PTSO Honors Teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week

From May 2 to 5, students and PTSO members honored teachers and staff from providing snacks and lunch to commonly used classroom supplies.

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Rachel Adams

Teachers line up in the library to grab their free lunch provided by the PTSO on May 5.

From May 2 to 6, the PTSO celebrated teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week by providing food like Robeks smoothies and Moby Dick catering for lunch, as well as organizing a table filled with commonly used teaching supplies including sticky notes, pens, and highlighters. 

Several students also showed their appreciation by giving gifts and notes to their teachers. Freshman Hannah Tyson has particularly enjoyed her biology teachers’ class, Joshua Persson, because of his passion for the job. “I’d like to highlight Mr. Persson,” Tyson said. “He understands his students a lot. He’s a good teacher because you can tell he loves what he does.”

Math teachers Dermot McGee and Travis Herrity enjoyed getting notes for teacher appreciation week, especially the notes activity done in an advisory lesson. On May 4, students were directed to write a note to their teacher and on the back was a code teachers could input into a Virginia lottery. The lottery had money and teacher supplies. 

McGee did not know it was TAW until he got to school Monday. He found out because one of the other teachers mentioned that they were getting breakfast, and he saw the decorations set up in the library. “I feel like the week is solid and that I enjoyed the cards and gifts,” McGee said.

Senior Grayson Scheefers also loved the week, since it gave him a chance to celebrate chorus teacher Jordan Markwood. “[Markwood] is fantastic because he’s kind, way kinder than he needs to be, more than he should. He’s always there to help, he’s always got great words of advice, he’s got a great sense of humor, and I would do anything for that man,” Scheefers said. 

Sophomore Raegan Carper said that theater teacher Rebekha Hess has been a great teacher since joining the “Matilda” production. Hess was the dance choreographer for half of the numbers that the cast did. “I remember she really let me shine and show my talent in one of the numbers,” Carper said.  During one of the rehearsals, Hess gave her props for how she was very good with showing emotion towards the crowd and just having fun the entire dance. Carper now thinks about actually wanting to do theater as a class and when she leaves high school, she sees it as something she can do for a living.

Math teacher Travis Herrity

Q: How do you feel about teacher appreciation week?

TH: It was really nice to hear the things from the students where they shared that my teaching did help them. It’s been a really rough year coming out from the pandemic, so to hear that the way I taught them worked and that I actually made some of them like a course that students don’t typically like was very encouraging. 

Q: What’s a highlight of this week?

TH: I think the highlight of the week was getting the notes in the mailbox again of students and hearing the impact that us teachers have throughout the year. It can be really hard sometimes to remember that we are doing good work and that we are making an impact, especially in light of the testing environment we are currently entering.

 

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Rachel Adams
Students and staff helped to decorate the front of the school with red letters that spelled “Teachers, We love our staff.” Students also adorned the sidewalks with nice messages using chalk.