Samuel Konstantinovich

Mr. Konstantinovich, or "Mr. K," as his students call him, is an engaging and passionate teacher whose witty banter and creative lesson plans inspire his students to pursue computer science. Although I have been interested in computer science since my sophomore year, it was not until junior year, when I was enrolled in his class, that I discovered the breadth of my passion for the subject, and it was Mr. K's skillful teaching that influenced me and convinced me to pursue a future in the tech industry. On the first day of class, I walked in hesitantly, unsure if I had made the right choice in signing up for AP Computer Science. However, within the next few days, Mr. K quelled all of my fears with his relatable repartee, interesting metaphors, and well-structured lesson plans. While computer science may have been a foreign concept and a difficult topic to grasp, the flow of the class helped me understand unfamiliar ideas and Mr. K's detailed explanations, accompanied by hand-drawn diagrams, clarified even the most obscure subject. This meticulousness is perhaps best exemplified by the day we learned a sorting algorithm called the merge sort in his class. He started off by guiding us towards developing our version of the solution, as he always does. I appreciated the fact that he never explicitly told us the answer, and always encouraged us to think creatively and intuit the solutions ourselves, because it allowed us to analyze the problem more closely and develop our critical thinking skills. When the entire class had figured out the merge sort, he then asked us, "How long do you think this program takes to run?" Guesses ran wild all throughout the classroom, but the complexity of the sort rendered me and my classmates thoroughly confused with no clue where to begin answering the question. Three seconds? Three years? Just three? "Well, let's imagine it this way..." he said, and started drawing graphs and boxes and all kinds of visual aids on the board to help illustrate his point. He gestured and explained, all the while paying close attention to his students to gauge their level of comprehension and adjust accordingly. As he laid out the entire explanation, it became clearer and clearer to me why the answer was "n log n" and that lightbulb moment that seemed to strike every day during his class arrived on-schedule, as always. It absolutely fascinated me how logical and yet beautifully simple the whole proof was, and Mr. K presented it in a way that allowed me to appreciate its rationality and elegance. He turned a difficult, college-level topic into a 40 minute lesson plan and we all left his class that day marvelling at the intriguing insanity of the class. However, Mr. K's influence is not limited to the classroom. As I became more and more passionate about computer science, he encouraged me to attend programming contests, hackathons, and other computer science events. His support of my journey and my pursuit of a tech career was invaluable, especially when he accompanied me and a group of students as a chaperone to a coding competition held by the University of Pennsylvania and another at St. Joseph's College. Beyond computer science, Mr. K is also open towards helping his students in many other ways. Last May, when I needed a teacher recommendation for a leadership position in my school's honor society, Mr. K readily agreed to recommend me despite the last-minute request and as a result, I was appointed to the position in part due to his generosity. He has since then gone on to write letters of recommendation for countless students, giving up his own personal time to spend several hours per letter. While there are numerous other stories of Mr. K's kindness and enthusiasm to help his students, one final moment I would like to highlight is a discussion I once had with him on the way back to school after a programming competition. We stumbled upon the subject of the overwhelming weight given to academics in our society, and his insights on how "merit" often unfairly translates to "grades" demonstrated that he had a deep understanding of the pressures that plagued each student. He talked about the injustice of the public education system, the unnecessary stress imposed on children, and the high expectations that many of us faced. His thoughts revealed how empathetic he was and I was amazed at how accurately he had captured our society. In order to be an effective teacher, one has to balance clarity, sympathy and intrigue. Mr. K does an incredible job of both teaching his students because of his ability to entertain the class with relevant jokes and enlighten his students with fascinating topics. He routinely gives up his time to be more than a teacher, to be a mentor for his students and a guide, and his ability to relate and comprehend the issues his students face allows him to become more than a great teacher, but also a pivotal figure in his students' lives, and in my life.

Crystal Wang