The End of a Teaching Era

There's this mass facebook/email circulating from Miss Taxier (well, she's not 'Taxier' anymore...yay! Tax got married!!!!) with the subject:  Mr. K is Retiring.

I just broke down crying.
I know I'm easy, but COME ON.

That's how much this man meant/means to me.  When I think back to 'favorite teachers', Mr. K cracks the top 5 every time.  I remember being SO anxious that I wouldn't get to have him for 8th grade Social Studies.  This was EVERYONE'S biggest fear; you hear rumors about teachers, and all of K's were AMAZING.  I don't know a student in his 30 or 35 (or longer) career who didn't love and worship this man, and look forward to his class.

Mr. Kemnitzer is the epitome of what teaching SHOULD be.  He is caring and patient and thoughtful and passionate and really makes history come alive.  Is that cliche?  Whatever, he truly did. 

It was making Stacey cover half her face with a piece of paper to re-enact the picture of her in the paper.

It was making us watch scenes in the movie 'Glory' that STILL make me bawl when I see them.

It was reading Uncle Tom's Cabin so passionately that he lost himself and actually kicked over a desk to show his frustration with the situation.

It was the loud, jolly laugh, and the accompanying smile.

It was writing our own radio skits and performing them, and then listening to them like we actually WERE in the 1920s.

It was the way he praised that stupid poem I wrote about the Civil War and wouldn't take my shrugging or shying away as an answer.  I lost the only copy of that poem I had, and I regret that so much because it reminds me of Mr. K.

I don't have many fond memories of middle school, but Mr. K is definitely one of them.

When I teach my class Social Studies, I want to emulate him.   I try to make it as interesting and creative as he always did.  Even just taking NOTES was enjoyable. Honestly, one of the hugest compliments I could ever get during the span of my teaching career would be one of my fellow Mr. K graduates to observe me teaching a lesson and go, "wow, that was totally something K would do". There aren't words in the English language (and probably not in other languages either) that can encapsulate how high the bar is with Mr. K, and how bad I feel for all the future WHMS students who will never have the pleasure of Mr. Thomas Kemnitzer molding them for a year.  I am truly amongst the fortunate.

Tax wants us to write letters that she's going to compile to give him in June.  To tell him how he inspired us and helped us and how much we love and will miss him.

I don't even know where to start.