Do Teachers influence your future profession?

Today my daughter Gaby who just started middle school told me that they changed one of her favorite teachers. He was her Social Studies Teacher and she told me that this year for the first time she was liking the class.  However this teacher, was actually a Math Teacher who had been assigned as a temporary teacher to give the Social Studies Class until they were able to hire a permanent teacher.

I do understand how a Math teacher should really be teaching math and fortunately he was able to get a job teaching Math at another school. I mean, if he was a good teacher teaching Social Studies, I bet he will be an amazing teacher teaching Math.

What got me sad though was my own memories of Middle School. How my 6th grade teacher was a History/Social Sciences Teacher and how she was so mean. How I hated her, and how much I hated Social Studies since then.  This got me thinking. If I hate Social Studies because I had an awful teacher, would I love the class had I gotten an awesome teacher?

On all my years of Study, including College, I only recall 2 good Social Studies/History Teachers. My eighth grade Social Studies teacher who was fairly nice and my College History Professor who I had for only one semester. I remember going to that History class in College and thinking that I wished I had that teacher since I was young. He was amazing and gave the class as if it was all some gossip, so it was really fun. But had it been too late for me? I have all these years of history lessons with horrible, mean or deathly boring teachers and it left me ignorant on the subject. I did not learn Geography, or History, or Social Studies all through my teenage years so now when I read the news paper or try to help my daughter with homework I feel dumb. I don't know almost anything. So how am I supposed to learn years of History Lessons now? When I really don't care enough to learn it. I just give up on it and maybe grasp a thing or two from my daughter's homework throughout the years.

Then I questioned myself, are teachers really that much of an influence in a child's life? I always thought that the course of study one chooses was mainly based on a basic inclination that we are born with, some kind of innate skill. But this made me doubt my theory. What if a child with a natural ability in a particular subject, say math for example, what if all his life his Math teachers were mean and even abusive to him. What if never in his life he had a nice inspiring teacher on that subject? Would this child avoid math in his career even if mathematical skill was natural in him?

I always found that my favorite teachers growing up where English teachers, I absolutely LOVED all my English teachers and what I Love the most is to write so it makes sense. However when I was in college, I had a horrible English Teacher who discouraged me from writing, not because she said I was a bad writer but because she thought I had a "disturbed mind" when I wrote. This teacher discouraged me to the point that I stopped writing for over 10 years. It was only after I got inspired by other mentors, friends which in a way are teachers as well even if not in a classroom, that I was able to start writing again.

Did I see my English Teachers as Amazing Teachers because they were teaching me my favorite subject? Or did English become my favorite subject because I had amazing Teachers?

What do you think molds us more? What experiences did you have growing up? What do you think influences more our decisions? Our innate passions? Or Inspiring teachers?