The greatest teacher

Although Agent 47 laid an egg at the start of this one, I would like to ask a question that we have occasionally brushed up against in the blog: who were/are the greatest teachers in the local school system? It is, after all, the end of summer and teachers, many of whom have been working summer jobs, are now preparing to start their real job: preparing our children to pass the educational standards tests.
My top five are these:
1. Mary Turenne. She taught Spanish like it mattered, requiring students to speak the language from day one or contribute a penny per English word to UNESCO. When she took students to Minneapolis for a language convention, she made us speak Spanish even in the buses on the way down.
2. Kevin Kennedy. Never a math whiz, I struggled mightily until Kevin Kennedy made a special effort to engage me in the subject. I remember going up 2 1/2 years in the Iowa basic tests that were so important to a previous generation. And I can still do some pretty good algebra.
3. Mrs Alice Swanson. She read to us -- the whole series of Laura Ingalls Wilders books and then others. She encouraged us to read and didn't care whether they were Irish Setter books or biographies. So I read both and continue as a reader to this day.
4. Wallace Haglund. I have mentioned before that I was convinced that shop was for people who wouldn't be attending college. Fact is, I learned more stuff that I still use -- electricity basics, layout, printing, basic woodworking -- than in any other class, except typing, of course. Who would have guessed that we would spend the rest of our lives keyboarding?
5. Henry Peters and Jim West. They both gave me the historical frameworks that lodged in the small space in my head; even today, I can tell you how impressionism is different from expressionism and why the period from 1815 to 1848 was called the age of Metternich. And it seems to matter; at least to me.
Interestingly, not a single one of these five would have been considered a friend. I had teachers who became friends, but they fit another category. I'm not saying which is more important, but the ones that mattered over the long run -- and it has been a long run -- are the ones listed above. And I have several others who are close alternates.