Great Teachers

Often, all it takes is one special teacher or coach to set a teenager on the right course. Sometimes they’ll slide a book over (“Just read this”) or say the right words at the right time or dole out some well-deserved tough love. With luck, they’ll reveal to a student the enormous potential hidden beneath a fraught and volatile psyche. Great Teachers: Life-Changing Encounters in the Classroom and the Gym, by Star feature writer Paul Hunter,  focuses on  eight prominent or emerging Torontonians — artists, athletes, a punk rocker turned politician — who talk about the instructors who inspired, rescued or even launched them into their lives. The resulting eBook is a celebration of the special bond that can be forged in high school.

Star Dispatches is a weekly series of quality journalism in ebook form from the newsroom of the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper.