“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING??,” AP Art History teacher Daniel Kempner jokingly shouts. Usually, AP classes are intensive and serious, but there is at least one funny and charismatic AP teacher residing in the WJ art wing.

Kempner is a Photography and AP Art History teacher who brings a unique flair of creativity into his classroom. He’s often described as an out-of-the-ordinary presenter and lecturer.

“He’s super engaging,” senior Elsa Santighian, who had Kempner as a teacher for two years of Photography and one year of Art History, said. “He will literally say anything and I think that’s hilarious. Art history is a boring class but he makes it super interesting. He engages students in the content. I zone out a lot in class, but in Kempner’s class I never zone out.”

Kempner has always taken a liking to photography, initially with aspirations to become a photojournalist. While working for a newspaper in Tucson, Arizona, he was also teaching students photography at an after-school program.

“The kids were working on their own photo-essays and journalistic stories that would be published at the end of the school year in a youth magazine,” Kempner said. “The pictures that the students made and the work that the students were doing was more provocative, interesting and sometimes even more meaningful than [the work that] a lot of my grown-up peers were doing for the real newspaper.”

Kempner remarked that this helped inspire him to make the switch to teaching, inspiring young minds with the art of photography.

“It made me get real excited about the potential of young people and art-making, and how it could be just as good or even better as grown-ups working professionally,” Kempner said.

While Kempner engages his class with his extroverted and outgoing personality, it often can come as intimidating to his students on day one.

“If you’re not prepared for Kempner, you’re going to be scared of him. Especially at first,” Santighian said.

Kempner makes his presentations and class lectures fun, engaging and loud to heighten students’ participation.

“I think that he’s funny, he makes it fun to learn. And it’s always entertaining in his class, like there’s always something going on. That’s definitely what I would say is my favorite thing [about Kempner],” freshman Sebastian Patch said.

Seeing students marvel at the end-result of their own work is what makes this job so special for Kempner.

“Watching students do things that even surprise them, like making artwork that was so good or strong. When I get surprised at what a student can do and when they get surprised at what a student can do, it makes this the best job ever,” Kempner said.