Mr. Tierney Retires After His 50 Year Legacy of Teaching

As the Glendale Prep Class of 2025 prepares to step forward into their future after high school, a beloved teacher is closing a chapter of his own. Mr. Patrick Tierney, Latin teacher and mentor at the Great Hearts academy, is retiring after an extraordinary 50-year career in education, a career marked by pure joy, intellectual curiosity, and a deep commitment to the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Mr. Tierney began teaching in September 1974. Over the course of five decades, he has shaped the hearts and minds of students from Philadelphia to California, and most recently, here in Arizona. For the past ten years, Glendale Prep has been his home, a place where his love of Latin, literature, and learning was welcomed with open arms by the faculty and student body.

“This has been a joyous, joyous labor,” Tierney reflected. “I got up each day just yearning to get here so that I could start doing what I knew and loved.”

That love of teaching was evident to everyone around him. His colleagues describe him as a man who poured himself fully into the work, not as a career, but as a calling. “It’s remarkable when someone teaches for 50 years,” remarked Headmaster Kyle Navarette. “He probably, when he was in his 20s, brought energy, joy, excitement, and was able to individually know every student, and he’s still doing that after 50 years. So, there’s something about him and the man he is that makes this more remarkable than just the number of years. He’s been blessing young souls with love, joy, a desire for excellence, and growth. That’s what’s remarkable. We’re honoring the legacy of a man who happens to be an educator for 50 years, not just someone who met a milestone.”

Though he taught Spanish for decades, Tierney returned to school later in his career to earn a degree in Latin, desiring to spend the rest of his professional life immersed in the classical tradition. In fact, when applying to Great Hearts, he famously sabotaged his Spanish teaching demonstration. “He bombed his Spanish demo on purpose,” laughed Navarette, “so that we wouldn’t hire him for Spanish, but would hire him for Latin… He knew what he wanted and had a goal for how he wanted to end his teaching career, and he was able to accomplish that.”

When he first arrived at Glendale Prep, he pulled up in his “brand-new chariot, “a sporty Corvette with only 400 miles on it at the time. Over the years, the car has become almost as famous as Tierney himself, standing out in the faculty parking lot, lovingly and carefully covered to protect it from the harsh Arizona sun. His “chariot” now proudly carries over 124,000 miles.

Outside of his teaching duties, he is also known as the voice of the morning announcements and many football games, a job he said he just happened to step into one day and never stopped. “I have never met a microphone I didn’t love,” he joked. Students, however, will surely miss starting their day with his voice.

Over the years, his students have encountered the poetry of Horace and Catullus, grappled with timeless questions, and learned not only how to read Latin but how to think deeply and live meaningfully. “You must teach a book from the inside out,” Tierney often said. “Let the text speak for itself… and help students see the Truth, the Goodness, and the Beauty in it.”

His next great adventure? A literary pilgrimage to England with his wife, Christi, where he hopes to visit a recreation of Don Quixote’s library, first editions and all. “Maybe this is going to be the first of several visits,” he said, “as I enter my own Quixotic quest.”

Though he may be retiring from teaching, Mr. Tierney’s love of learning, and the lives he’s touched, will continue to inspire long after the final bell. His legacy is one of wisdom, wonder, and the love of learning. He is a mentor, cheerleader, and friend to generations of students, as well as a great teacher who will be deeply missed as he made his final wave goodbye from the driver’s seat of his beloved “chariot.”

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