When english teacher Frank Alletto graduated from LT in 1992, he knew confidently that he wanted to return as soon as he could, inspired to follow the footsteps of his own senior year english teacher, Glen Powell. 

“I absolutely wanted to be back to LT,” Alletto said. “ It still amazes me that things worked out the way they did. At the end of my senior year, I wrote Glen a thank you letter, ending with my wish to one day call him a colleague and friend. Four years later, in 1996, I started teaching at LT. Incidentally, on my first day of teaching, I stopped in the main office to grab my mail before first period. Imagine my surprise when I found that exact same letter in my mailbox. Glen had saved it in the hopes that I’d be back.”

A significant amount of things have changed since starting to teach, he said. Alletto first began working at LT when he was just 22 years old, only four years after graduation. In his 28 years of teaching at LT the most change he experienced was in both teacher/student expectations and technology. 

“But what hasn’t changed is the value of it and the significance of what happens in a classroom,” Alletto said. “I still believe a classroom is the most sacred place to be. I felt it here as a student, and I still feel it everyday as a teacher.”

Since there wasn’t there wasn’t much digital access everyday, students during this time were less socially, politically, and culturally aware than the students at LT today, he said. The access to computers was limited and almost everything was still physical and manual. 

“We hand wrote everything, though most tests were filling in bubbles,” Alletto said. “And I love describing for my students how we texted in the 90s: pen on torn out spiral paper, carefully folded, palmed, and handed off in hallways or dropped in lockers.”

Being on the edge of two decades in high school, Alletto had a unique experience as a student in regards to music and fashion, he said. For a while Alletto harbored the iconic mullet hairstyle and also listened to many different bands as the years went on. He went from listening to Def Leppard to then transitioning to Nirvana by the time he graduated. 

“I have truly vivid memories, all related to music: flashes of me as a newly licensed sophomore, driving out of the SC parking lot blasting Guns and Roses’ ‘Sweet Child of Mine’,” Alletto said.