To ease us back to school, we asked readers to send stories about their favorite teachers.Here are two (and scroll to bottom for details on sending your story):

Dear Mrs. Miller:

How do I begin to tell you what a difference you made in our lives? You are the one unforgettable teacher to many students in Glenville, West Virginia. At Glenville High School, you taught us to stretch beyond our closed-in hills, to think beyond our small minds, to appreciate the arts and music, to wrap ourselves in books.

I tried to tell my daughter, Lisa, what it was like growing up in Glenville. No matter how often she heard my story, she could not grasp what I meant. To her, Glenville looked like a small town punctuated with Glenville State College sitting at the pinnacle. I tried to get her to see how I grew up with freedom to be a child. People looked out for us. Glenville was a tight community full of love and compassion.

Lisa and I traveled back to your memorial service in 2001. It was there where Lisa met your devoted husband, Espy. He was a man of distinction, well dressed, a little stooped with age. Many of my classmates attended -- Carol, Raymond, Jorene, Karen, Mary Ann and Jeannie. Did you see us, the many you influenced? Did you hear Carol Ford read letters penned by your former students? Did you see the glow spread over your husband's face? He looked so sad but pleased.

Carol Ford wrote: "In the fall of 1954, Mrs. Rosalea Miller took some 30 awkward, loud, pimply, and unappreciative seventh-graders into her homeroom in the old high school building on the second floor. I wonder what she thought! A challenge? Am I up to THIS? We never knew.

"Mrs. Miller went to work on the rough edges right away. She gave us heavy doses of love, time, guidance, and concern, sprinkled with her enthusiasm for education, music, art and life. She taught us to be proud of our 'roots.' She even involved Mr. Miller in her learning schemes! During one sock hop, Mrs. Miller engaged Mr. Miller to dance with each one of the seventh-grade girls, so that we could practice the dance steps that we had learned in physical education."

You taught business, English and French in the Randolph County and Gilmer County schools. At Glenville High School, you organized the first Future Teachers of America Chapter in Gilmer County Schools. I was one of your students in typing class.

One day you were timing our progress. My fingers were flying across the keys when you said, "Stop!" When you stood over my desk, you asked, "Is that correct?"

You didn't preach; you just let me agonize overnight.

The next morning I told you, "Perhaps it wasn't." You allowed me to find my truth.

I was never part of the 24 seniors graduating from our class. I had moved on to Indiana, Pa., in 11th grade. But you always included me in the class and reunions. Throughout the years you welcomed me into your home on my visits to Glenville. You shared your Thanksgiving with Jeannie and me -- the first time I had tomato aspic and oyster and chestnut stuffing. My face turned green. I had never eaten such things. You were happy to hear of my successes and exposure to the world. You taught me stick-to-it, to do my best, to conquer, to excel!

At your memorial service, our classmate Raymond told me it was because of you and your encouragement that he became a school principal. "Can you imagine me a principal?" he asked. Think of all the souls you influenced!

I learned through your letters to your nieces and nephews that you were a complete tomboy growing up -- climbing trees and standing on your head. You loved to play in the creek. I find it hard to believe since I only knew you when you dressed so spiffy -- your clothes so neat and pressed, your blonde hair coifed to perfection.

After cookies, punch, and conversation with long-lost friends, Lisa and I left the church. "You don't have to say anything," Lisa said. "It was all there -- the people -- what Glenville is all about -- through the life of Mrs. Miller. I see what you have been trying to tell me. Don't say a word!"

-- PATRICIA ORENDORFF SMITH, Indiana, Pa.

The story of my favorite teacher -- "Papa" Cannon -- goes back more than 75 years to my days in junior high school in Chanute, a small town in southeastern Kansas.

Papa Cannon was old. At least to his students he seemed old, hence the nickname -- but we all addressed him as "Mr. Cannon," of course.

He had taught math in the junior high for many years and was soon to retire. He was a small and somewhat frail man with thinning white hair and glasses pushed down on his nose so he could see over them.

Papa Cannon was my neighbor and friend when I was small. I recall as a preschooler watching him feed the squirrels in his front yard. He would say, "Now, don't get too close. They might bite."

Papa Cannon was a good teacher. He knew his math and knew how to get it across to junior high kids. He was gentle but firm -- and he had rules that were not to be broken. The penalty for breaking the rules was a paddling ... three whacks with his very special paddle.

He was strict. But he also had a keen sense of humor that reflected his humanity. He knew that the embarrassment of a paddling to a student could be more effective than the physical pain involved.

He had commissioned Mr. Hamilton, the wood shop teacher, to build a special paddle -- a piece of oak about 30 inches long and 3 inches wide. The main section was split into two thin blades spread apart at the end. When the paddle struck a student's posterior, the two oak blades came together with a sharp crack that could be heard throughout the school building.

That loudness of that crack was, in proportion, much greater than the pain on the student's backside. Yet the sharp sound made any other sensation irrelevant. At the end of the class, everyone in the hallway was asking, "Who got the paddling in Papa Cannon's room?"

Despite my favored status as a neighbor since childhood, I once received a Papa Cannon paddling. I had been whispering to another student during class. I didn't do it again.

Papa Cannon taught us the virtues of discipline in other ways. He sponsored a Parliamentarian Club that met during the extra activities period. It was there that I was introduced to Robert's Rules and the elements of parliamentary procedure. In the club's meetings, we moved, seconded, discussed and voted on various actions, all in order and by the book, all carefully supervised by Papa Cannon.

The lessons of that club have stayed with me forever. He showed us how to exercise control in dealing with other people, how to conduct ourselves in public with dignity and respect.

I close my eyes and I can see Papa Cannon after all these years.

I get a bit sentimental as he feeds the squirrels that come down from the canopy of elms that arched across my street. I chuckle when I see the paddle and hear it crack. And I have a sense of admiration and gratitude for his patience when I sit in his Parliamentarian Club.

I feel proud that some of Papa Cannon may have rubbed off on me and I can pass it along to my children and grandchildren.

-- ROBERT C. BUTLER, Clinton