On Friday, February 16, the students of Chamblee Charter High School said goodbye to David Johnson, who had to leave CCHS due to family reasons. The well-liked engineering teacher caused students to reflect on the many fond memories they share with him after he left.
As a tribute to Johnson, juniors London Moore-Millender and Tazia Kahn made a video with messages from Johnson’s former students and colleagues at CCHS, which Moore-Millender and Khan presented to him in the auditorium during the pep-rally on February 16.
“We chose to make this video because, in the years I’ve known him, he made a great impact in our lives and many others,” said Khan. “He taught us the fundamentals and the logics behind engineering. He always encouraged to go above and beyond our limit. When we heard that he was leaving, we knew that we couldn’t let him go empty handed.”
Johnson was also able to make large impacts on the students he taught for short periods of time or did not even teach at all.
“Although I only had Mr. J since the beginning of this 2017-18 school year, I can honestly say he easily became one of my favorite teachers,” said sophomore Leah Edwards. “His welcoming, friendly and joking nature made him someone to count on and come to whenever I needed guidance.”
VEX Robotics participant Drew Council was unable to have Johnson as a teacher, but, through his participation in VEX, he was able to get to know Johnson.
“I remember him always stopping me in the hallway, asking how robotics and school was going, and congratulating me for our victories in robotics,” said Council. “I also remember joking around about which programming language to use for the robot; he prefers easyC and I prefer robotC. Even in these joking discussions, he always respected my opinion and treated me as an equal.”
Shayir Aniqa also never had a class taught by Johnson, but interacted with him via extracurricular clubs, such as Technology Student Organisation (TSA).
“I met [Johnson] after school in the lab when I was working on one of my TSA projects,” said Aniqa. “He just kinda showed up out of nowhere and started suggesting techniques I could be implementing. That was my sophomore year and he just came to the school. I started asking him for advice on almost all of my projects. He just had this way of designing things efficiently. I honestly learned so much from him I don’t even know how to express how thankful I am. He inspired me to think differently.”
There has been no announcement as to when a new teacher will be hired to fill Johnson’s vacancy, but it seems that he or she will have pretty large shoes to fill.
“One of my favorite things about Mr. Johnson was that he was always honest with students and he wanted to pass on his knowledge in a meaningful way to his students. If he saw a student not working hard, he would be proactive and try to encourage them to do their best,” said junior Aaron Boyer. “No matter what the case, he always personally helped anyone who needed it, and because of that there is no single memory of him that is good, but rather, they all are.”
