Teacher Appreciation: Mr. Welp

I met Mr. Welp on orientation day before the school year started. I started to ask him some questions when he told me he was just as new as I was to City. I was the only one in his classroom since most people at orientation were freshmen and he teaches chemistry, so we just talked for a while. I knew that I was excited to have Mr. Welp as a teacher, and my prediction was confirmed once school started.

Mr. Welp genuinely wants his students to succeed. He is willing to go the extra mile,and not just because he runs.  When Sophie Trom ‘20 needed help but he was volunteering at a track meet, he worked with her while at the track meet.

“I appreciate how he’s very accepting of working with students one on one,” Trom said.

Not only is Mr. Welp’s classroom an environment of success, but half of class with Mr. Welp is just his hilarious anecdotes. From the start of the year, all his students knew about his entire life, especially anything that has to do with his wife or cat. We know about his past girlfriends and his crappy drawings. He allows us to get to know him, which makes his classroom environment enjoyable. The entire classroom often will erupt in a fit of laughter at some point in the class, either because we made fun of him or he made fun of us. More often than not however, it’s the former.

Once during class, a student told Mr. Welp that he looked like his name should be Chad. Every student agreed and started plainly calling him Chad. Mr. Welp walked out of the room, and we were all very confused. He re-entered the room thirty seconds later, saying, “All right, listen up you Chads,” and after that, everyone in the class was addressed as Chad for a week.

Another instance of students making fun of Mr. Welp is every instance he has been mistaken for a student. He’s fairly young for a teacher, and when he wears his athletic gear to school and walks around wearing a backpack, it’s not very difficult for teachers to mistake the new faculty member for a student.

At the start of the year, Mr. Welp said he “isn’t very good at expressing emotions,” only being able to use numbers to quantify success when sending home postcards for students.  However, he has improved greatly, and even if he can’t express his emotions, the emotion the students express, even if he doesn’t know it, is appreciation.