Mr Kraus. Had him for 8th grade for three different periods: We had a double combined period for Advanced English and Social Studies (so that we could get judged on our English while writing papers for social studies). We spent a lot of time debating issues in that class and he was awesome had playing devil's advocate so that, up until the final day of class, nobody knew his actual opinions or beliefs. He forced you to actually figure out what you believed *and* to defend it. We even had a mock constitutional convention in class where we ended up creating our own US Constitution (that almost had three houses in the legislature).

Separately, I also had him for Algebra 2, where to this day I still with my kids use Kraus' Laws (he had them for algebra, fractions, word problems, the "cross your heart bra" method, and he introduced us to the mystical Chief Sohcahtoa).

He is one of two teachers I would put here for best I ever had and like noted above, he's the only one I actually have friended on FB.