Decades after working together at Beverly Hills Middle School in the Upper Darby School District, teachers and a principal shared stories at a recent reunion at Charlotte’s Restaurant in Newtown Square, writes one of their students, Maria Panaritis, for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The writer and her peers remembered the teachers as a unifying force that glued together kids from vastly different backgrounds, including kids of Greek immigrants, Vietnamese refugees, and Catholic and Protestant-American parents.
Because of the diversity of the students, teachers had to get extra creative in class, something that principal Mel Brodsky encouraged. He would let them design theme-based weeks when students would come to school in costume, with subjects ranging from the Roaring ’20s to Mesopotamia to the Civil War.
The teachers also had some fun among themselves in those days. Former social studies teacher Bill Coren once commandeered the public address system to prank Brodsky and luckily did not get fired for it. Meanwhile, Coren also got his share of pranks pulled on him, as metal shop teacher Jim Doyle and the other shop teachers would torment him during parent-teacher meetings.
“You wouldn’t believe the stuff we did,” said Doyle.
Read more about the reunion in the Philadelphia Inquirer by clicking here.
