacher, Mrs. Mulhern, has been this figure for me. On the first day of class junior year, she said "Whatever you have heard about this class is true. This will be the most challenging course you will take here at Unionville. Success is not impossible; you will get out what you put in." She promised that she would provide us with the tools we needed to succeed but it was up to us how much we would take from her course. History, a subject I had no interest in previously, quickly became one of my favorite classes simply because Mrs. Mulhern's approach to teaching was so different than any I had experienced before. She gave everyone in the class a personality test and a learning style quiz and to my astonishment, reinvented her curriculum based on our results. When I came to her disappointed with my first test grade she asked "what did you do to study?" I replied that I had read the chapter twice and immediately she retorted that I was tactile-kinesthetic and that my brain would only retain 20% of the information by simply reading. Instead, she suggested that I type, eat, or walk around while I read. Willing to do anything to salvage my failing grade, I tried her seemingly crazy methods and ended up getting a 95% on the following test. While I think all of my teachers are great, I truly appreciate Mrs. Mulhern's efforts to provide me with an education I can use in and out of the classroom.
