Elementary school teachers sculpt the minds of young generations and prepare them for their futures every year by leaving a positive impact on the lives of many.

The students at Nicholls State University remember the positive and the negative impact that many elementary school teachers had on their college careers. Elementary school is a time where young minds are taught many different ways of learning, which way of learning is best for them and what techniques they will use for the rest of their lives.

Moriah Strother, sophomore athletic training major from Suwanee, Georgia, said her third grade teacher, Mrs. Hutchinson, broadened her horizons and helped train her brain and build a solid thinking process that she now uses. Strother said the things she learned from her third grade teacher have helped her throughout grade school and even into college.

“I know that in the third grade I didn’t know much, but the small exercises she did to help us think beyond what was possible really impacted my life and made me into something, Strother said. “The fact that I’m in college right now and can still give thanks and adoration to her shows something.”

Elementary school was a time for fun, active learning that almost everyone liked to partake in. Recess, physical education, music, art and many more fun activities are requirements that most students wish could have continued into college. However, if it is their major now or what even got them to college through scholarships, students usually found a love for that activity in elementary school.
Quade Smith, junior interdisciplinary studies major from Brandon, Mississippi, first found a love for baseball when he was in the first grade during his elementary physical education and now continues to play at Nicholls on scholarship.

“In the first grade, my P.E. teacher taught us the rules for baseball and we played it for two weeks straight and I never wanted it to end,” Smith said. “Ever since then I’ve played in several different leagues and into high school, then it eventually got me to where I am today playing at the collegiate level.”

Even though Strother and Smith remember a teacher or experience that positively impacted them, some students recollect a specific time where they learned exactly how they did not learn the best way. Caitlyn Carroll, junior marketing major from Mandeville, Louisiana, said that she did not like taking the timed times table tests at the beginning of every year in elementary school because she did not learn well that way.

“They made me very nervous and really didn’t teach me anything but to rush my work and made me not be able to concentrate,” Carroll said.
Sydney Council, freshman psychology major from Douglasville, Georgia, said that her fourth grade teacher Mrs. Bryant was the first person to inspire her to travel the world. 

“She always told us stories about traveling around Europe and this summer I finally got to experience that and the whole time I was thinking about her,” Council said.