{"id":995,"date":"2010-09-01T17:36:35","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T00:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=995"},"modified":"2010-09-01T18:08:35","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T01:08:35","slug":"a-teachers-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=995","title":{"rendered":"A Teacher&#8217;s Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_997\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-997\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-997\" title=\"mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501\" src=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-997\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Mike Bellah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Hazel Sunderman died today. In the &#8217;60s, she was my 7th grade English teacher, and, in the &#8217;90s, one of my best fans.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been a published writer for over 20 years now, and I have a Ph.D. in Technical Writing. But I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve learned anything new about grammar or sentence structure since Mrs. Sunderman&#8217;s class.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s because she was one tough English teacher, the kind who had us diagramming compound, complex sentences at the blackboard. They don&#8217;t make &#8217;em like Mrs. S. any more.<\/p>\n<p>I told her so in the mid &#8217;90s when she sent me a note complimenting one of my newspaper columns. I wrote back, explaining how whatever success I was experiencing was due, in large part, to her teaching.<\/p>\n<p>Hazel&#8217;s son Max told me his mom framed my letter and put it on her wall. As an English teacher myself now, I understand. Our students are our best legacy.<\/p>\n<p>Max called today to ask if I would officiate at Hazel&#8217;s funeral on Saturday. I told him it would be an honor.<\/p>\n<p>And it will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hazel Sunderman died today. In the &#8217;60s, she was my 7th grade English teacher, and, in the &#8217;90s, one of my best fans. I&#8217;ve been a published writer for over 20 years now, and I have a Ph.D. in Technical Writing. But I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve learned anything new about grammar or sentence structure since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}