At our Thanksgiving dinner this past weekend, my wife’s family did something that was extraordinary.  They wanted to give thanks to special teachers that they had in their lives by going around the table and speaking about them.  I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately given all of the feedback on my Science – It’s Just So Damn Hard blog.  It’s pretty clear that impactful teachers can make a huge difference in teaching science to our students and making it stick.  I think it’s also important to tell our special teachers what kind of impact they’ve had on our lives. So at the risk of indulging myself, here’s my list of the teachers that have had the biggest impact on me.

Professor Tom Katz (Columbia University): Tom was my Ph.D. advisor, and he taught me how to think about chemistry.  He was the person who got me thinking about concepts that are the basic principles for everything in organic chemistry…not just memorizing individual rules and reactions.  He was pretty tough on me at times, but I knew that he wanted me to be as the best scientist that I could be.  I can still here Tom saying, “Now Adam, what does Pd(II) do for a living?”  He’s retired now from Columbia, but I’m still in contact with him.  I’ve also had to chance to thank him for all that he did for me.  I know he appreciates my thanks, but he’s too embarrassed and modest to accept my thanks graciously.

If you’ll indulge more even more, there are also 2 non-science teachers who have made a huge impact on me.

• Linda Jolly was my first music teacher in elementary school in Chappaqua, NY.  She made me love music – I still do – and she was constantly supportive of me through all of my musical endeavors in middle school and high school.  I used to play in pit orchestras in during this time and had the chance to be in pits for several shows she conducted including “On the Town,” which has incredible music but is a very challenging and complex Leonard Bernstein score.  This was so rewarding for me.  I need to track her down to thank her as I don’t know if she knows how important she was to me.
• Bill Kline was my Lindy Hop instructor for ~8 years.  As opposed to the choreographed routines seen on “Dancing with the Stars” on TV, Bill is a social dancing master who creates the most amazing social dancing tuned to the music he’s dancing to at that moment.  Anything I know about social dancing and the sheer enjoyment I feel when dancing comes from Bill.  I’m currently trying to track down Bill on Facebook to thank him.