2012

On the first day of sophomore English, three questions were on my mind. First, who else would be in my class? Second, who would the teacher be and what would he or she be like? And third, would the work be interesting? My first question was easily answered. I indeed had friends in the class. As for the last two questions, my teacher would be Miss. Calabro; some may know her now as Mrs. Fattorusso. And because of her, I would quickly find that the work was very interesting. She took a subject that I could easily take or leave at that point and turned it into my favorite subject. This was at least in part because of the comfortable atmosphere in the classroom. She challenged me, and encouraged me to participate and never made me feel as if I had a wrong answer. She had a way of turning an incorrect thought into something worth talking about, thus inspiring me to work harder, to challenge myself, and to want to read and write more. Thank you, Mrs. Fattorusso; I can only hope that some of my college teachers will be like you

Miss O’Toole was more than just a teacher to me during my junior year, she was, and still is a friend and mentor.  She would always be there for me when I needed somebody to talk to and when I needed advice about a current situation I was in.  She knew how to make class a fun experience and was able to relate to her students.  It is for these reasons that I chose to honor Miss O’Toole tonight.  Thank you for everything you have done for me.

What makes Mrs. Lieu such a special teacher is that she made her lessons interesting by keeping the class involved. Not only that, but she also was always around after school. If I needed to take a test, all I had to do was stop by her classroom. But what makes Mrs. Lieu the one teacher I have chosen to honor tonight is not even about all the great ways she helped me as a teacher but in the ways she helped me as a mentor and a friend. When I was worried about applying to college I spent a good 45 minutes talking to her about interviews, SATs and the application process every week. Although there are few teachers as good as Mrs. Lieu, there were none that did as much to make me confident about the next stage of my life as she did.

Ever since the days when I attended his baseball camps in grade school, I knew that Coach Mueller would be a great role model for me. Nothing has changed since those days, since Coach Mueller is still one of the first people that I look to for guidance today. Words cannot describe how much I appreciate what Coach Mueller has done for me so far. Whether its taking time out of his day to contact colleges for me, help me work on baseball skills, or help me succeed in the classroom, Coach Mueller has invested much of his time to make me the person that I want to be, not to mention that he does the same thing for every other team member on the Montgomery baseball team and even other students. It is safe to say that I would not be where I am today without the efforts of Coach Mueller, and for that I thank him greatly