Unforgettable Miss Bessie

1. Summarize the reading, what did the author say?

Unforgettable Ms. Bessie is a meaningful narrative about Carl’s favorite teacher. Carl Rowan favorite teacher’s full name is Bessie Taylor Gwynn, she taught Carl many things and there are many reasons why Ms. Bessie is Carl’s favorite teacher.

Carl graduated from Bernard High School in McMinnville and there he met Ms. Bessie taught the following subjects like English, Civics and History. The author she recommended to read are Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, Booker T. Washington, Shakespeare and Thoreau, Samuel Pepys, William Cullen Bryant, Brontës, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and other classical authors.

Another impressive thing Ms. Bessie did is she smuggled books from the while library because black Americans were not allowed inside the library except to mop floors or dust tables. Ms. Bessie always told her students that if you don’t read, you can’t write, and if you can’t write, you might as well stop dreaming.

Ms. Bessie and author had a profound relationship. We can know that because Ms. Bessie wrote a note to the author that she loved his writing in the Nashville Tennessean. She wrote that I ‘m so proud to read your column in the Nashville Tennessean.

Five years later, Ms. Bessie died in 1980, at age 85 and hundreds of her students mourned her death. They loved her because they were taught many things from her and was inspired by her to get rid of poverty and her students became doctors, dentists and college professors because she inspired them. The author said the real measure of a teacher is somebody who is wise, educated, and warm-hearted.

2. YOUR personal response to the reading.

The thing that I knew and realized most is that there will be always light at the end of the tunnel if you keep going forward without giving up. “If you are not brave enough, no one will back you up”. Even though Ms. Bessie didn’t get her a proper salary, she changed children’s lives who didn’t get support from their parents. If there were nobody like Ms. Bessie around them, they would have not enough gotten out of horrifying poverty.

For instance, most of backward countries, there are millions of kids who needs teachers like Ms. Bessie. I think government needs to take care and give more education efforts on them. However, I hope that more teachers will be motivated to teach like Ms. Bessie.

Thank you for take your time to reading my personal response.