You Are What You Do

The students of McNeil High School would like to vouch for the integrity and professionalism of Walter Lee, a man who has touched the lives of every student that has walked through his doors. To remove Mr. Lee from this campus would not only be a disservice to our computer science program, which is already short on teachers, but also a disservice to the engineering program and SAT prep classes.

Few other teachers can teach these subjects with the skill, efficiency, and above all, the creativity that Mr. Lee can. It’s this creative teaching that made Mr. Lee so beloved by his students, teaching them to view situations in a way that emphasised real world applications and ‘outside of the box’ thinking. His students aren’t just taught about base concepts, but also how to identify and use those concepts in real life scenarios. His teaching methods were often unorthodox, but as evident by his PLTW final exam scores in previous years, they worked significantly better than other teachers nationwide. Blowing the national average scores of 4-5 out of the water, Mr. Lee’s classes averaged around an eight, with a significant amount of students receiving the maximum score of nine.

More important than his scores, however, is possibly the biggest imprint Mr. Lee has left on our school: his iconic phrase, “You are what you do.” To his students, it holds the powerful, undeniable truth that a person's actions are what are used to define character. This phrase, referenced by him time and time again in his classes, has taught his students how much weight their actions hold, implanting in them the idea that one must have the initiative and drive to change their actions in order to change themself. Much as a person who picks up an instrument must practice to become a musician, one must practice to become the person they want to be. Whether they want to learn a skill or change their lifestyle, they must practice those habits to change themselves.