6
Mr. Dean’s Undeniable Teaching Skills
Mr. Dean is one of two Latin teachers at the Summit Country Day. Along
with Mrs. Ashcraft, they teach students ranging from 6th grade all the way to
12th grade. Mr. Dean’s enthusiasm for the Latin language and the classics
make him one of the best, most unique teachers in the entire school. Aside
from just teaching material, Mr. Dean adds a fun twist to class with his silly
behavior and entertaining off-topic discussions. This makes his class quite
entertaining and occasionally causes my classmates and I to burst out laugh-
ing. Mr. Dean’s silly behavior is derived from a combination of strange voic-
es, unique hand gestures, and random emphasis on words. This year, and in
past years, Mr. Dean’s hilarious voices, which include impersonating a Ro-
man soldier, Darth Vader, and an individual from Virginia with a thick ac-
cent, accompanied by an array of hand motions have put a smile on my face
and turned my day around multiple times. Honestly, I never know what to
expect when I walk into his room for class. Like his entertaining behavior, off
-topic discussions which often occur throughout class are usually completely
random. I can remember times when we were talking about the major ports
in Italy and suddenly we were talking about sharks, or when we went from
talking about Julius Caesar and his lineage to Luke Skywalker and light-
sabers. This is yet another aspect of Mr. Dean that makes him an awesome
teacher. Aside from the entertaining aspects of Mr. Dean, he is a wonderful
teacher who goes out of his way to make sure his students learn the material
he teaches and are not just memorizing it
and “vomiting” it onto the page of a quiz or
test. I could not ask for a better Latin/Greek
teacher.
-Christian Lipa: Secretary