“Me, myself I’m a positive person. I want to affect young people the way adults affected me when I grew up…I just want to be a teacher that students remember. Shape the way they think, not just what they think.”

• Lamar Lee

That is Mr. Lamar Lee, who has just begun his first year teaching here at Whitney Young. We sat down with our newest Special Education teacher to get to know him. He was born in Chicago but raised in Lafayette, Indiana. After graduating from college at the  University of Detroit and returning to Chicago to be with his grandmother, a friend of a friend came to him with a job offer, as a teacher’s assistant. It didn’t take him long to realize how much he enjoyed working with disabled students, and soon he began asking himself how could he continue doing this.

Mr.Lee taught at Ravenswood and, before that, Albany Park. His goal is to be the teacher that his students will remember. He wants his teaching to leave a bigger impact. He wants to teach more than what can be found in a book. In regards to his goal, although it’s only been a week, he says “so far so good.”

Something he enjoys about teaching, at Whitney or in general, is the ability to connect with students through common interests. When he’s not in the classroom he can be found out on the basketball court. Basketball is his favorite sport and pastime, along with watching ESPN and some other favorite shows like ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Power’. When he isn’t doing that, he enjoys spending time with his dog Django (yes, like the movie). Surprisingly enough, ‘Django’ is actually not his favorite movie, it’s ‘He Got Game’. Mr. Lee also enjoys hip-hop and R&B(He even played some Ne-yo jams during the interview).

Mr. Lamar Lee says that he works well with his colleagues and enjoys being at Whitney Young Magnet High School. It seems as though the feelings are reciprocated by Mr. Gary Lewis who says “He’s a great teacher, very organized, he’s going to be a very good asset to Whitney Young.”  as well as Mrs. Sandra Williams who says “He’s a really nice teacher. He has his students doing things they’ve never done before. He’s an excellent teacher and he has a lot of energy. He’s motivated, he’s excellent, he’s a good person, he’s kind. he’s really into his students.”

We would like to welcome Mr. Lee to Whitney M. Young Magnet High School- he is a great new addition to our staff and we have no doubt that he will do a great job here.