LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

David Gierach was nominated by an anonymous student.

"Mr. Gierach was my first teacher at Arrowhead Union High School. I had him for my first-hour class, which was English 9," said the student. "He knew we were nervous about entering high school, so he spent the first few days doing icebreakers with us. He mostly talked about his own experience in high school when he was young and his overall experience as a teacher. Our first couple of assignments were also icebreaker-related because they were about what we like to do. Finally, when we got to the first book, it was a simple book that he loved called 'Of Mice and Men.' He would get a classmate to read a few lines from the book each chapter, and we read along in class to try to familiarize ourselves with the class and the book. We even watched the movie at the end of that unit since he loved the book so much. Other units were similar, with us starting off with reading the first couple of chapters together as a whole class and group. There truly is a lot we did in Mr. Gierach's class, but this was my first year of high school, and so that was long ago. Thank you, Mr. Gierach, for being an amazing English teacher."