Favorite Math Teacher

Sometimes in class I will think back to some of my favorite teachers and ask myself what they would do in a particular situation. I’ve had some really good teachers and they’ve all impacted my life in a positive way. As I am now teaching math, I sometimes think back to my favorite math teachers. I never really had a math teacher in high school that can really stand out as my favorite teacher. I think they were all good teachers in the own way but I think I excelled at math in high school because I simply enjoyed doing it.

Looking back, I think the reason I enjoyed doing math in high school so much was because I had a solid foundation. My elementary school teachers were very good. My 5th grade teacher was Mrs. Fancher and my 6th grade teacher was Mrs. Saah. They were very different teachers and in being so, they provided a very good balance and transition for me in those two years. The one thing they had in common was that their favorite subject to teach was math. Mrs. Fancher was very motherly and encouraged and scolded just like my own mother. She was extremely caring and nurturing and yet could be the scariest woman if we misbehaved. Her face would turn red and the meanest look would appear on her face as she slammed the door and yelled at us to put our heads down on our desks for misbehaving at lunch. She would go on a tirade about how embarrassing our behavior was on her and kept the lights off for a good 15 minutes of complete silence. She was also very personable, telling us stories of her family. We knew her family very well by the end of the year just from the tangents she went on about them. Sometimes when we wanted to get her off the subject, someone would ask her something about her family and she would go on a tangent about it for 10 or 15 minutes. We did that about twice every day and it was a good break from our work.

Mrs. Saah was very different in that she was more business like and meticulous to and extent. She stressed responsibility and not doing the bare minimum. If you did the bare minimum you got a C. If you did the extra work, you got an A or a B. She always related school work to our future jobs. She would stress to us that in the work place, if something is late or incomplete, it was unacceptable and we’d lose our jobs. Mrs. Saah was very strict in regards to grading and everything else. I remember always breezing through with all A’s and B’s in all my classes until the sixth grade (and after) but Mrs. Saah gave me 3 C’s the first quarter and I was astonished I had received C’s. I actually had to work hard to get my A’s and B’s for the next 3 grading terms.

The thing I remembered was that they were both extremely enthusiastic about math, especially Mrs. Saah. I think their enthusiasm and interest in math really made me work harder for them in math. They did a great job in building the foundation for me and by the time I entered high school, all the gaps were filled in and I excelled.

The one thing I should emulate from these two teachers is there enthusiasm for math and their caring nature. There are a lot of things I would not emulate like the tangents Mrs. Fancher would go on and I would never do as Mrs. Saah did and give myself 3 C’s. Their enthusiasm and their care were the main ingredients that helped me to become successful. The other routines and things that they did were apart of their personality and styles. I would relate that more to icing on the cake. I try to emulate them as much as possible every day because they were very good teachers but I realize that I must fit my own personality into my classes and not try to be another teacher.