Thanking their teachers ― what people say

Think about your favourite teacher from your school days. What made them so good? Perhaps they inspired you to love a subject that has since defined your career. Maybe they taught you something about life. Maybe you didn’t realise how important their teaching was until later in life. Did you get a chance to thank them?

These are the questions we asked via our website during October when we invited people to write ‘thank you’ notes to their favourite teachers, as part of our ongoing work to raise the status of teachers. So what did people write? 

There are those who engaged with a certain subject in a profound way. The most touching example is provided by one contributor, Sally, writing about her English teacher. “You introduced me to the First World War poets and I was forever lost,” she writes. “For that joy I thank you over and over. A shared love of Owen’s poetry was a strong factor in bringing myself and my husband together.”