When author Andrew Forrester gave a heartfelt shoutout to his elementary school teacher in the acknowledgments of his debut novel, he never imagined what would happen next. A good teacher can have a huge impact on a student's motivation and development. In 2025, a systematic review published in the European Journal of Psychology of Education found that teacher-related factors rank among the strongest influences on academic motivation, with supportive relationships and positive encouragement helping students engage more effectively with learning.
The impact those teachers have can linger long after students leave the classroom. A former English teacher himself, Forrester has been writing seriously for about a decade. However, his love of literature stretches back even further, nearly 30 years in fact, to his time at Ponderosa Elementary in Spring, Texas.
"I really loved my elementary school," he told Newsweek. "It was full of wonderful, committed teachers. I have only positive memories from my years there." Chief among them was his fourth-grade teacher, Ms.
At the time, Forrester was reading books like Animorphs, Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet, and The Chronicles of Narnia. Black's classroom that he took his first tentative steps toward finding his own voice as a writer. "That was the first year that writing creatively felt like something people actually did in the world (for money!), and the first time I realized it could be done for fun," he said.
"I remember the first piece of fiction I ever wrote in Ms. Black's class was called Freezing, about a shipwreck off the coast of Antarctica. I think it was a page long, but it was enough to get me started." Forrester remembers Ms.
Black as someone who encouraged every student to write. "I remember knowing that she loved stories, and feeling like that reflected something in myself. Her whimsical enthusiasm for the books we were reading and her commitment to making them come alive felt familiar, and seeing how she embodied that passion gave me permission to do the same." He said Ms.
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