Matthew McConaughey Identifies His Favorite Teacher: His Mom

“Inside the classroom and out.”

Matthew McConaughey doesn’t have to look far to find his favorite teacher. In fact, she lives with him.

“My favorite, honestly, has been my mom, inside the classroom and out," the Oscar-winner said  in a new campaign from activist and educator Nicholas Ferroni called "My Favorite Teacher."

“What I loved about my mom's teaching was you always started with a book,” McConaughey said of his mother Kay, A.K.A. MaMac, who taught him in kindergarten and as a substitute teacher in high school. "You always started with the history of what you were studying, the mathematics of it. You had to open the book, you had to learn the skill, learn the history of whatever it is you were studying.”

The unabashed mama’s boy said that his mother, who worked as a teacher for 39 years, has a gift for helping people learn through experience. As an example, he shared a story about a lesson she taught him and his classmates about trains.

“Everyone understood the train from the book, understood how trains worked, and Mom decided it was time for a field trip to go to Amtrak. She loaded up the bus—I think she drove the doggone bus—and headed over to Amtrak and we all loaded up," McConaughey recalled. "She said, ‘We're not just gonna look at it. Let's go somewhere.’ We learned more about trains by that experience based off what we learned from the books that we had read."

Kay, who is just days away from her 92nd birthday, was a big inspiration in McConaughey’s decision to become a professor of practice at University of Texas in 2015. He said he is influenced by her approach to experiential learning in his own career.

“I think it's deeply valuable for children to get as much experiential learning as they can," he continued. "I think it's a wonderful challenge for all teachers to give to all students: How does what we're learning in the classroom, how is what we're teaching in the classroom—how can they [students] take that into their own life outside of the classroom with their friends, with themselves?”

"That's what I got from my mom," McConaughey concluded. "Thanks, mom."

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