There’s always one teacher, isn’t there? There is always one teacher you remember, the one who saw something in you that no one else saw.

For Jay-Z, rap mogul, that one teacher was Renee Rosenblum-Lowden. She remembers him very well as Shawn Carter, the poor kid from the projects with an extraordinary talent for reading.

”As the rapper tells it, in grade school, he found something of an escape in language. He’s mentioned this in interviews throughout his career, most recently telling David Letterman, “I had a sixth-grade teacher. Her name was Ms. Lowden, and I just loved the class so much. Like reading the dictionary, and my love of words — I just connected with her.”

“That teacher’s name is Renee Rosenblum-Lowden, and she remembers Jay-Z as well, though she still refers to him as Shawn.

“Rosenblum-Lowden, 77, now lives in Columbia, Md., but in 1980, she taught sixth grade at Brooklyn’s I.S. 318. Carter, a shy and avid reader, was one of her standout students.

“The thing I remember about Shawn is he took the reading test and he scored 12th grade in the sixth grade,” Rosenblum-Lowden told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “And I remember telling him — because I really feel it’s important to tell kids they’re smart — I said, ‘You’re smart, you better do well.’ And he listened….

“She said she’s equally proud of her students who found success in other careers, but there’s a certain sense of pride that comes with having affected a young Jay-Z — particularly when he uses his national profile to advocate for better teacher wages, as he did in the Letterman interview.

“One thing that I feel uncomfortable with is all the credit he gives me. I don’t think I’m deserving of all that credit. He was super bright,” she said. Still, “it makes me feel great that I had a part, or that he feels I had a part, in his love for words.”

Teachers make a difference. Sometimes it takes years to know the difference. The student who never forgets you. The one who credits you with changing his or her life.

Peter Greene has decided to retire and thinking about his next career, other than Stay at Home Dad.

He wonders why failed Superintendents can always find a cushy job as a consultant.

He wonders why the sweet do-little jobs at think tanks are reserved only for charter lovers.

“It’s odd how this works. If I had only taught for two or three years, I would be qualified to run an entire charter school, or even serve as the education chief for an entire state. But as I understand it, having worked an entire teaching career instead of just a couple of years disqualifies me for that kind of work.

“I could set myself up as a consulting firm. That seems to be a pretty sweet deal. Take Antwan Wilson. Wilson spent just a couple of years in a classroom, but upped his skills by attending the Broad Fake Superintendent School and then worked several school administration jobs, then got himself hired for the Big Show in DC Public Schools– and then got himself booted for skirting the rules of the system. But that’s okay, because Denver schools, where he previously worked, hired him to be a consultant with a contract that pays $60,000 for 24 days of work (two days a week for twelve weeks)– plus per diem and daily lodging expenses. The fee is based on a $150/hour rate. And for those of us considering the consulting biz, here’s the kicker– the Denver COO justified the huge no-bid contract by noting that other consulting companies would have been way more expensive. From which we can deduce that $150/hour is the low end of the money that a well-connected consultant could make (meanwhile, substitute teachers in my district make $100/day). That would certainly help put my board of directors through college.

“I like traveling and speaking; maybe I can con people into hiring me to travel to where they are and to talk at them. It could be fun to work at a thinky tank and crank out position papers in my robe at home while my board of directors plays on the floor, but most of the thinky tank money is going to tanks that support ed reform. Hardly anybody is operating a pro-public education thinky tank. Whether you’re left-tilted (Center for American Progress, the Century Foundation) or right-tilted (Fordham, American Enterprise Institute), you have to be a fan of charters and choice and privatization and busting Those Damned Teachers Unions. NEPC hires actual scholars, and NPE, while they support the values I care about, does not have the kind of money involved in hiring a bunch of tanky thinkers.”

What’s a successful teacher to do?