Is it something in the hallway?  Mr. Johnson and Mr. LeResche, two of Sahuaro’s English teachers who are next door to one another, are both expecting babies this fall! To be precise, Mr. Johnson is expecting a baby boy, and Mr. LeResche is expecting a baby girl. Mr. Johnson already has a 7-year-old daughter named A’ziy, and he recently shared that he’s feeling even more nervous this time around. Johnson’s baby boy is due on November 10th, and though he already has a name chosen for his baby boy, shh…it’s top secret for now! Only Nancy Drew can crack the case. Baylee is the name chosen for Mr. LeResche’s new baby girl, who is due on October 27th – which also happens to be his wife’s birthday, and he has one other daughter named Noelle.

For Mr. LeResche, there is a lot of pressure raising two girls only because he worries that the world has gone too far for girls’ “attractive exploitation,” meaning that society has made girls look like just sex objects and not value what is truly important.  One of his top priorities is to make sure that he teaches his little girls to grow up strong and that beauty is not the number one factor to be judged upon and that it is wrong for society to care about superficial things like that. He plans on teaching them that they can make a difference and not shelter them from the subject just because it’s a little uncomfortable.

Mr. LeResche is eagerly looking forward to witnessing the interactions between his daughters. He is curious to see how they differ or resemble each other, whether they share common interests, and how their unique personalities merge into a cohesive dynamic.  Both Mr. and Mrs. LeResche are Sahuaro graduates, but from different years and they did not really know each other back then. LeResche returned to  Sahuaro High School 4 years ago, currently teaching all seniors. “I want to make sure that students see that literature can bring a whole new world to us. I love watching them fall in love with reading,” says Mr. LeResche. “It’s just always been something that I was the most comfortable with in school.”  Prior to returning to his alma mater, he worked at Corona High School in Phoenix for 6 years, however, when his wife got pregnant with their first baby, Noelle, who is now 2 and a half years old, he decided to move closer to his family.

While Johnson was both excited and nervous when he found out he was having a son, he’s now a little more worried about making more mistakes as a father to a son. He wants to be a positive role model and avoid repeating any of the mistakes made by the male figures in his own life, making the pressure hard to handle. Mr. Johnson began working at Sahuaro for the summer school program in 2022; now he teaches English to both ninth and eleventh graders. Mr. Johnson shared that, “English has taught me how to use my brain in more creative ways.”

As these two work hard to teach their kids important life lessons, they are also here to teach us everything we need to know. Thank you to these two amazingly hard-working teachers, and good luck to them with their new babies.