Ron Clark writes the following in his book, “The Excellent Eleven” (a book on teaching):

Mrs. Owens scared the death out of me. She taught me biology, chemistry, and physics in high school, and those were three years I spent in complete fear of her wrath. Each day I would walk in Mrs. Owens’s classroom to be met with her intense face, those piercing eyes hidden below her strong brow and that gray hair swooping upward to give her already tall stature even more of an ominous presence.

Yeah, I was scared.

Her appearance, however, was only the beginning. Mrs. Owens was the most demanding individual I have ever met. She would often declare in her bellowing voice, “I insist that you all succeed! Now apply yourself!”

Her tests were brutal, and taking notes was a nightmare. I would have to run from my third period class to get to her room, and before I even made it, and before the bell had run, she would already be lecturing away.

My classmates and I would be falling over one another to get in our seats and get started. Her room had chalkboards on all four walls, and she would fill up every inch of space on them, talking away all the while about grams, molecules, and weights. She would then pause, stand upright, look around and finally say with intensity, “I need board space.”

After all I went through during those three years, I was surprised to find that once I started teaching, I drew one very important lesson from Mrs. Owens:

When you are dealing with children, above all else you must have passion. I learned more from Mrs. Owens than any other teacher I have ever had. Her passion and enthusiasm for her subjects were infectious, and we all worked three times as hard in her class as we did in the others.

I remember one time when Mrs. Owens was having problems with her back. She came to school on a stretcher (no exaggeration) and, lying flat on her back, wheeled herself around the room from chalkboard to chalkboard. She claimed she would let nothing short of death come between her students and their education.