Educator of The Year

Growing up I wasn’t a kid who liked to go to school.  I never tried that hard and I just coasted through my elementary school years.  That was until I walked into my social studies room in sixth grade to find what was soon to be one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Gissen. 
My sister has told me stories about him that scared me.  Stories like how he yelled so much and how intimidating was.  So when I walked into his class, I expected a large man who was scary looking, but,  he was the complete opposite.  He stood at a total of 5 feet and 3 inches with sunglasses so no one would see his lazy eye. He also wore a sports coat making him look even smaller than he already was, which made me feel like a giant standing next to him. 
I had heard so much about Mr. Gissen from my sister and her friends, and I was alittle scared walking into the class the first day of school.  Stories about how he would put  bananas on the ceiling and let it rot for the whole semester.  Mr. Gissen was so weird, but thats why he once was everyones favorite teacher at Stone Bank Elementary School. 
Mr. Gissen taught me so much in two of social studies.  He wasn’t like any teacher, teaching the same old stories.  He didn’t give out homework like other teachers, and he did not give us worksheets and boring stuff.  But what he did was lecture about the most interesting stories and with the most einthusan I’ve ever seen from a five foot three guy.  He told stories about how his Mom made him go to the Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I had a dream” speech even though he did not want to go and stories about how his family members were victims at Jewish concentration camps, making me feel so sad for him and making me want to actually listen and learn more about the history and his family.    
He not only taught me about the history of the world, but he also taught me to try by telling me how much better and smarter I can be if i would just study in school, and also taught me how to be a more mature young man.  For his energetic stories about the world’s history, for the nicknames he gave everyone in our class, and for the rotten bananas hanging down from the ceiling, I nominate Mr. Phillip Gissen the Educator of the Year.