Douglas High School and Carson
Valley Middle School, are both located in the small town of Minden Nevada. Minden
is nestled in the sagebrush laden valley below the snowcapped Sierra Mountains
and is only 20 minutes by car from one of the world’s most beautiful lakes,
Lake Tahoe. CVMS is the remnants of the old High School that had been replaced
years earlier by DHS. The school grounds of DHS have an uninterrupted view of
the Sierra’s and, in the winter as it begins to get dark, you can see lights
from the snow groomers as they prepare the runs at Heavenly Ski Resort for the
next morning rush of powder hounds. It was at these two schools that two of my
favorite teachers in my life taught. Ms. Hamer and Mr. Collier were both teachers
who motivated and inspired me in my quest for knowledge. Although both Ms.
Hamer and Mr. Collier were great teachers and had the ability to garner my
attention and focus to the subject matter they taught, they did so in different
ways.
My first year of public school was
the 7th grade as I had been homeschooled by my mom and grandma from
kindergarten through 6th grade. Although I had many teachers that
year, the one who made the transition from homeschool to public school a lot
less stressful was Ms. Hamer. She was known to take her students outside to
energize their bodies and minds by having the kids play sports that were
modified to include English lessons. The ambiance for her classroom was very
inviting but for a 12 year old kid, being outside was what we drooled over like
hungry dogs when they hear the dog food bag shake. “Tag you’re in!” a student would exclaim,
which usually meant it was your turn to give an answer to a question followed
by the absolute fulfillment of kicking a soccer ball as hard as you could
toward a large weathered net. I don’t
quite know how it worked, but my brain was able to suck in information like a
sponge whether I was kicking soccer balls or defending the flag of my team in
an unrelated but equally entertaining Mr. Hamer sponsored activity. Ms. Hamer
was very soft spoken although her ability to motivate had her students hanging
on every word that she so calmly voiced. She was a relatively small person
physically; maybe 5 ft even and weighed enough that a 12 year old could hoist
her above their shoulders. Her size was misleading however as the content of
her message and her ability to relate gained the respect of even the most
dispassionate and cold-blooded mischief makers.
Both in and out of class, we learned about Ms. Hamer’s personal life as
she learned and participated in ours. Her husband was a Sherriff for the
Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, and she a part-time Juvenile Probation Officer
after her long day of teaching. I can still remember those little details about
her life and I would be hard-pressed to remember things like that with any
other teacher, especially in the amount of years that have passed. With that
personal relationship in place, I felt the ability to confide in her my private
issues as well as academic issues I had in her class as well as the other
classes I was taking that year. She would stay after class sometimes and help
me with my homework for all my other classes. Her ability to relate to me on
that level got me through that year and left me looking forward to the
next.
It was my second year at Douglas
High School, although I was a junior. My freshman year was spent at Carson
Valley Middle School due to overcrowding from Southern Californians sneaking
over the Nevada border and building houses to hide out in….permanently. During
the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I signed up for Astronomy
since it sounded like it would be an easy class to take to knock out my science
elective without a lot of work. My first day in class, I noticed a tall lanky
white man with serial killer glasses so thick he could probably see the ice
caps on Mars without a telescope, writing “Mr. Collier” on the chalk board. He
had an “I live in my mom’s basement” type of tone in his voice and I was
looking forward to walking all over this guy throughout the year. His nerdy
stature and 5lb bifocals were a clever disguise over what was a brilliant and
dedicated teacher. Over the next few months, Mr. Collier had converted himself
in my eyes from someone I wouldn’t get into a van with, to someone I would stay
after class alone with just to listen to him speak. There hasn’t been a class
since then that I’ve taken where the teacher truly loved his chosen subject to
teach as much as Mr. Collier loved Astronomy. Extra Solar planets had just
started being discovered at the time and he spent a lot of the semester
speaking about the possibilities of these new found discoveries instead of
teaching from the assigned book. His enthusiasm when he spoke about Astronomy
was infectious. I found myself obsessed with the universe and even went on
mini-field trips almost every Friday night to the new Jack C. Davis observatory
that was located on top of a hill overlooking Western Nevada College in Carson
City Nevada. It was under his suggestion that I became involved in these weekend
trips and it also resulted in more extra credit than any one person would need.
During the year, the planet Mars was at its perihelion which is the closest
distance a planet gets to the Sun. With parental permission, Mr. Collier took
us to the observatory at midnight on a Friday to observe Mars through a 16”
lens telescope. As we lined up to see the what was probably the most amazing
sight I had ever seen, he played the theme song to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and
told us Mars facts as we took turns examining the planet through the looking
glass of the telescope. What really took my breath away, was seeing the polar
ice caps on Mars and being able to see astonishing detail in real time. It had
a much more profound effect than watching a documentary on Mars or reading
about a new discovery online. Mr. Collier engaged his students with practical
application as well as showing us his love for the science with every word he
spoke. I relished going to class and if I wanted to ditch school on any given
day, I had to make sure it wasn’t on an A day since that was Astronomy
day.
My years in middle school and high
school were much more valuable and palatable with teachers like Ms. Hamer and
Mr. Collier. They both inspired me to pursue my education and they both gave me
a feeling of fulfillment with learning their respective subject matters. Ms. Hamer seemed to be interested in teaching
her students the importance of an overall education and outside the box
thinking when learning throughout life. She was very interested with our
personal lives and strived to relate with us personally. Mr. Collier was just
as great of a teacher, but he earned his place in my great list because his
love for a single subject. He loved his subject so much that he passed that
love to his students. I don’t ever remember talking to him about anything
outside of Astronomy, but every one of those conversations were very meaningful
to me and put me on a path for a life time love of the subject. I feel Ms.
Hamer was a great teacher because of her love of people whereas I see that Mr.
Collier was a great teacher because his passion for the specific subject he
taught.
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