This week is Teacher Appreciation Week. I hope students and parents take this week to say thank you to the people who work long, often thankless, hours shaping our children’s futures. These are the teachers who inspired me.
Like my older brother Tony, I’d been in the gifted and talented program at my old school in Norfolk, Va. So when we moved to Novato in 1976, my third-grade teacher, Ms. Hutchinson, saw something worth cultivating in me. Not only did she challenge me, but she had me help my struggling classmates. She’s the one who recommended I be promoted from third grade to fifth.