When I tell people my favorite class is autos, they aren’t surprised. Eric Varrelmann (or Mr. V, as students refer to him as) is a teacher that no student I’ve met has a distaste for.

At Arrowhead High School, Mr. V’s 11th grade consumer autos class during the 2018-2019 school year was one of the most productive classes I’ve attended. Every day we had lab, I would roll my old diesel Volkswagen Jetta into the shop and do what I needed to on the job sheet (a job sheet is a piece of paper we get monthly—on these sheets are tasks we must do and then check off). This class helped me with focusing skills, motor skills, and teamwork more than any gym class has. Intense focus is needed to complete any job on a vehicle, motor skills are needed to operate the machines, and teamwork is necessary to get everything you need to get done on time for the A. If I wanted to get an oil change and a tire change done in one class period, it’s likely I would need to work with someone. Both tasks done alone take even professionals quite some time, but working with a partner or a group of three speeds things up.

Mr. V was a fair person when it came to fooling around in class, making jokes, and doing work. This was my favorite part about Mr. V as a teacher: he rewards people who behave by giving them leniency in what they want to do in class and punishes those who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing by keeping watch over everything they do. This has taught me how to be a good classmate and working partner. It was nice to see something in school that could be related to job experience, doing work and getting it done without disruptions or trouble will get me much further than messing around and making a fool of myself. He said, “This class will be fun if you let it be fun. Get your job sheets done, and work your hardest.” This was the first thing I remember Mr. V telling the class when we had lab time, and it was the point that I knew autos would be my favorite class to go to. I value grades based on work. All of my manual work based courses had been based on trying my hardest and doing the best I could. It was like a breath of fresh air to be graded based on if I got things done or not. Despite being the lowest “brain power” manual work class I’ve taken, autos was the class where I worked the hardest because of the expectations set forth.

My favorite personal experience in autos class came when my friend Tyler and I needed to change tires on Tyler's car for credit on the job sheet. Mr. V let us both stay after class for around 15-20 minutes, even though it was during his break period, to work in the shop. I’ve never had a teacher set aside their own time for my success. Whenever I’d ask to stay after school in engineering or math, the answer was always come in during a study hall.

Mr. V always led with example and was a great jokester during class. Autos felt like a seperate world from regular school where I could focus and do hands on work without worrying about tests and project deadlines.

Although Mr. V is a student favorite at Arrowhead, he will be leaving for a different teaching job after the 2018-2019 school year. It saddens me. I was looking forward to taking the advanced autos class my senior year as another refreshing break in my core classes load, mostly to just to have another class with Mr. V, but hopefully Mr. V enjoys his new job just as much as I hope he enjoyed his time with my class. The next autos teacher Arrowhead hires will have some large shoes—or, in Mr. V’s case—colorful shirts to fill.