The One and Only Mr. Pankop

Every school has a teacher that everyone knows more for their personality than the subject they teach, whether they’ve had them in class or not. These are the teachers students dream of having. Here at BHS, we have multiple teachers like this, but one teacher that stands out more than the others is Mr. Pankop. Mr. Pankop teaches Geometry and Pre-Cal. He has been teaching for a total of thirteen years, eight of them being here at BHS.

Mr. Pankop does things differently than what the standard teacher is expected to do. During my freshman year, I had him as my Geometry teacher. He would often write on the board and teach from there. One day, he was teaching how to graph a certain problem and he ran out of room on the top of the board. Instead of just saying what should be there at the top, he started to write on the wall like it was nothing. I remember everyone sitting there wondering what we just witnessed him do. But this is just a little portion of who he is.

When asked what was one of his most memorable moments from teaching over the past thirteen years, Mr. Pankop described a time when he held little egg babies for ransom. He talked about how a class here at BHS has a project where students house and take care of an egg for a couple of weeks. If Mr. Pankop sees an egg just sitting there in the open, he’ll ask the student to go print him a piece of paper and that is when he makes his move. Little do the students know, but the printing paper is actually a ransom note that asks for a piece of sugar free gum for their egg baby.

“I get my gum every time,” Mr. Pankop said.

There are many reasons to appreciate Mr. Pankop as a teacher and as a person in general.

Junior Suzy Ramsey appreciates Mr. Pankop because “he makes learning more enjoyable with his weird humor, and [he] is always willing to help.”

Sophomore Anna Sinclair agrees. “He’s good at teaching, and he makes it fun.”

To Mr. Pankop, on behalf of every former and future student of yours, thank you for being the person you are and making school enjoyable, even if it is just for one period.