{"id":249602,"date":"2026-04-28T13:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T13:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/249602\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T13:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T13:36:12","slug":"former-student-recognizes-a-teacher-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/249602\/","title":{"rendered":"Former student recognizes A+ Teacher 20 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

LARGO, Fla. — Patti Beck has been teaching for 35 years. She\u2019s spent 30 years teaching at Largo High School. A former student from two decades ago nominated her to be featured as an A+ Teacher.<\/p>\n

“Always had encouraging words and even on the hard days, just, it really helped a lot. She was in a lot of ways the mom I never had,\u201d said Jodi Ward.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

Patti Black has spent 30 of her 35 years teaching at Largo High School\u00a0\u00a0
\n
A former student of hers, Jodi Ward, nominated her for A+ Plus Teacher of the Week\u00a0
\n
Would you like to nominate an A+ Teacher?\u00a0Click here<\/a><\/p>\n

“She had so many obstacles to overcome and I’m just so glad I was able to support her,\u201d said Beck.<\/p>\n

Beck and Ward have stayed in touch over the years. Their bond is an example of the impact Beck hopes to make. We visited Beck\u2019s classroom during one of her Theory of Knowledge classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy understanding how and why you know things, and how knowledge is constructed, then you can also understand how other people might have different perspectives and come to different conclusions,\u201d said Beck. She went on to say, \u201cI just hope to make it interesting enough and engaging enough that they embrace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next school year will be Beck\u2019s last one teaching before she retires.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will miss all of this. Because I do love it,\u201d said Beck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LARGO, Fla. — Patti Beck has been teaching for 35 years. She\u2019s spent 30 years teaching at Largo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[12422,12421,274,770,113,55104,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-249602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-a-plus-teachers","9":"tag-app-a-teachers","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-community-news","12":"tag-education","13":"tag-jorja-roman","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-pinellas-county","16":"tag-st-pete","17":"tag-st-pete-headlines","18":"tag-st-pete-news","19":"tag-st-petersburg","20":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","21":"tag-st-petersburg-news","22":"tag-tampa","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}