I am a product of the public school system. I was a good student. I was involved. I graduated with a 4.0. Without my outstanding public school system, I would not be the person I am today. In light of budget cuts to public education, I am going to honor my favorite public school teacher. This woman, not only taught me to be ambitious, but changed the way I saw the world.

My favorite teacher happened to be my yearbook teacher. Yearbook is 100% the reason I have such a drive for success. With budget cuts happening in public education, I fear programs like yearbook will not be available.

Ms. Liz Hale was not originally someone I found similar to myself. She was very laid back. She wore whatever she wanted, wore little make-up, and proudly displayed an "I support LGBT" poster on the wall in the back of her room. Me, as a preppy junior girl, she did not originally impress me. However, the more I grew to know her, the more I recognized how naturally beautiful and smart my new teacher was. She taught me so much more than she was required to. She taught me to see the world differently. From my experiences in her class, I learned how to be a more accepting and caring person.

Ms. Hale cared about her students, but gave us tough love. She never babied us. In order to survive her class, you had to learn to be independent and develop a work ethic. This was the single most important skill I could have developed going into my freshman year of college.

Unfortunately, for Ms. Hale, she found herself in a large class of caddy girls. Every one of us that stayed in the class, left a different person than we started. She didn't let us talk bad about others or gossip in her class. She taught us to be better people.

Ms. Hale is the single most missed thing from high school for me. There is no amount of thank-yous that would ever be enough to repay her for the lessons she taught me in life.

Yearbook is not a mandatory study such as science and math, but it taught prepared me more for college than any other class. I was lucky enough to have such a program offered to me, and it is my deepest hopes that all students will have opportunities beyond the typical classroom in high school. Every person in the United States deserves a dynamic education. Moreover, every student deserves teachers such as Ms. Hale that teach them to be better people. Current budget cuts may hinder these opportunities for extracurricular and devoted teachers.

The key to success is education. In a developed nation, such as the United States, no child's opportunities should be sacrificed.