Re: Teachers Who Fought Teachers

12/28/09 - posted by Paul Rosenberg

Candis, I would like to defend the memory of Mr. Reinosa (1922-1983) whom I found to have been a kind and valuable teacher. I felt that he was always in favor of the students. For example, he would construct his multiple choice quizzes with different letters of the alphabet so that the student entering his or her responses would find that a word or phrase would be spelled down the side of the page which would enable that student to ‘correct’ answers that didn’t fit. Also, knowing that each class had super achievers, he would throw out the top three scores in every test when determining the grading curve. He was always ready to answer questions and would help out in the lab assignments. I am sad that you found this gifted teacher to be of a disagreeable personality type. Nevertheless, my first civics teacher in the low ninth grade was Mr. Wheat whose lectures were so stimulating to a new student at a challenging school. He had some oddball ideas, for example, that the Philippines would become our 51st state that we found to be rather interesting. As I remember he came from a military background and he was willing to share some war stories. I’m sorry things did not turn out that well for him. I never knew Mr. Halbasch and I have spoken to him more at reunions than ever at school.