Mark Russell

"In her classroom our speculations ranged the world.  She breathed curiosity into us, so that each morning we came to her carrying new truths, new facts, new ideas, cupped and shielded in our hands like captured fireflies.  When she went away, a sadness came over us.  But the light did not go out.  She had written her signature upon us: the literature of the teacher who writes on children's minds.  Many teachers have taught me soon forgotten things but only a few like her created in me a new direction, a new hunger, a new attitude.  I suppose to a large extent I am the unsigned manuscript of that teacher.  What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person."
                                                             John Steinbeck, "A Former Teacher"