Describe the characteristics of your own most significant teacher...

I'll mention someone from high school, and not from college, since I'll be teaching at a high school level.

Mr. Lugo was my senior high school English teacher. There were rumors that his wife had left him for a truck drive who worked for H.E.B. If these rumor were true, the man didn't let his heartache, if he was experiencing, show. He read to us poetry, and emphasized certain lines that he himself thought made a great impact to the work. Then he'd ask us for our own opinion, to specifically sight something we liked in a poem. After a few days of studying poetry, he assigned us to write our own poem, and even though I pretended to detest this assignment(everyone hated and I really wanted to fit in at the time so i pretended to hate it as well), I put many painstaking hours into producing a thought provoking poem. A classmate of mine, didn't make at all, and asked me if I had an extra poem he could use. I wrote one in 10 minutes(it was very short) and he read it to the class. To my surprise, Mr. Lugo like the short poem I wrote in 10 minutes, and praised my fellow classmate for writing it, even though I was the true author. This didn't bother me however, because all I cared about was that he liked what I had genuinely wrote.

Students in his class disrespected him many times, but it didn't get to him. In fact, it seemed that any negative remarks bounced off him like bullets do to Superman.

What I liked about Mr. Lugo was that appreciated all type of literature. And he admitted when he didn't know something, but didn't feel ashamed about it. He was calm, and patient man who always had a new paperback on his desk.


I ran into him not too long ago at, and this is going to be ironic, H.E.B. I went up to him and gave him with overdue acclaim. I didn't expect him to remember me, and he didn't, but I just wanted him to know how much his teachings and love for literature meant to me. I met his new wife too, they seemed very very in love with each other.