We all know Fred Saner. He’s the funny guy you might have as a teacher in one of your classes; you might have passed him in the hallways a few times. Some of us have known him for years, some of us not so long; but do you really know Fred? Fred taught here for 28 full years. Did you also know that he taught for a total of 10 years at Broadview and Rogers Park? You may wonder how someone can teach for that long, but Fred certainly has a gift for it. He’s a respected teacher and rightly so, he has done a lot to earn his title. Though we can all appreciate what he’s done, not only at ACE but at other schools; we’re all sad to hear the news that he’s leaving us.
So what is Fred going to do during his retirement? The first thing he said was “relax”. We can all understand that. Who wouldn’t want to relax after such a long career? He plans to dive deeper into his passion of filming. He also plans to research Social Neural Science, as well as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and last but not least, he plans to continue his old time hobby of stamp collecting.
Here at ACE, Fred taught social studies, English, psychology, and also helped out with the haunted house during Halloween. Fred also participated in the “Taste of Danbury”. Fred is a guidance teacher as well and has seen over a hundred graduations. When asked what his funniest time at ACE was, he replied: “That time in Boston when a kid got arrested over an incident involving a chicken leg.” He told me the people that were there at the time would know. The saddest thing that he’s seen at ACE was kids “self-destructing”. When I asked what he meant by this, he told me that he had seen kids make poor decisions and even die because of them. The loss of young people’s lives has hurt him deeply.
Fred feels that ACE will continue to thrive and flourish even with him gone from the picture. Although staff like Joe Pepin, Michael Chapman, Karen Rezendes, and Sandy Atanasoff have been replaced by other people, they cannot be replaced in our hearts. Neither will Fred Saner.