I think everyone has that one teacher who really pushed them... taught them more than the subject of the class... provided an example on how to live life and learn their true potential. For me, that woman was Donna Mayer-Martin. I have never worked so hard for a grade as I did in her classes; never learned so much, nor retained so much, as I did from the hours spent in her classroom. She taught music history at SMU... but to teach the music, she taught the lives of the composers, the background on that particular area at that time; political and art movements that influenced the music... Donna had a passion for music, a passion for teaching, a passion for her students. Every other fall, she took a group of approximately 15 music majors to Paris for a semester; I had the blessing of being one of those students, nearly 6 years ago now. She gave us assignments that forced us out into the city - attending specific concerts, going to see monuments, works of art; she took us to Monet's house in Giverny. She took us to Versailles on one of the two days a year that the fountains are on. I remember fondly days sitting in the courtyard at our school there, talking to her and some other students... one afternoon that we walked in the Luxembourg gardens, a trip to the cemetary, a cheese party at her apartment. She gave us the world and taught us to explore new things and embrace the world around us. Last weekend, she passed away. Not from the rare form of cancer that she had been battling; that treatment was going well. It was a blood clot. She will be missed. I can only hope that she knew how much she touched the lives of her students, how much she influenced my life. She gave me the world; she gave me Paris. | 
