Stories from the Past
Larry Martin
May 2, 2025 – 364 days after being named Amarillo ISD’s 2024 Secondary Teacher of the Year, Larry Martin addressed a room packed with colleagues anxiously awaiting the announcement of this year’s teachers of the year. Always animated and charismatic, Larry’s remarks were witty and not without a few jaw-dropping details.
This is a “Stories… From the Past,” where AISD’s rich and colorful history comes to life in black and white.
“I’m old,” Larry joked to his colleagues. “This is year 40 for me as an educator.”
And with that, Larry had everyone’s attention. The room knew they were in for a treat.
“I started teaching before students had to take any kind of standardized test,” he continued. “Rod Schroder was my high school physics teacher.”
Say what? The nod to former AISD Superintendent Rod Schroder was unexpected. Not many in the room would have known Mr. Schroder before he was an administrator.
“As a matter of fact, he taught honors physics when I was a junior,” nods Larry. “I’ll tell you a quick story.”
“I always loved physics, but I couldn’t make an A on a major test in that class if you had thrown me out of an airplane. One day, I had an 89, and I looked at my test and realized I got one of the problems right, I just had the decimal point in the wrong place,” Larry recalls.
“So I went up to Coach Schroder and I said, ‘How about looking at question 5, because I was actually correct with all the numbers.’ And he said, ‘Martin, when you work for NASA, you’re going to be required to call up the families and the next of kin and explain why, because of your calculations, they missed the moon by a factor of 10.’ And I had nothing else to say to that,” says Larry, throwing up his hands.
“It was a brilliant teachable moment for me.”
Reflecting on 40 years, one spent as District Teacher of the Year, Larry confirms there will be a year 41.
“I get paid for doing something I dearly love, and I get a chance to work with people who are fascinating and interesting on both sides of the desk, my faculty buddies and kids, so I’m sticking around.”
Additional settings for Safari Browser.
