For two years, William Thomas Sides was listed in Who's Who Among American Students. Now, the two teachers he says influenced him are sharing similar honors.
When the publication asked the 18-year-old Anne Arundel Community College freshman for nominees, his mind wandered back to Arthur Slade Regional Catholic School in Glen Burnie. Now, Ray Atkinson, 38, and Rosemary Wisniewski find themselves listed in Who's Who Among America's Teachers 1994.
"I was really honored that a child I'd had that many years ago and that I would see at different events would do this," said Mr. Atkinson, an intermediate math and science teacher. He has been teaching for 12 years and was Mr. Sides' fourth-grade teacher.
"Sometimes you can tell when you've touched a child's life. Sometimes you can tell you made a difference. But I'm not sure what I did to influence Tommy's life," said Mrs. Wisniewski, a junior high math teacher. She taught Mr. Sides in the seventh and eighth grades.
Mrs. Wisniewski may not remember, but Mr. Sides has not forgotten those days in junior high.
"She was kind of like a mom," he said of Mrs. Wisniewski, who has been a teacher for 26 years.
Mrs. Wisniewski said the maternal touch is part of her teaching style.
"When I'm teaching them, they are my kids," said Mrs. Wisniewski, who lives in Severn. "I treat them like my own kids. I have high expectations of them and I try to get them lovingly to where they should be."
Mr. Sides, of Arnold, remembers a time when Mrs. Wisniewski made his class take a quiz at the beginning of the school year. Only he and another student passed the test. Mrs. Wisniewski made the entire class retake the test until everyone passed, he said.
Both teachers remember Mr. Sides as a good, quiet, persistent youngster. He remembers them as his favorite teachers and said he nominated them because they made learning fun. They also pushed students to excel, using gentle encouragement, telling students it was OK to make mistakes because mistakes were a part of learning, he said. They were people he felt he could talk to.
The teachers learned about their nominations in different ways. Mrs. Wisniewski said she didn't know Mr. Sides had nominated her until she received a letter from Who's Who.
Mr. Atkinson, of Brooklyn Park, said he found a note from Mr. Sides in his mailbox at work toward the end of the last school year. The let ter said Mr. Sides wanted to talk to him.
Mr. Sides, who was listed in Who's Who during his junior and senior years of high school at Mount St. Joseph's in Baltimore, said it was Mr. Atkinson who sparked his interest in science.
He recalled one lesson on inertia in which Mr. Atkinson used a tennis ball attached to a string to illustrate that objects tend to move in straight lines when not hindered.
He says the whole class sat in rapt attention as Mr. Atkinson swung the ball around his head several times before letting it go.
"It went straight," said Mr. Sides.
Both teachers said that they try to make learning fun. For example, when Mrs. Wisniewski teaches about perpendicular lines, she asks students to think of real-life objects that appear to be perpendicular to the ground. As the students contemplate the world around them, they often mention flag and light poles, she said.