Progression

I only had a semester in Acker’s government class but I can truly say I enjoyed every second of it. The actual work we did in the class was always intriguing and it never felt like busy work which I appreciated since the very beginning of the class. He had a color-card system in place that keeps his students paying attention which was very effective for me because I have a hard time paying attention but this always kept me listening to the conversation and gave every student in the classroom an opinion on the conversation without it being chaotic. He also makes it a safe place and somewhere you feel heard which makes learning all around easier. He is able to give you a relationship where you can talk to him if you're having trouble with not only class related situations but he also cares about his students mental health and always keeps that in mind with workloads which I have never seen in a processor before.

It's just an overall good experience in his class because of this I personally feel I was able to absorb twice as much information as I usually do in classes where the teachers' lessons feel like a cookie cutter. It's the same exact information you get just reading the textbook. In this Government class we would get the ideas of the textbook and reflect on it and chew it up until the class felt like we knew not only the unbiased information but the true information as we would use other sources that just that one textbook. His class almost feels catered to your needs and I think this is because he is actually willing to sit down with you and see what's troubling you and work around it and make a plan and if you mess up on one assignment it's forgivable he is not super uptight and rude about it, but is still able to relay the message that you need to get it done. Like instead of him just blowing you off he offers extensions and personal help with the assignments. He even let me do an alternate assignment because my Chromebook isn't working so my grade didn't have to suffer so much.

We went over content that truly changed my outlook on things. It wasn't forced to make you think this is absolutely right and you're wrong if you think differently, we were always able to come to one answer off of everyone's evidence which was a really cool and unique experience to be a part of. I was nervous coming into a high-level class but hearing the way he did things my stress levels went down a lot. In other classes it feels like they are judging a fish's ability to climb a tree and it's just so by the book and boring.

Luckily I have always had adults I could talk to in my life but you can see that professor Acker could not only be there to talk to but a good mentor and an adult you could model yourself after. He is very inspiring and in my eyes he is a real life superhero with all the battles he has fought and overcome and is still an exceptional person. He showed me that no matter how hard life gets there is always something to fight for and to never let yourself fall too hard and give up. It's okay to be down sometimes and life is hard but it can be conquered which is exactly what he has done. I am very happy I was able to be a part of his class and hope I get him in my last semester of high school.

P.S Thank you for everything you've done for us as a class in case no one has told you recently!

- Alex W., December 2020