Kevin Graves

Coach Graves (Photo by Mrs. Caudle)

My teacher hero is Coach Graves. He is the P.E. teacher for 5th grade and Middle School at Greensboro Day School in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is my teacher hero because he is nice, funny, and a good teacher. He can make anyone laugh but still teaches them.

Coach Graves is the nicest P.E. teacher I have ever had. He does not yell at us when we aren’t being respectful, but he still talks to us and makes sure that we know what we did wrong. He makes sure that we are all playing fair and that we are trying our best. He chooses our teams when we are playing with teams so that they are fair and not a “good” team and a “bad” team. He also makes our teams so that they aren’t boys against girls even though most people like that better.

Coach Graves is very funny. He is always cracking jokes and making us laugh. He can never keep us quiet because he always tells us something that we start laughing hysterically and can’t stop! Each P.E. lesson, he does one of his imitations of someone like Barney, or Yoda, or a man from Jamaica, or something else. He makes up songs that he sings to us about whatever we are learning about in other classes. When we were learning about eating healthy and the digestive system, he sang a song about fiber.

Coach Graves is a great teacher of life lessons. He tells us stories about when he was in the Air Force and tells us things he learned like “Hard but fair, sad but true, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.” He makes us work hard to achieve something that we didn’t think we could do, like run a mile in under 10 minutes or jump hurdles. He points out how we’ve progressed from the beginning of the year to now. He gives us funny lectures about things like listening or following directions. He teaches us how to play each sport correctly and teaches us about good sportsmanship. He corrects our mistakes and teaches us better technique.

Coach Graves is definitely a teacher hero because he is very nice, funny, and an awesome teacher. If you ask anyone in his P.E. class if they like him, you will get the same answer from each of them: YES!!! Coach Graves definitely deserves to be a hero.