The person I have picked to be Educator of the Year is John O’ Kneski , or Mr. O, as his students call him. “OK, attention on deck; today we have a plethora of activities”, these are the words of John O’Kneski. When you walk in to someone else’s room, there are posters and guides of information - not in Mr. O’s classroom. If you take a test, you know it or you do not know it. If you look around during a test, BAM! A lion has leapt from the underbrush, seized your test, and ripped it up before your very face! That is why there are no posters in his room.
If you have never met Mr. O, you might not know what that means. If you ever get a chance to be in his class, right from beginning you will like him instantly. He might be strict, and that is old school, but that is the way of Mr. O. He does not stand for bullying in his class; if he sees it, he stops the class, and deals with it.
In high school sometimes you take Civics, a class about the government. It is probably a boring class if you don’t have Mr. O. He makes it so that you learn something, but you are having fun as well. If you want to have fun in school and learn, you want to go to his class. When I went there for the first time, I loved it. If you are walking around during the day, look for kids walking fast to class, and follow them; they might be going to Mr. O’s class. He’ll joke around with us, just like he’s a regular friend and not a teacher. When you talk to Mr. O, he talks to you like you are a grownup and not a kid.
Mr. O talks to us adult-to-adult. He respects us, at least the ones who have earned it and deserve it. Like I said, if you make him angry, he is not afraid to let you know it. The thing I think Mr. O respects the most is intelligence. He recognizes the more intelligent students, but does not treat them any better or worse than the rest of his students. Another thing I like is that he treats us like he treats the other teachers he talks with during school.
If you sit in on one of his classes, some of the older kids might come in and say “what’s up", because he is the funniest teacher at DMA. He has been at DMA since it started ten years ago. Everyone loves Mr. O. I bet 50 years from now I will remember his name.
There isn’t a person alive who deserves to be Educator of the Year more than Mr. John. O’Kneski. He is the Educator of the Year. As Mr. O states himself, he’s “ not whistling Dixie in the dark”.