The Teacher Who Changed My Life
- Nicholas
Gaze
In the essay, "The Teacher Who Changed
My Life", the writer, Nicholas Gaze has clarified how a good teacher can
really transform the life of students. A good teacher does not provide a fish
to eat but he rather teaches him how to fish. So that the students could eat
fish throughout the life. In other words, a good teacher
explores the potentiality of the students and consequently the students become
the successful citizen in the future. The writer himself was a refugee boy who
came to America with the trauma of his mother's death. He would like to forget
his bitter past but his teacher, Marjourie Hurd changed it into a successful
writing. As a result, he became a successful journalist as well as a writer.
According to the writer, he was born in 1939 in Greece. At that time there was
a radical communist movement in Greece due to which his mother was killed. He
was just 9 years old when he lost his mother and he entered America with his
two sisters as a refugee boy. His father was already in the USA and he detested
his father for not saving his mother. As a refugee boy, Nicholas was sent to a
low Graded school for 4 years. Only in 1953, he was sent in an English school
where he met Miss Marjourie Hurd. Miss Hurd was the patron of the club named
'Newspaper Club' and he had been there following the most beautiful girl of his
class. In fact, he why he joined the Newspaper club. Miss Hurd was a very
strict teacher who made her students read the stories of immigrants and
refugees. When she knew the pathetic story of Nicholas, she told him to write
his own story as a refugee boy and the death of his mother. He did not like to
unfold his bitter past however when Miss Hurd insisted, he wrote how his mother
was killed mercilessly by the communist Guerrillas. His article made him well
known all over his school and it was even published in the school magazine.
After the publication of his first article, the writer understood the power of
written words. Gradually, he began writing about his motherland and became
proud on being born in Greece. He even promised to punish those people who had
killed his mother.
Nicholas Gaze became so famous that he was
even called by the President of his country America and his photo with the
president were carried by his father in his pocket till he took the last
breath. Though he did not like his father in the beginning, he adored him at
the end because he understood the helplessness of his father. Even though he
lost his parents, he always found Miss Hurd at his side with her inspiring
words. If Miss Hurd was not his teacher, he would never become a journalist and
a writer. In this way, it is the evident that a good teacher always makes the
student explore the potentiality due to which the students become a successful
citizen in the future.
