Contest time with three winners!

[Captain Pre-Capsize]

With school back in session I thought it would be fun to run a contest about the teacher that had the most influence in your life. Tell us why - tell us a story.

This is CONUS only due to shipping expense. The three winners will be drawn by random.org. Each winner will be able to select one item from our store right here: All Products

(LATHER BOWLS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THIS CONTEST.)

Good luck to each of you!

Let me share first. I was a very average student all the way through and did my part to make the upper half of the class possible. Ahem. My senior year in high school I took College Prep English. I was way over my head, believe me. It was taught by a man who was the most intimidating person I ever knew. Intimidating not only physically but intellectually. He commanded the classroom using the Socratic method of teaching. This meant nobody was allowed to raise their hand. He would simply call on whomever he pleased. In addition, he never uttered our first names. We were always addressed as, "Mr. Peterson" or "Miss Rodgers."

When it was time for him to fill in our semester report card we turned them in to him as we entered the room. Then he would call our name alphabetically one at a time. We would approach his desk and then turn and face the class as we stood next to him sitting at his desk. He would fill in our grade and then (dismissively) hand our report card back to us. After we were seated he would call out the next student, and so on. This all took place in total silence during the hour. A very different atmosphere and quite formal. We studied Shakespeare and other English poets as well as classic novels. All of us walked away with war stories from the class that even today we reminisce about at reunions.

As you can imagine, I did not do that well in the class and yet it was priceless for me. Here is why. What this teacher revealed to me was the whole world of symbolism. This was throughout the literature we studied but is in our world today, of course. Whether in nature, advertising or just life in general, the awareness of symbolism has given me a more fulfilling life. That teacher is the one who made my life better for having been his student.

 

[G.W.]

(Not in, as I've won one of your give-aways.)

Nice story, and offer, Captain. Thanks for being so generous, so often.
To those of you that haven't tried one of the Captain's Choice products, I'd recommend you get in on this offer.

 

[BigSpivito]

I'm in! Even if I don't win, I want to share about Mr. Tuttle.

Mr. Tuttle, or Coach Tuttle if you were so inclined, was my 10th grade English teacher. Coach Tuttle was also the one of the assistant football coaches, the head wrestling coach, and the strength coach for most other sports. He was a larger than life kind of guy, who was an amateur body builder, and full time lover of Shakespeare.

I remember Coach Tuttle for always being a stern authoritarian, but also a kind ear when one was needed to either give advice or just listen. He had one of the best assignments that I have ever heard of or could imagine for a high school student. He gave us a week, and a location on campus of our choosing, to just go write. There was no assignment, no rules other than he would be checking in on us to make sure we were there, and nothing that would break school rules. I remember going to the practice football field and just writing about different songs, college hopes, girl problems, and all sorts of thoughts in a teenage mind.

Coach was always there when we needed him, and helped us to learn about ourselves. Though all of my schooling Coach was the best teacher I had, teaching a great deal of English and letting us learn about ourselves.


Happy Shaving
-Chris
US Army Veteran, Foxhole Shavers Club Member

 

[emwolf]

Wow! Definitely in on this (I just picked up the Lime Shave Cream and was exceedingly happy with the purchase). I was in band and theater and those teachers were a tremendous influence on me and I remember them all. However, one teacher stands above the others and that was my private lesson piano teacher Lester Van Tress. I took piano lessons beginning in first grade and continued up until my junior year in high school when LVT (as he was affectionately called) took ill and subsequently passed away. During that time, he taught piano, but he taught so much more. I learned the proper technique for shaking someone's hand (get the thumb webbing connected and you cannot help but give a firm handshake). I learned not to crack my knuckles, but to stretch my hands in other, more productive ways. I learned etiquette, I learned that to say "pretty good" was "damning with faint praise." LVT was up on current politics (his window overlooked the alma mater statue at the U of I and so he saw a lot of changes through the '30' to the '70's). He had a strong sense of fairness, justice and cared for all his students. As a German immigrant he embraced the American dream and always believed in hard work. He also didn't take garbage excuses. If you were sloughing off on practice, he knew and if you were practicing the wrong way (his practice room was next door to his studio/apartment) he would stop you and tell you how to practice correctly.

