A person changed her name from A to B.
"My 6th grade English teacher was A" sounds right, but when I alter the sentence structure to "B was my 6th grade English teacher" it sounds right. These are just 2 variations of the same sentence, so why does the order make referring to the person with a different name sound correct?
According to Past or present tense when talking about firsts that happened in the past?, one should always say "My 6th grade English teacher was..." and not "My 6th grade English teacher is..."
I think the "was" version requires using her old name, but the "is" version (although not grammatically correct) is 1 way to use her new name.
How to properly refer to a person who had changed their name in past tense?