Coming to Arrowhead High School my junior year wasn’t easy, especially since my dad thought the school was just for rich snobs.  The first time I met Mr. Tower was in his Western Civilizations class. He asked, "Is that an Insane Clown Posse thing?" while pointing at my favorite sweatshirt with horror movie villains all over it. I told him it wasn't, but I was just surprised that he knew what that band was because it was a band I liked. That was when I knew I was going to like the class and immediately started to view him as the "cool teacher."

The more time went on, the more I engaged. I didn’t do well with getting my assignments in because I was struggling mentally, but he never made me feel bad about it (like some of my other teachers did). The next semester, I didn’t have him for my Western Civilizations class anymore, but I did have him for Sociology.

One day he made small talk with the class, and he pointed at me and asked, "Where do you work?"

I told him, "I work at the movie theater in Delafield."

"You should bring popcorn in for the whole class with extra butter and salt."

Anyone who’s worked at a movie theater knows that a lot of popcorn gets trashed at the end of the night, and my theater allowed us to take as much of that popcorn home as we wanted. So on a day where we were watching a movie, I brought in popcorn, and I could tell that he was grateful. I had a friend tell me that Mr. Tower had told their class about the "student that brought in popcorn for fourth hour" and praised me to them as well. It made me happy to know that he had thought about something throughout the day that was so insignificant to me. I did this a few more times, until I ended up not working there anymore, which I was too embarrassed to tell him.

Sometime in the spring, my mom got something in the mail from Arrowhead, and I opened it, and it was a handwritten note from Mr. Tower.  He talked about how glad he was to have me in his class this year and joked about how he doesn’t know why I would choose to have him as a teacher twice. I had never gotten recognition like that for anything I’ve done in school. I was never a good student academically, and I didn’t participate in sports. Just a simple good deed being noticed made me feel accomplished. I don’t know if teachers are forced to send notes like that, but he chose to send one to me, which meant a lot. The end of junior year was bittersweet. I was excited for summer, but I couldn’t help but be sad because I will never have Mr. Tower as a teacher again.