When I first walked into my period 8 class, that’s when I knew I would enjoy learning Spanish. As soon as I walked into Mr.Rankin’s room, he had a big heart-warming smile on his face, and he was eager to start teaching. It was my final year at Springer Middle School, and I didn't know what to expect since this was Mr. Rankin’s first year at Springer.  As soon as the bell rang, he introduced himself and told us a little about him and his past, and that he was excited to spend this school year with us. Also, he was looking forward to getting to know more about us. He asked us if we knew how to speak any kind of Spanish and half of us raised our hands and said no…. “This is only the first class,” he said. 

Mr. Rankin was, I could say, the most eager to teach, teacher that I knew. He would always make slide presentations with pictures and videos to help us understand about the Spanish speaking language. You would see him always walking in the classroom with excitement to start teaching and make all of his students smile. Mr. Rankin always had his students engaged in class, whether it was working in partners, or just simply watching videos about what we were learning. He had a way of getting everyone in a good mood in all of his classes; he would run around the classroom trying to help everyone, making sure everyone knew the material. He would sometimes make us speak in Spanish in his class to help us understand more and to help us comprehend. Mr. Rankin was not only eager to teach, he had a passion to teach; he loved helping kids as much as he could. Whether it was giving his classes extra credit to boost their test grade or staying after school to help his students understand better, he went the extra mile. He was the real reason why I love Spanish so much and why I understand it so well now.

Mr. Rankin was the most supportive teacher I've known out of my 3 years at Springer. One out of several things he would tell us was “to never give up, especially when things got hard.” Mr. Rankin said “Achieve your goals, DON’T ever throw them away when you can’t achieve them the first time!” He taught me to work hard for things that I want. Mr. Rankin tried to help everyone. He would tell us to study harder if we would fail a test or go over the criteria again with us. He would also let us retake a test if we didn’t do too well just because he always wanted to see us succeed. He didn’t just let us re-take them; he went over what we didn’t understand and got wrong on the first test, and gave us materials to study with for the re-take. As you can see, he would do whatever he could to help us succeed in his class. Mr. Rankin was never the type of teacher to give up on his students. He was hard on us sometimes, but that was only so he could push us to do our best. I couldn’t have been more grateful for a more supportive teacher for 8th grade year. 

Mr. Rankin had such a fun way of teaching us Spanish, either teaching us songs to help us memorize how to pronounce words or throwing little class parties. When we would walk through his classroom door, he would always have something fun for us to do to learn about Spanish. When he would teach us about different Spanish cultures, he would throw little class parties with the culture’s music, food, dances, etc. I never dreaded going his class because unlike any of my other classes I would have fun. He was always happy, and he would never have a frown on his face, ever. Mr. Rankin would come in the classroom with a sumbrero and maracas and sing along to songs and teach kids how to tango. He is hands down my favorite teacher, and he will forever and always be the reason why i love spanish. 

I truly could not have asked for a better Spanish teacher. I am giving a huge thank you to Mr. Rankin for making my homework load a lot less stressful and for never giving up on me.  Not only did you make my loads of homework less stressful, you only gave homework to help us, only material that we would need to know. You never chose to give us work just for a grade; you wanted us to know what we were being taught, so we could understand the spanish language. Most importantly, you made your classroom a safe environment, and you made spanish so fun to learn. Thank you, Mr. Rankin - my nomination for Educator of the Year.