High School: Mr. Farrell - Ecology Teacher

Mr. Farrell was one of my favorite teachers. He must have been, because I kept signing up for his classes. He taught advanced biology, ecology and a few other, similar subjects. I especially enjoyed his ecology class, mostly because we went on a few field trips into the local hills.  I loved hiking with him, as he was a very interesting guy.

He was a very good teacher, always trying to get his students involved in their assignments, usually by letting them do something. Instead of giving us a bunch of dull lectures, he would do things like bring in a pile of leaves for us to examine, or he take us all on a hike on the hill behind the school. In each case, we’d spend an hour or so observing and asking questions. Everybody enjoyed these exercises, and we all learned much more than we would have from dull lectures.

I think I was a bit of an enigma to him, though. I was losing interest in school at the time, mostly because I felt all my other classes were exceedingly boring. The teachers all seemed to incompetent, stupid or hostile. For whatever reason, school was not exactly where I wanted to be at the time.

Unfortunately, a single good class could not save my attitude.

I think Mr. Farrell understood how intelligent I really was, and how good I could have been if only I would have applied myself. Occasionally I did, and produced some excellent reports for his class. Usually, however, I just couldn’t get up any enthusiasm.

During his ecology class, Mr. Farrell asked us each to write a report on ecology. I decided to play a little game with him. I had recently read an article about dinosaurs, and decided to write a paper about why they went extinct. However, instead of coming up with an original paper, I copied the article, word for word, out of the book.

Mr. Farrell read the article and loved it. He game an A+ for the assignment. To make matters even worse, I inadvertently loaned him the book latter. He never mentioned it to me, so I assume he didn’t finish reading it.

Mr. Farrell left the following semester, never to return. The rumor mill said he got tired of trying to teach students who refused to learn. He fled to Guam, and at last report, was happily teaching on that island.