Student Spotlight: "Gilly, the King of Philly"

This has been a really difficult year teaching at North Catholic. It was my old high school, and I've been teaching there for seven years now. I've often said that it was my "calling" to teach there. It has been more than just a job for me. Over the years, I've grown to love the students, teachers, and coworkers at North like family. It's going to be really tough walking away from it.

The fourth quarter just started. I have to admit that I am getting more sentimental than usual. So I wanted to start preserving something from this year for me, from my students, something that I can look back on to remember why I took this job in the first place. I've met a lot of interesting and talented kids while teaching here, all unique and gifted in their own way. One of those kids is Andrew Gilpin. His classmates call him "Gilly, the King of Philly".

Gilly has a really unique way of drawing. He's part of the North Catholic Cartoonist Society. Like most of the kids in the group, he loves Anime. The other day, he was going on and on about a teevee show I never heard of called "One Piece". When he was explaining it, I couldn't even begin to understand what the heck he was talking about. It was some kind of pirate type story with reindeer and skeletons. It sounded like he was speaking a crazy different language. I had to do some research on the web. I actually found it hilarious, so I asked him to bring in pictures to better illustrate. He said I could tape him explaining the show to me. I promised I'd put it on my blog.

Gilly is a great kid. He looks after his Mom. He's got an awesome sense of humor. When a kid jokes with him, he's pretty good at zinging them right back. He's really grown into himself since he walked through the doors as a Freshman. Now he gets along with just about every kid at North. Gilly is a treasure to the school. I hope that next year, whatever school he transfers to, the students treat him with the same respect. I'll sure miss Gilly when this school year ends. He's a great dude.