As you all know, the Teacher Appreciation Assembly is on Friday, April 25. Like several different articles that are going to be posted pretty soon, I’m going to present a profile on a nominee. The nominee of my choice is Patrick O’Keefe.

Mr. O’Keefe is a history teacher here at North Kansas City High School. This is Mr. O’Keefe’s second year here at Northtown, teaching Pre-IB World History, regular World History, and regular U.S. History. Next year, Mr. O’Keefe is going to teach Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology. Mr. O’Keefe graduated from University of Missouri (Mizzou).

Mr. O’Keefe is currently enrolled at University of Kansas City, Missouri (UMKC) working towards masters in online educational technology. And when you ask Mr. O’Keefe about his degrees, he may or may not mention something about a yodeling degree from Germany.

During the interview, I asked O’Keefe what he thinks his students think of him, he replied, “I hope my students would describe me as someone who has a good time, while still teaching. Constructive teaching, I guess.”

I interviewed two of Mr. O’Keefe’s students about his teaching.

“He’s an amazing person. He’s funny,” said freshman Ashley Worth. “He makes learning fun, while still teaching us.”

“He tricks you into learning. He makes history lively and fun,” freshman Abigail Hutton said. ”Which is a really hard feat to achieve. You have to try really hard to walk out of the classroom and not learn anything.”

Mr. O’Keefe hosts the Scholar Bowl team (along with Mr. Jackson). The Scholar Bowl team is doing amazing this season; they actually qualified for Nationals in Chicago this year.

The last question I asked Mr. O’Keefe was what he liked about Northtown, and he responded “Northtown is awesome because it’s extremely diverse. There are so many options for diplomas, and there are many different kinds of people that attended Northtown. It’s like a melting pot.”

Along with sponsoring clubs and teaching classes, Mr. O’Keefe is a family man. Mr. O’Keefe is happily married with one toddler and a baby on the way.

The final comment that O’Keefe said was, “I don’t care if I win, as long as Mr. Bruns doesn’t win. That’s right, Tim. I’m talking about you.”