He was passionate about what he taught and he taught with passion. He lived with gusto, skiing the Alps when he was younger, taking up climbing as he got older. He wrote for journals about his travels and studies in Soviet Russia, and in post-war Japan. I, and the many friends of mine who also took piano lessons from him, will never forget him. He was a role model, a mentor, a piano instructor and a good man.

 

[RedsFan75]

Love your stuff!

I have two that were really influential in my life. When I was young I had an aunt that lived with us for a while. I probably drove her nuts wanting her to read to me and other things. She did, a lot, so when I started school I already knew how to read, and thanks to her I knew a good bit of addition and subtraction. My first school was a two room school house, we had the 1st - 5th in one room, with each row of desks being a grade. My 1st grade teacher Mrs. Hendrix presented us with our first grade reader, and began passing our stuff to the other grades. While she was doing that I read it. When she sat back down I raised my hand and asked her to do when I'd finished reading it. She commented that we needed to read it, not look at the pictures. I told her I had read it. She brought me up, and had me read it to her. Half way through she took the book and handed me another. I started reading it, and again she took it when I was half through and gave me another. I read up to 4th grade that day. She tried me some basic math, and then she had me sit back down, and later gave me a letter to take to my parents. She sent me to take a test through the state, and then wanted me to shift to the 4th grade but my parents wouldn't let me. So she told me, since we were in one room, I could do my 1st grade work and when I was done with it, to just listen to the work of the other grades and I even got to answer the questions when she'd ask the other grades questions if they couldn't answer she'd ask me. This worked well until I advanced a few years then she'd get me books from the 6th and 7th grade to read.

When I was in the 5th grade we moved, so we changed schools in mid year. I was actually bored in class, so I started checking out library books. The school library would only let you have books up to your grade level. When I got to the 6th grade my english teacher, Mrs. Nantz found out how well I read and at what level I was doing work. She also went to the library and had my grade level restriction lifted and even got them to let me check out reference books and encouraged me to read and explore outside my normal boundaries. She was my english teacher until I finished 8th grade. In that time, under her encouragement I read 90% of the books in the library, studying literature, poetry, art, and including science and math. She pushed me to the point that I entered high school ready for college. I've been a computer programmer for many, many years and I owe it all to teachers that allowed me to go beyond the convention.

Sent from my SM-T580 using Tapatalk

 

[gvw755]

Good idea as grade school teachers are so important but mostly forgotten. In high school I had a teacher, Mr. Lake, that taught us the local history of our state. My state being Hawaii, he went further than just telling us about dates of events and names of people and places. He went very deeply into Hawaiian culture often times teaching us Hawaiian words and phrases so we could understand the way they thought. I remember specifically when he spent a week telling us how to construct a "little grass shack" (which was not little nor a shack). In the context of understanding the culture, only then could we comprehend the events that happened in the history of Hawaii, and to this day, I carry that with me, even though I spent most of my last 20 years here in Washington. A lot of the way I see the universe comes from what I learned of the way the ancient Hawaiians interacted with the land.

 

[ItsTaz]

Thanks for the offer Captain. I'm in.

I can't believe I'm going to go with this guy, but he really did leave an impression.

My final class in college before I got my Marketing degree, I had a professor named John Sullivan. I don't take pleasure in saying this but Jon was quite hated by the entire class. Why? Because John's approach to getting us ready for the real world was to make sure that we could back up anything that we said. To help us achieve that our group presentations were modeled after the idea that we were a group of business people within a company and we were presenting a business idea to the board of executives. The board of executives was comprised of John Sullivan and the rest of our classmates that were not on our particular team. Jon encouraged The class to scream out "bull***t" anytime a team presented facts that seemed like they weren't backed up with evidence. Evidence could be a reference to an article, a publication, a textbook, etc. The goal was to never make a claim that you couldn't back up using credible sources and this was before the internet really came to be. So, each presentation was quite rowdy and a lot of people crumbled under the pressure of trying to present their business proposal in front of a confrontational board (the class). It really was rough and the entire semester was comprised of presenting about 6 proposals in this model.

