This Teacher is HOW Old? — and his 5 Tips for Parents of Middle School/Junior High Students
“I think people get into teaching because of their own experiences,” declares Jan Jacobi, 7th and 8th grade teacher at The St. Michael School in St. Louis.
Mr. Jacobi continues, “My teachers were just the most wonderful mentors. With middle-school kids, I can be open and honest and relaxed and goofy. But my curriculum is very challenging.”
This St. Louis Magazine Excellence in Education Winner teaches a humanities course that combines American History with literature.
My favorite detail about Mr. Jacobi is that he just turned 70. Yup, seventy. “I can’t stop teaching, and I never will. I love being with those kids each day. Teaching is what I love.”
Mr. Jacobi’s 5 Tips for Parents:
1. Trust the teacher.
2. Know that the teacher loves your child.
3. Be in close communication with teachers.
4. Share family issues with teachers.
5. Don’t white-knuckle it. Enjoy being with your child during his or her schooling; it goes by so quickly.
joescheets 
My Creative Writing teacher my senior year in high school was one of these legends! Even her name – Miss Lillie Pearl Helm. She went back before my older siblings who graduated 12, 10, and nine years before I did. She was behind my first published pieces in the high school paper. It led to hundreds of other professionally published pieces. Perhaps it is time to come out of retirement. I have a few peers from high school that are this kind of teacher and turning out outstanding drama, English, Spanish, Math, Special Ed., etc. students, also steering elementary, middle school, and high school students as teachers and principals. Follow through.
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“Perhaps it is time to come out of retirement,” you wrote here. Why not?
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I am warming up here and gingerly writing hunks and guarding a piece I wish to submit to a major magazine. I write comments, as a superuser and some other award, in Huffpost, I comment in Disqus articles, and I comment in AOL as a top commenter. Some of my Facebook statuses are novellas. I am working up to it! I am peeking out. Right now I have two Halloween sewing projects due in the next ten days, today is buckle down to the cutting out and sewing days. I am getting paid for one of the projects.
Perhaps!
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Rereading your comment in my email, I see you asked, why not come out of retirement, rather than my first interpretation. A few years ago, my eight-year weight loss journey came to a screeching halt on a plateau of 271 pounds for over two years in duration. It messed with my clinical major depression and I retreated from my writing and the public. I was getting my mojo back and appearing in public again after years of hiding behind the weight and the depression. “Why not?” is a good and honest question I need to ask while I am sewing!!! Thanks!
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