(upbeat music) - I don't even know where to begin with Mr. Capone.

He is my favorite teacher I ever had.

- When I was a young boy I, my dad was a teacher and I watched him and was impressed, inspired the way he affected students.

- So I would describe Mr. Capone, firstly, as very genuine, he was always upfront with us.

He would tell us when he was proud of us, when he thought we could be working a little bit harder, a little bit better.

- Tim was a student of mine in sixth grade.

He walked in my classroom the first day and I was just totally impressed the way he handled himself.

Sixth grade at Wallenpaupack is the first year that students are in the middle school and most of the students come in very scared, very unsure of what's gonna happen at the middle school level.

And Tim just walked in and presented himself as a very confident young man and he was there to learn.

- He is the sweetest soul.

He's been there right through since I was in sixth grade and followed me all the way through.

Even he recently texted me before graduation just to simply say how proud he was of me and that he was excited to follow where I was going later on in life.

Math was not always my favorite subject.

I came into Wallenpaupack's gifted program in fourth grade with an actual English specialty.

I always liked numbers but until that point they were never something that I really focused on.

- I had a lot of teachers, excellent teachers at Dunmore High School and they inspired me and showed me so many different ways to express numbers and problem solving.

- But once I hit sixth grade and hit Mr. Capone's class, I think what really changed for me is he made those ways of connecting it to real life.

And that's kind of why I love math now is, you find your solution, you find your answer and you're there.

- You know two plus two is always gonna equal four.

How you get there may be taught a little different or may be thought of in a little different way.

- And to this day I'm gonna be a business analytics major so statistics are gonna be a big part of my life and that really kind of pushed me from that point on to now that math is gonna kinda be my life from now.

- To be quite honest, this year I've decided to retire.

And after 32 years in the classroom at Wallenpaupack, eight years prior to that, working at a YMCA as a director, 40 years of working with students, again I am totally humbled and very grateful for this honor, but looking forward to my retirement.

- Mr. Capone, I just wanna say thank you first of all.

You don't know how much you mean to me and a lot of other students that had your class.

You really changed a lot of us just by being there for us and just thank you, it was a great experience and to retirement.