Ray Schlitz, a Grade 6/7 teacher at Park Avenue School, is cool, kind and extremely patient. He just keeps going until his students get it and he always makes work fun and easy for his students.

I know this for a fact because Katie Byrn, one of his students who had just completed an after-school detention, told me so and every other student standing around agreed.

Ray Schlitz is a born teacher.

Rather than picking up a textbook to teach Newton's laws of physics and the principles of design, Schlitz has his students creating and building two-liter pop bottle rockets that will shoot up to two hundred feet in the air when they are well built.

The first attempts seldom reach full potential so the kids learn from each other's experience and keep returning to the drawing board until they experience the sweet smell of success.

Once that success has been achieved, the next step is to send an "eggonaut" into space. A fuselage, nosecone and parachute is added to the rocket and a raw egg is seated safely inside. Then the goal is to shoot the rocket two hundred feet in the air and return the "eggonaut" safely to earth.

"I like to see kids learning by seeing, doing and touching," he enthused.

Schlitz brings Lego Dacta, old CD players, clocks and radios and 10-speed bikes into the classroom so kids can learn, hands on, about gear reduction, leverage and such.

Kids in this class seem to work hard at learning without knowing it - they just have a lot of fun.

The "experts" tell us that many of today's students will become self-employed entrepreneurs so Schlitz has created his annual Centaun-Ville days to help them prepare for such a future.

Students come up with a marketable ideas, create their business plans, "rent" space in the school gym and then they invite the rest of the school to purchase their products or services.

When it's over, the students either reap the profits or suffer the losses. One partnership made ninety real dollars after expenses and some have lost as much as ten dollars but the lessons learned are priceless.

A Schlitz classroom is also democracy in action.

"The class has the power," he confirmed with a grin. "We meet each Friday and discuss things like behavior, homework, classroom seating patterns, things like that and the kids usually make the 'honest' choice ... but if they don't ... here's another learning experience. We'll go for it, try it out and if it doesn't work, well, we'll talk about it at the next meeting."

Every time I've been into Schlitz's classroom, I've noticed that the students are particularly polite to me, to him and to each other. It probably stems from those Friday meetings.

What are his goals as a teacher?

"Students need to experience the link between what they are leaning inside the classroom and their real-life experiences. They should be able to apply what they are learning in school to their lives outside the classroom."

I can't close without mentioning two of Ray Schlitz's role models, two of his Neighbourhood Heroes.

They are Mr. Wayne Drinnan, his Grade 6 teacher at Chase River Elementary - "He made learning fun and he's probably why I went into teaching" - and Mr. Bert Webb, his woodworking teacher at Barsby - "He was gentle, kind, patient, very caring and he was always there if you needed an extra hand."

So there's three more Neighbourhood Heroes for our list -- Ray Schlitz, Wayne Drinnan and Bert Webb. Sadly, Mr. Web passed away several years ago.