In the end, I walked away with the discipline to not make baseless claims. Try to read up on a topic before commenting on it. Don't spread half truths. Speak with convictions and be prepared to back and prove what you say. All this is still with me 25 years later.

I almost hate to say this, but thank you very much Mr Sullivan.

 

[Dick peck]

I'm in. Coach Elliot was my favorite. He was my English teacher 7 and 8th grade. He was an excellent teacher. I needed to be challenged in school. I was always in trouble or arguing with teachers.I made good grades but was bored most of time.in coach Elliot 's class I was different. His work was challenging and I had to pay attention. He didn't demand it. He wasn't pushy. Some teachers were friendly some were mean. He was just there to be a teacher. This may not paint a great picture of a great man but he was a great teacher.

 

[Lightcs1776]

Not in, as I need to finish some soaps, but my wife really likes the Parallel 45.

I was a very less than average student, attending high school in the early to mid 80s. I spent plenty of time skipping classes and having a good time throughout high school. I would go back and do it much differently if I could. However, I had an English teacher who was well respected by the students. He also didn't ignore discipline issues. So when I decided I would take a day off, and bring in a poorly forged parental note for the cover-up, I figured all was good. However, when I arrived at his class he made it crystal clear that I best never do that again. In fact, his exact words were "if you ever do that again I will kick your a..." Not only did I never skip a school day again, I had tremendous respect for that teacher, since he actually cared about this unmotivated kid. I put more effort into his class than all the others combined, which wasn't hard considering how little effort I put into the other classes. He would probably be shocked if he knew I was only five weeks away from completing a masters degree in teaching.

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[Bobbers]

I am in. Coach Curry was the football coach and taught History and English at Aquin H.S. when I was in school. I fact just last month I reached out to thank him for having a positive influence on helping me become the man that I am today. I waited 32 years before I told him and I wish I would have done it years ago. He is still coaching with his son at a small college.

Both on and off the field he taught me lessons I use to this day. I had trouble with english and he would have tutoring sessions after school and before practice to help any student that need that little extra help. He also did the same for history. On the field he was a great coach teaching us team work and the value of following the rules and sportsmanship.

Thank you coach.

 

[skibik]

I'm in.

Hard to remember back 35 to 48 years ago and a couple come to mind my kindergarten teacher comes to mind, but it was kindergarten, toys, milk and an afternoon nap. What I remember was she was like another mother. She was well loved as a teacher.

My 4th grade teacher comes to mind also, always gave you a chance to improve. If memory serves correctly he might have been a little nuts as I recall he had an imaginary assistant. I wish I could add more but like I said my memory isn't that great. In high school I wasn't all that attentive in class(I think it is called ADD now) and had a couple teachers that were willing to help out a below average student and were just not about getting the curriculum done. Those kind of teachers were gems and far a few in between.

 

[Captain Pre-Capsize]

*
It is time to celebrate, the winners have been drawn!

We have eight entries and there are three winners. Now THOSE are pretty good odds. The three winners were selected by random.org. Thanks to each of you for entering, great stories all around. Here are the three winners:

Dick peck

gvw 755

RedsFan75

If you are a winner send me an email at: [email protected]

Please include:

1. Name and address
2. Your selection from our store (lather bowls are not included in this contest.)

Congratulations to the winners, well done! Your free Captain's Choice selections will soon be in your hands!

~ The Captain

 

[RedsFan75]

Thank you very much.

Sent from my SM-T580 using Tapatalk

 

[G.W.]

Congrats to the winners. You guys are in for a treat.

 

[gvw755]

thank you for the opportunity to win a Captain's product and to read about everyone else's influential teachers.

 

[Dick peck]

Thanks again. I'm finally a winner.

 

[Graybeard57]

Congrats to the winners. You guys are in for a treat.

Indeed you are.

 

[Dick peck]

I'm hoping this cat o nine tails is good for me.

 

[Lightcs1776]

Congrats to the winners. Another fantastic giveaway from Captain's.

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[skibik]

Congrats to the winners!