A desk, a single table for a single student, as a shy person, that’s all I usually think of when I see a desk. No room for interaction, no place for friends. The feeling of isolation that is overwhelming is what most kids get in classes when they don’t have friends, or when their only friend gets so sick, they can’t come to school. In Mrs. Ferenc’s class, everyone feels like they have a friend, if not in a student, in her. Mrs. Ferenc has been a teacher for 25 years and is now the head of the history department, as well as the special education department. She brings history to life in class, and it makes the class not only easier, but so much more enjoyable. She allows us to discuss controversial topics in class, and when someone, like me, gets in too far, she says, “Opinions can’t be argued.”
She always puts history in perspective and gives us projects to do that don’t only help us in school, but will help us in life. She’s a great teacher and rarely misses a day of school, even though she is in intense pain. She teaches and walks all around school to perform administrative duties with a broken back. The first day of school she told us that she broke her back last year after falling down her stairs. She later told us that she doesn’t take pain killers, at all. She goes through the day in pain, and then drives her three kids all around to sports practice, work, and friend’s houses. There is no way to describe her but dedicated.
When we were learning about the Holocaust and World War II, she told us about how her younger brother was sick and was having severe seizures. She also told us that there was a diet that the Nazi’s had come up with and it was said to stop seizures, and along with a big name news anchor, whose daughter was also sick, her parents went to court to have the diet released into public record. All that her brother could eat was a leaf of lettuce, a rice cake, and a small amount of mayo for the day, and all he could drink was water. She recalled her family bringing home snacks and each kid having a shoe box with their name on it, all ten other kids, and they would put their snacks in the shoe box and keep it under their bed and if they wanted a snack, they went to their room and locked the door, so her brother wouldn’t feel bad that he couldn’t have it.
She truly cares about how people learn, because she knows that different people learn differently, our first thing we did in the class was to read over a paper with different styles of learning, and to tell her the way WE learn best. She tries to incorporate all those styles of learning into her lesson plans. She does so much for all of us. Mrs. Ferenc will never give up on her students, and it’s time she got some recognition outside of Lacey High School.