Speak Up reading - 133

Article #133 The Best Teacher
I have had a lot of teachers. Some of them were good, and some of them were
boring. There is one teacher whom I remember very well.
He is the best teacher that I ever had. His name was Mr. Alban. He was a history
teacher. History is not my favorite subject.
I don't really enjoy history a lot. When I was in Mr. Alban's class, he made history
seem exciting. He was more of an actor than a teacher. If he was describing a war,
he would make us feel all the emotions that the soldiers and their families would
have felt. We could almost hear the guns firing and the people shouting. He would
paint a picture in our minds that was very vivid. When I had a history test in his
class, I didn't have to study much. I would remember every word that he had said. I
would see him doing the actions that went along with his stories. He was very
animated. He would shout out orders as if he was a general, or he would speak softly
and reverently when describing the death of a great hero. The most important thing
that I learned from Mr. Alban was that I did really like history. I just thought that I
didn't like it because most people had made it dull by just reading from the
textbooks. History is not just a series of dates and dull facts. History is what really
happened. History is real life. All the historical figures had real families and
emotions. They weren't just fictional people. After I took history from Mr. Alban,
I realized that I really did have an interest in it. He was my favorite teacher, and I
will always be grateful to him for making me aware of just how interesting history
really is.