Mr. Peter Spizzirri was a chemistry teacher at Souderton Area High School from 1998-2012.

Mr. Spizzirri was one of the teachers who I will remember for the rest of my life. I absolutely LOVED his chemistry classes. He had a crazy, wonderful sense of humor that produced countless inside jokes, which really made his classes feel like friend groups with a wonderful sense of camaraderie. If you tried to tell your friends about his class, and there was something they didn't get or didn't think was funny, you realized that unless they had Spizz for a teacher, they wouldn't understand. More than just the humor though, Mr. Spizzirri really challenged us. He gave us an incredible amount of freedom and self-direction, which was wonderful for students like me. I think he expected us to take charge of our own learning, but of course, he was there to teach and help and answer any questions we might have. Particularly in AP Chem, he fully expected all of us to study hard and do really well on the exam (as opposed to the quizzes - there was only one exam...) One of my favorite parts of his class was when he had us all make up a study guide for the AP exam - putting us each in charge of one or two chapters of the textbook. When the whole study guide was finally put together, it was such a wonderful compilation of everybody's individual style and senses of humor; you could almost tell who wrote which section without seeing their names attached to it. Plus, the study guide was really helpful. (I think I might even still have mine!) I came away from that with a renewed sense of respect for my classmates and a sort of admiration for all that we had learned. When I went to college, I was going to be a chemistry major, and I wanted to skip the freshman chemistry class, but my advisors strongly advised against that. So I took the freshman chemistry class and was bored to death the whole time. I have Spizz to thank for that ;) Thank you Spizz, for all the learning and all the laughs. Thank you for giving me an appreciation for the Beatles, and for teaching me how to add and subtract in hours and minutes so that I could tell what time it was in your class. "It only burns... if you touch it," is forever burned (pun intended) in my mind. And I always remember that if I don't know the answer to something, the answer is either "yes," or "42." I truly loved your class.

-submitted by Jen Heavener