For me, it was mainly the philosophy and politics teachers. Boy oh fucking boy, for some reason, every single one of my philosopy and PolSci teachers were... interesting personalities to say the least. It was our philosophy teacher who introduced us to the Labor Theory of Value, oddly enough, and the issue of economic inequality. And as for the PolSci-Side, two teachers stand out: One grew up in the GDR and was very, very nostalgic about it (with some fair criticisms, especially concerning the Stasi), and the second, and final one in my case, was an irony-poisoned super-leftist with a gigantic disdain for the rich, the state and capitalism.
My sophomore year world history teacher was a Korean War vet chud who demonized communism, and lovingly told us the story of how calling someone a pinko commie back in the day were fighting words.
Interestingly enough, he also taught about the history of several different world religions from a completely historical point of view, no injected Christian worldview or anything, which led me to begin questions my faith and upbringing (Southern Baptist) and curiosity into other religions, which led to my then agnosticism (but now am converting to Judaism)
I also had a thing with his daughter later in hs and that enraged him because I was a girl at the time, and that was hilarious
Edit: I almost forgot. he was also surprisingly pro union and paid a lot of attention to teaching us about labor movements in the early 20th century; I remember watching Matewan, a movie about a coal miners strike. He also commented a lot about how unions were important and how often strikers were massacred.
converting to Judaism? Pardon my ignorance, but is that actually a thing?
From my admittedly still small understanding, as I am in a learning process: There are three main branches of Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Reform Jews are pretty chill and allow conversions.
Conservatives allow allow and recognize conservative conversions and most Orthodox conversions, rarely Reform conversion.
Orthodox conversions happen very rarely, and they almost always only recognize Orthodox conversion.