TEACHER FEATURE

DANIEL REITZ

9th Grade English Teacher

Whitney High School is an amazing place,

full of remarkably bright students who for the most part,

want & love to learn.  

Maybe their parents do push & encourage them just a tad.  

heee hee,

 Right Eunice?

Anyways,

it's also a place where great teaching is going on by individuals who love children,

who want to make a difference in their lives,

who were probably inspired/influenced by their own teachers and decided they want to do the same.

To give back, 

to share, 

to care.

(I didn't mean to rhyme)

  LOL

By the way, 

we just went up in our rankings,

 from 10th to 7th best school in the nation.

Whoo hoo!!!

Recently I was inspired to do a monthly feature on several of our outstanding teachers.

I'll be starting with a newbie to our school,

Daniel Reitz,

a fellow artist, athlete, 9th grade English teacher & instructor of Creative Writing.

Welcome to his room.

I'm starting with Daniel because the kids are raving about him to me.

They love his classes,

love walking into his room to the beat of classic Reggae music.

He is also one cool dude.

Very relate-able.

He's 27 years old and married. 

Sorry girls,

ha ha.

His wife also teaches.

No children yet he says.

Daniel did a long term sub stint at one of the high schools in our District,

Gahr,

teaching English & Drama,

and then was scooped up by us to replace retiring teacher Ann Palmieri. 

Daniel is a lover of baseball and has been appointed our Head Baseball coach.

He has played ball for over 20 years

for both his high school & his college team at Biola.

He & best buddy/bromeo English teacher,

Jonathan Dalley,

are heading up an adult baseball team at Whitney so our teachers can have some fun together 

out on the field.

This is it's second year & going strong.

Do I play?

No,

I'm too old and a big chicken.

Anyways,

Daniel also enjoys painting in acrylics whenever he gets a chance,

as well as fitness & writing.

Both of these loves are artfully displayed over his desk.

And if he hadn't come to me before school started the other day 

to borrow some paint for a project he was working on for his class,

I probably would have not known about his art background.

He seemed so very excited to be creating a huge piece of wall art for his room 

that I had to check it out.

(see last post pix)

As I was checking out Mr. Reitz,

oh no,

 I mean his room,

ha ha,

  I noticed that he takes great pride in making little things artful,

like the labels on the 9th grade & Creative Writing boards.

I don't even take the time to do that,

and I'm the art teacher.

Very nice young Daniel.

And the big WHS below is the whole reason I went into his room to see what he was creating 

with the paint he borrowed.

Check out the scale this master is working to.

Very impressive young grasshopper.

And welcome to Whitney!