Truly influential teachers don’t come around often. When former Cal High English teacher, Randy Kinavey, passed away on October 14, the loss of this wonderful educator left his community shaken. He was 62 years old.

During his last year of teaching, I had the privilege of being in Mr. Kinavey’s sixth period freshman class. I walked into Room 325 and saw flamingos and Giants paraphernalia about the room. I knew immediately that English was going to be entertaining.

Being in Mr. Kinavey’s classroom involved talking, but not always on his part. He wanted the students to be part of the discussion. He genuinely cared about what we had to say and encouraged us to have our voices heard.

When the students weren’t doing the talking, we instead heard some of Mr. Kinavey’s famed “Kinavey-isms.” When someone did something well, he would proclaim, “My heart soars with the eagles!” Sometimes, if you were lucky, he would look you right in the eyes and say, “You are the woman!”

For all of Mr. Kinavey’s infinite witticisms, he was not light with our workload. Ask any student and they’ll tell you that freshman English was tough. I recall staying up into the late hours of the night cramming 18 pages worth of Greek myths into my head while memorizing my lines for a 30-minute long presentation on “The Odyssey.”

Mr. Kinavey wanted us to think. He handed us poetry, novels, and even a fake autobiography and urged us to see them through the eyes of literary scholars. The advice we received was simple, yet powerful: “Getting stupid is the smartest thing you can do.”

Students strived to do well in his class. Why? We wanted him to be proud of us.

We would do and say outrageous things if we had the slightest chance of impressing him. There were soliloquies from Shakespeare, a treacherous poetry project, and a donut-eating contest that allowed us all to shine in our own ways.

For 37 years, Mr. Kinavey touched the hearts of students that walked into his classroom. We were the lucky witnesses of the wit and kindness of that remarkable man.

He was the best teacher I’ve ever had and I will always be thankful for everything he taught me.

Kara Avancena is a senior who was in Kinavey’s Advanced English 9 class in 2010.