Educator of the Year       

It all started my first year of middle school when I had Mr. Fairfield in Social Studies as my first class of the day. My first impression was that he is very humorous and diligent in class. Another first impression I got from Mr. Fairfield was that he loved to have fun and learn at the same time, but if anyone took the having fun part too far, he had zero tolerance. This is a great quality to have as a teacher, especially if you are funny as Mr. Fairfield is. Throughout my three years of middle school, I really grew to admire the way he acts with his students, since I have always wanted to maybe become a teacher someday. But there is more to him than just being a teacher.

The more I went to school in the 6th grade, the more I got to know Mr. Fairfield as my teacher, as my baseball coach, and even as a person. At the beginning of sixth grade I was scared out of my mind. To come to a new school and adapt to a new environment was hard for me, but Mr. Fairfield really made it easy for me to quickly get the hang of things and to enjoy coming to school. Mr. Fairfield really knows how to teach a classroom full of 12 year olds, since most of the kids in his class all had good grades, mainly because of all the extra help he gave us before tests, such as review games or quick times to study. Those types of things before tests usually give me a good result, but I started to fall behind in his class. When I informed Mr. Fairfield that I was struggling, he ensured that I got the proper help I needed to succeed moving forward in his class, by giving me and some other students extra credit options and one-on-one help with certain topics. In his class, I went from a C to an A in less than 3 weeks, all thanks to Mr. Fairfield’s amazing teaching ability. His teachings had a very positive effect on me as I started to exceed standards in his class.

In the sixth grade I tried out for the H.B. DuPont baseball team. Knowing that Mr. Fairfield was the coach, I thought I had a good shot at making the team; however, I was not the greatest baseball player. After tryouts, I was informed that I had made the practice team, meaning that I would play only in practice and some scrimmages but not in any games. Some people told me that this decision was made by Mr. Fairfield because he wanted to keep me, along with some others, in the program to learn and grow into eventually playing at the varsity level. That year Mr. Fairfield taught me all kinds of new things to apply to my game, and sure enough the next year, I had made the varsity baseball team. Thanks to his teaching and coaching abilities, I had reached the goals of becoming a better student, and a better baseball player. He was honestly the greatest baseball coach I ever played for, making him a great role model to me and to many others.

The three years of my middle school experience I had never had a relationship with any other teacher that was as strong and as close as my relationship with Mr. Fairfield. Having 6 children of his own, Mr. Fairfield knows exactly how to make kids feel comfortable in an environment they are not used to. This means he also knows how to have fun with the students, but not too much fun to the point where it gets out of hand. These traits are extraordinary for a teacher, which is a good reason that makes him one of the most admired teachers in my mind. Mr. Fairfield juggles his busy life of teaching every day, coaching almost every night, and going home to 4 kids every day. You might say that he isn’t human, but these things are what make him such a great teacher in life and not just in school. The things that Mr. Fairfield has taught me, between baseball and school, don’t compare to what any other teacher has taught me in the past, which is really special and why I think Mr. Fairfield and I are so close.

Mr. Fairfield made school worth going to every day and made those gloomy Monday mornings just a little bit better, and these reasons are why I like to call Mr. Fairfield my role model. He taught one of the only classes where I actually learned something in middle school, and also coached one of the only baseball teams I learned on, making him probably the greatest teacher and baseball coach I ever had. Mr. Fairfield has traits about him that other teachers just simply cannot accomplish, and these are the reasons why I think he would make a great Educator of the Year.