“If you act like a punk, you flunk.” That was one of Coach A’s famous sayings. Coach Archangelo (also known as Coach A or just Coach) was my favorite teacher that I ever had. He is the health/P.E. teacher at H.B. DuPont Middle School. He is also the wrestling coach at HB. Even though he only teaches classes for boys, everybody knows him, girls and boys. This is because when he doesn’t have a class to teach, he will visit other classes and joke around with teachers and students. He is a people person. It’s hard not to have fun or at least be in a good mood after he leaves a classroom. He is also a great role model, and I will explain why.

Coach A is a great wrestling coach. One of the reasons that he’s such a good wrestling coach is because in high school and college, he was an All-American wrestler. That is a really big accomplishment! This accomplishment is especially great when you are as small in stature as Coach A. He is not easily intimidated and he is a good example of how size doesn’t matter. Of course, another reason I hold him in such high esteem is because he helped me win First Place in the district Championship in my 8th grade year. Eighth grade was the first year that I ever wrestled, and I was awful at the beginning of the season. However, by the end of the season I was not half bad. With Coach A’s encouragement, I actually won the district championship in my weight class. The last reason I believe Coach A is such an awesome wrestling coach is because the H.B. team has not lost a single match in six years! It’s hard not to be motivated to win when you’re being pushed in a positive way by someone who is so driven himself.

Maybe the best reason I feel that Coach A should win Educator of the Year is because he is a great all around teacher. He definitely lives and researches what he’s teaching. If you ask him a question about the current lesson he is teaching, he has an answer for you. He delves into the answer because he wants you to know it too. He is an amazing teacher, not only because he knows the subject, but because you can tell he cares about every student he teaches. It didn’t seem to matter to him if someone treated him negatively, or if they were having a bad day; he was always respectful to them, and he always had a positive attitude. He had a way of diverting their negative mood into a better place, mostly with humor. Last but not least, he is one of the most laid back guys I’ve ever met. He always let us sit in the classroom wherever we wanted and let us talk during class, but if it got too loud he would tell us to be quiet. That worked for us. By simply saying keep it down, because he always treated us with respect and treated us like adults, everybody respected him.


My third reason is because Coach A is a great role model. I think he’s a great role model because he is one the funniest people that I have ever met. I think that a lot of people he taught would say the same thing. To lighten the mood or get us to know each other better, he would crack jokes about people (not in a mean way). Coach A is also a really cool guy. He always made me feel like I could talk to him about anything. I was really unsure about wrestling for example. I was being coerced into it by my friends on the team. Coach A knew I wasn’t confident; he told me I should just try it, and he would help me. It was his positive attitude that inspired me to do my absolute best and win that championship in my weight class that year. I use that attitude today whenever I’m playing a sport or thinking that I can’t do something.

So after reading this I hope you can understand what a good man Coach A is. I hope that he will be strongly considered in your contest. One of his other quotes that is a favorite of mine is, “I’m not just your coach in school, but also your life coach.” After all of his years of teaching and bringing joy to kids, I think that he deserves to win this contest.