After thinking long and hard about who most deserves a shout-out this Thanksgiving season, I decided upon all of the Liberty teachers who genuinely care about what they teach every day in class. Now it would be very easy for someone to counter that my choice is in fact too broad to make any one person feel actually thanked, but I would respond by saying that only at Liberty does that problem apply. Throughout my three and a half years at Liberty I have continuously had teachers who connect with myself and the other students in a way that would get teachers at most other schools heaped with “good teaching” awards. One teacher whose class I still remember vividly even after two years is Mr. Level. Although the memories of staying up into the wee hours of the night to finish Socratic Seminar entry tickets and quizzes on a Tale of Two Cities that seemed to be better tests of photographic memory than reading recollection are still very much there, I even more remember the countless class discussions in which Mr. Level would religiously prod the minds of still-sleepy teenagers for answers to life’s deeper questions until he was satisfied (which needless to say took a substantial amount of prodding). Furthermore, I believe Mr. Level was my first English teacher to regularly ask me if I liked the book we were reading. Although I’m sure I would answer his question the first couple of times with something along the lines of “umm… it’s pretty good”, that one question and the conversations that would eventually follow it helped me to develop the appreciation for reading and writing that I believe English class should be designed to instill. Yet Mr. Level is just one example of a kind of teacher that seems to be everywhere and in every department at Liberty, and that is what I am really thankful for this Thanksgiving.