Inspiring Teacher

I sincerely thank Mr. Hicks for touching my life through English class. His passionate commentary on stories is life changing. He makes what the class is reading not just words on a page but a frontier. This uncultivated, timeless frontier cannot be conquered due to its simple vastness. A frontier that dissolves its inhabitants into something complete and great. Mr. Hicks delves into books as an explorer would travel new land. His persistence everyday in digging deeper for meaning in words, searching for symbolism in stories and uncovering the message within a book is daring.

Mr. Hicks beckons me and my classmates to follow him on to this frontier, so he can train us how to navigate our way. He embraces those vibrant students who want to dig deeper and go farther. Our fertile minds are encouraged to continue on this journey, because he makes himself equal with us. Many times after he states his thoughts he will say, "In my opinion" or " This is what I think." When he says those words he keeps the frontier uncultivated, because he doesn't allow his opinion to become law which means there are no absolute interpretations of a story in his classroom. Mr. Hicks creates a warm, free thinking environment by taking on conflicts in the room head on. He stares down the cold, lifeless faces of those students who delay progressive discussion. For these drifting minds, Mr. Hicks, uses his charisma to captivate them back to the path of progress. One day a student was delaying progress in class, because he made an impertinent comment. Mr. Hicks simply responded, "Decorum, man, it all starts there."

When class ends and I open the door to step out of Mr. Hicks classroom and into the rest of my regular calculated school day I feel confident. I am confident because Mr. Hicks has given me a compass to stay on the path this vast frontier of reading and writing, even when I am not in his classroom. Mr. Hicks touches my life, because he teaches in a way that provokes me to not only see the framework of stories in mere pages of fictional writing, but to see the connection to real life. I took a campus tour of Loyola of Chicago on a normal winter day. The view of Lake Michigan was breathtaking. As I stood there awed by the lake's allurement, a light, christening snow began to fall over me and the campus. I automatically began to think of the symbolic implications of this scene. The christening snow represented me being baptized. I was being baptized into the depths of Lake Michigan. The lake symbolized the immense opportunities that go with college life.

My ability to maneuver through the elements of story writing is intimately connected with Mr. Hicks' teaching. I am gratefully appreciative of the chance to explore the frontier with my adventurous teacher, Mr. Hicks.