Myfanwy.

Nature Laura Davis of the Liverpool Daily Post remembers one of her favourite teachers:

"This was a good example of what sort of teacher she was. A boy in our class was painfully shy but knew all the names of dinosaurs so she made it the subject of our class’s “special project”, gave him the title “Professor Philidocus” (his real name was Philip) and told us to ask him for help with pronunciations of words like Pterodactyl and Pteranodon (I just had to look up those spellings, no longer having the Prof around for assistance)."

Apparently, though I only have a hazy memory of this but it's been repeated by my parents enough times, on the first day of primary school during the mass assembly we were asked for the name of a composer and I stuck my hand up and said Tchaikovsky. I hadn't heard properly and they'd actually been asking for a "local" composer and meant John Lennon (this was in 1979), but were nevertheless impressed that I'd even heard of the Russian composer let alone pronounce his name at the age of five. From that moment on I was encouraged by teachers just like this. Not entirely sure I repaid their faith in me, but there you go.