Throughout my high school career, I’ve had the pleasure of being taught by several really awesome teachers. However I’ve been assigned to focus on the teacher that was my overall favorite. Without a doubt that teacher is Mr. Gene Petross.

Upon entering Mr. Petross’ room on the first day of my sophomore year in high school, I was ready for another boring and bland history class. I like history, but the teachers are normally droll and boring. Well for the first few weeks Mr. Petross was exactly what I was expecting.

He may not be a strong starter, but by god, Mr. Petross is an awesome teacher once you get into the school year. While we where learning about the middle ages, he brought a authentic scythe out of his closet. While we were spending our time studying the French revolution, he pulled a miniature guillotine out of his closet and proceeded to demonstrate how it worked by chopping off the heads of carrots and displaying them on toothpicks like they where pikes.

He pulled so many strange things out of his closet that its one of the things that every kid in school knows about. There are many conspiracy theories about teachers at our school, but Mr. Petross is the ONLY teacher I’ve ever heard of that has been accused of having a portal to Narnia and a time machine in his closet. That résumé alone is enough to put him on the top of my list, but just incase that wasn’t enough, he is also a really great teacher. He would explain things so thoroughly that I never needed to take notes and with the use of the items produced by his magical closet, it was hard to ever get bored.

Without Mr. Petross, I wouldn’t be as interested in history as I am today. He took a boring subject and made it so fun that leaving his class everyday was almost sad. He is an awesome teacher and If I could, I would retake my entire sophomore year just to be in his class again.