Have you ever had a teacher who just seemed to stand out the most in your mind? Or maybe this teacher took a special interest in you and your success within their class and made learning their material an everyday enjoyment? Not many people are graced with these kinds of teachers but I know one thing and that was that I was one of those students who had a teacher that I could truly call my favorite. Her name was Mrs. Seifred and she was an 8th grade social studies teacher who taught, and still teaches, at HB DuPont Middle School (a public middle school in Hockessin, Delaware). She was by far my favorite teacher. She introduced me to teaching styles that I have never seen before and to my surprise they worked. Mrs. Seifred has been an educator for a very long time and has taught at many other local schools in Delaware. She absolutely loved history and politics and was always on the hunt to learn more about the two and to teach them to our class.
Mrs. Seifred loved all of her students and was able to work with any student’s ability to learn. She was willing to teach anyone that was willing to learn. She didn’t care who you were or what you’ve done; she thought of every student equally and she did not (I repeat did not) like to see anyone get any kind of bad mark in her class. She used to be so devastated if she were to find out that someone was failing or in danger of failing her class. It would drive her to work 150% better in teaching the material and she would do anything to try to keep the student’s grades up. I generally got good grades in her class but that was because I too was a geek in politics and history and enjoyed learning about the two very much. So I knew a lot of the material going into the class but I still learned a lot that I hadn’t known before. When it came down to the subject of politics, that’s when things would get interesting and sometimes fun. The reason I say this is because Mrs. Seifred and I had many different views on a lot of different political subjects. I won’t go into detail on what they are but I will say that a lot of the times we would debate and sometimes argue over these subjects. I look back at it now and I think to myself that I was lucky to have a teacher who would allow me and other people to do this with her and not just tell us that she was right and that we were wrong and that would be the end of it. She actually thought that debates like these were healthy for a class and helped us learn more about politics. I actually agree that this was true.

Mrs. Seifred had some weird, but at the same time fun, ways of teaching her material. I remember a lesson clearly where two sides of her room were split up. One side was England and that side would have to argue the case for England back in the 1800’s and the other side would be America and they would have to do the same things on that side. These lessons turned out to be very enjoyable (at least to me they were) and would actually teach a lot about old politics and that way things were for the time. Mrs. Seifred would also use tactics like trying to compare current events in the world to her lesson and she would try to show how these two things were similar to what happened in the time of the American Revolution. Yes, she would make us do things like write weekly current events which were annoying but not everything involving school is enjoyable and we just have to deal with these things because this is what school has to be like at times.

Besides the fact that Mrs. Seifred taught us lessons on history and politics she also taught us very unique life lessons that would help us later on in the future. She did a lot to prepare and help students get into the high school that they wanted to go to. I feel like a lot of students (including me) actually had a very helpful boost from her to get in to these difficult high schools that many of us wanted to go to. I also feel that Mrs. Seifred prepared me and talked to me about the things that would lie ahead of me. She helped me prepare for obstacles that I would have thought would be impossible without a little bit of help from other people besides my parents. Even though she didn’t fully prepare me nor tell me everything that would lie ahead of me, at least she tried to help out and tried to make sure that I was getting prepared for the road ahead of me.

Sometimes Mrs. Seifred had her moments of being strict but she is still the teacher that I mainly looked up to for help and she was the one there ready to answer any question I had even if it didn’t have to do with the subject that she taught. The way that I see her is that she was a teacher who always went the extra mile to help out any student. I believe she deserves to be on the Wall of Fame for Teachers!