Have you ever wished that you could get a perfect teacher that doesn’t have favorites, that listens to his or her students, has good handwriting, and has whatever other perks you think a perfect teacher would have? Well the truth is that there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. All teachers have their pros and cons, but the only teacher I know that doesn’t have many flaws and was a hair away from perfect has to be my 7th grade social studies teacher, Mrs. Celani. Not only did she do her job and teach us as her students, she acted as though we were actually her own children. She would treat us with a lot of respect, she would occasionally joke around with us, and she would even provide us with all sorts of school supplies that she had to buy herself.

When I first walked into her room during open-house, I saw her peppy and enthusiastic attitude and I assumed that she was going to be one of those teachers who was nice on the first couple of days, but would take off her mask on the fourth day and show us what a horrible teacher is truly like. Fortunately for all of her students, that day never came. She remained the same throughout the whole year and she would never let any student annoy her or get under her skin. She knew how to control herself, and to try her best to help students no matter how much they bugged her. But like I said before, she treated us like her own children so that does mean that we got castigated every now and then, and not because she was mad at us, but because she wanted to do whatever it would take to see us succeed.

From all of these compliments I’m giving her, you might think that I was a suck up to her or that I was a teacher’s pet, but the truth is that I was actually one of the bad students in her class. I would make disruptions to get other kids to laugh, and I would laugh at other kids’ disruptions. It’s hard to explain, but Mrs. Celani wouldn’t shout at us or send us out to the hall, she would simply give us a look that showed that she was disappointed. In all honesty, I would’ve rather had her yell at me than give me that look, because it really did make me feel guilty and realize that I was being a bad student. It would make me realize that I was negatively affecting my teacher, and the class. Although I did struggle, I eventually started too rarely disrupt the class, or at least I think I did.

Mrs. Celani is one of the few teachers that I will never forget. She exceeded all my standards more than all of my previous teachers combined. To ensure that she could be a great teacher to all of us, she made sure to ask us what our expectations were for her at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year. There’s really no other way to put it than that she was certainly the greatest teacher I have ever known. Forget her being the educator of the year, Mrs. Celani deserves being labeled as the “Teacher of the Century”.