What was your favorite class in High School?

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Perhaps it's because I've been working in a lot of High Schools lately... but I've just been thinking about this today.

Tell us about your favorite class in secondary school.
Be as brief or as thorough as you'd like, but try to include:
- what class it was
- why it was your favorite
- anecdotes from the class
- what the teacher was like
- how it has influenced you

For me, it was band. Several classes that blend together in my mind. The curriculum for my senior year was nearly half music. I took two concert band classes as well as jazz band. Those were happy days for me, spending hours just playing music, immersed in my interest.

Some of my favorite memories involve performing at gigs with the jazz band. I played guitar and bass and loved playing in front of a crowd. Any of the shyness or social withdrawal that I experience with individuals and small groups disappeared once I was on stage. Also, it was in this class where I discovered the magic of musical improvisation. I had played guitar for a few years previously, mostly trying to play other people's songs, but this jazz band class provided instruction into the mechanics of improvising. It opened a big door for me, musically. From this point on, I began to develop my own methods and styles.

The teacher was a singular human being. He was an ex-jazz saxophonist who had lived the whole jazz lifestyle, been through it all, and had now settled down to teach. He was an indescribably cool and interesting character. He had tons of connections in the local music scene, and he was always setting up gigs for the jazz band class to play at. Last I heard he became music director for the school district and now makes big bucks. Quite fitting.

Looking back, I wish that I had more strongly pursued music.... really dedicated myself to it and tried to make a life doing it. Unfortunately, my high school years were among the worst when it comes to home and family and other personal issues. Music was one of my few safe havens. For this, I am thankful.

OK, your turn!

Math class was my favorite in highschool because I love working things out and using my brain. I also spent most of the time studying together with my best friend and he and I would figure out how the equation works together since the book didn't really explain itself well and the teachers usually didn't know how to do it themselves. I don't really have much use for teachers, I enjoy learning on my own. Or with a study partner as in this case Those were good times.

Any class where I didn't have to do much or any work and/or where there was no time to socialize and we didn't have to get into groups... I also enjoyed grade 11 biology in grade 10 because we always worked individually and it was easy for me because I was talented at it.

Of my final three classes psychology was the most interesting and had the best (though debatabley barely sane) teacher for half the lessons, the other two economics and politics are probably tied, economics was more interesting but some of my politics classmates literally could not stop themselves from right wing ranting for an entire lesson, they were fun to listen too.
One of my best moments in school was in that politics class when after minuets of solid ranting about how the solution to the IRA was to send the army in and shoot them, so when he ended the rant with "how else do we solve it?" I turned round and answered "With Love!"*, the whole room loved it although our teacher's reaction was basically "oh god" as he predicted another rant starting.

*A bit of context, my other politics teacher tended to call me a hippy due to my long hair, as a result I tended to play up a few hippy stereotypes.

It all sucked.

By far, my most enjoyable class in high school was Computer Repair. Being a vo-tech class, it was three hours long, taking up nearly half the school day. Though the instructor was often overbearing and unreasonable, we were all as geeky as we could be (including the instructor) and most all of us were comfortable with each other. The assignments were easy, quickly completed, so most of the time we goofed off, played with Linux, did some networking, first-person-shooter gaming. Building up old computers and loading freeware DOS games was awfully fun. I think one of the coolest things that happened was when we got a bunch of stuff from the local Social Security office... and this enormous beast of a 386 file server, still loaded with its original software and data. 'Twas so great being surrounded by an ocean of old hardware, where you could just spend all your time digging through old equipment, or trying to make something work. Wish I could go back to those days...

History and closely followed by geography, science and music.

Had a deep love of the subjects prior to high school and still highly inquisitive.

Math 30 IB and Theory of Knowledge 35 IB

Before high school, it was SPELLING and BAND!! ! But once I got to high school I found that I had a handful of favorites. They were Drafting, Wood Shop, and Art!

These were my favorites because they were "creative" classes and technical at the same time, particularly drafting. I love drawing, hence drafting and art, and I used to enjoy building things even though I never was good at it.

My drafting and wood shop classes were taught by the same guy, and no one liked him much. He was particularly strict, just not a nice man. I hated that he taught two of my favorite classes, but I enjoyed the courses enough to take them anyway. My art teacher was awesome... she inspired me and seemed to love the extremely detailed three-dimensional cities I would draw from scratch.

Drafting is part of my job today, so it has had an influence on my life to that extent. I knew in middle school that I wanted to work in this field when I grew up, so here I am. I hate my job where I work, but I actually love drafting and design... if only I did more of it and less of the other junk I do.

I liked Spanish because it was an easy language to learn and I wanted to learn another language. I struggled with French so much the Learning Support took me out of French classes.

I also like Art as I like drawing, even though it can be stressful, it's fun and enjoyable.

English, I've always loved English.

I don't know. I love my art, business (grade 9 the most), and psychology course the most. Art because I could relax and just be creative without much pressure. Business because the teacher was awesome and I learned so much, and psychology because I'm fascinated with the mind and how much we know that we shouldn't really know.

I liked physics and chemistry best.

I liked physics and chemistry, taught by the same teacher. General themes of the class seemed to center on the humility of the teacher and her difficulty with getting things to work, and occasional outbursts if we irritated her too much! The teacher was in her late 40's/early 50's, very smart, might even fit the stereotype for female aspie, though I don't think she really was one, and never married. The class got me started on a career path I'm still on today, and gave a theoretical understanding which I applied to excess in other classes, much to the confusion and dismay of the other students!

English, Spanish and biology