After a 46-year career at Pascack Valley High School, Spanish teacher Andrew Lewis is retiring at the end of the school year.
Since joining the school in September of 1979, Lewis has left an impact on countless students— including some who have returned as colleagues.
Before his tenure at Pascack Valley, Lewis taught in Long Branch from 1977 to 1978. He then took a year off to travel in South America before returning to teaching, this time at Pascack Valley.
“My first dream was to be a baseball player,” Lewis said. “Mr. Lynch and Mr. Kennedy always laughed at me because I told them that I became a teacher because I couldn’t hit a curveball.”
“But I traveled [in South America] and fell so totally in love with the culture, and I just wanted to share that with my students,” Lewis said.
Lewis was inspired to teach by his “… passion for the language and the culture.”
During his time at PV, Lewis has coached various sports teams. From 1987 to 2005, Lewis was the assistant coach of the baseball team, and in 1995, he became the girls volleyball head coach.
“I just took the coaching job for volleyball because, at the time, I just to make some more money,” Lewis said. However, he fell in love with the sport and continued coaching the team for 21 seasons.
“I fell in love with it so much to the point where it’s really the only thing I follow,” Lewis said. “I don’t pay attention to professional baseball, football, or basketball anymore, but I can tell you the starting lineup on five different college volleyball teams.”
During his time with the volleyball team, Lewis led the group to winning the 2003 county championship; that year he was named Volleyball Coach of the Year by The Record.
In the classroom for almost five decades, Lewis has witnessed firsthand how teaching Spanish has evolved.
“The biggest difference is we did a lot more grammar then and teaching vocabulary, whereas now, it’s much more about talking and reading,” Lewis said. “A lot of my students now don’t know what the name of a verb tense is, but they know what the verb tense itself should be— which is the way you learn your native language.”
For Lewis and many members of the World Language Department, the goal is to leave a lasting impact on students.
“We teach the material, but I think we also teach and inspire kids and help them in their lives,” Lewis said.
One student who was inspired by Lewis’s teaching and love for the language is Courtney Rems—a current colleague. Rems had Lewis during her freshman year, and that experience would end up being part of the reason why she returned to PV to teach Spanish.
“It was funny: I had him freshman year for Honors Spanish II, and it was the first time that we were able to take an honors class when we got into high school,” Rems said. “And he had this expectation that we would speak Spanish.”
“For the first time [in my experience], a teacher didn’t just want us to memorize a vocab list, they wanted us to actually speak and use the language,” Rems said.
A memorable aspect of Lewis’s class for former students is a slideshow he created of his travels and his corresponding storytelling about his trip to Peru. For Rems, that slideshow might have just been the reason why she’s teaching Spanish today.
“It really showed me that somebody kind of like me, who didn’t grow up necessarily speaking the language, could go and travel throughout South America,” Rems said. “…That was sort of my motivation…I don’t think I would have been a Spanish teacher if I hadn’t had Señor Lewis in my freshman year. He was the first person that really made me enjoy the language.”
Now, as Lewis prepares for retirement, he reflects on the relationships he’s built and the legacy he is leaving behind.
“As I’m about to retire, I’m very proud of not only the work that I’ve done, but I’m proud to consider myself a member of this faculty…,” Lewis said. “Not only are they [the teachers] very skilled at teaching their material, I think they really care about the kids, and I think that’s what makes Pascack Valley pretty special,” Lewis said.
While he may be stepping away from the classroom, Lewis isn’t stepping away from the language altogether.
“Ms. Kosch told me this: you don’t retire from, you retire to,” Lewis said. “I’m leaving this, but I’m going to do other things. I want to spend time traveling, I want to see my grandchildren, I want to spend more time with my kids.”
