My Best (and Worst) Math Teachers

 I can say with little hesitation that, on the whole, my math teachers were the best teachers I had in high school (by which I mean grades 9-12 -- I went to high school in Pennsylvania, where grades 7-8 were considered "junior high school"). While I had a couple great non-math teachers in those years, it was always the math classes that I looked forward to the most! 

But while all my math teachers in high school were quite good, there is one who stands out as my favourite. His name was Mr. B and he taught me both algebra I (in grade 9) and calculus (in grade 12). Mr. B was a great teacher in my view for many reasons, including:

• He was a clear and engaging math "storyteller." Every day (or nearly every day, unless we had a work day or a test or something) we would take out our spiral notebooks (laptops didn't exist in my high school days!) and Mr. B would write. In chalk. On a blackboard. And we would all copy down every single thing he wrote. Sounds boring, right? But it wasn't because Mr. B was a math "storyteller." He made connections to what we already knew, he drew our attention to new things we could discover if we just knew where to look, and he illuminated a path that would lead us together to the new learning of the day. His course/class notes, which we wrote out in full in our own hand over the course of the year (and which we had to submit at exam times for completion marks), were like a narrative. His explanations were concise and his examples well-chosen. It was simply the best math teaching I've ever experienced.
• He was himself. By this I mean Mr. B was comfortable being who he was with his students. He was a thin, wispy-haired, soft-spoken, incredibly intelligent, kind of nerdy guy who made corny jokes in class. Yet he also coached the high school soccer team (he had the respect of the athletes!) and he loved music. He showed up at all the school band and choral concerts. He was the organist at his Catholic parish. He loved to eat salads every day for lunch. None of this made him a great math teacher. He didn't overshare about his life - about all we knew of his personal life was that he was not married - but we all felt we knew him as a person because he was just himself and we liked him. And so he could teach us...and we listened. 
• He was available to help, he understood math, and he was kind. In "study hall" (what they used to call it), we knew we could ask to go talk with Mr. B for math help if we needed it, even if the help we needed wasn't for his class! I remember bringing some confusing trigonometry work to him one day and watching and learning as he worked through trig identities with me. He knew his stuff and was glad to help. He didn't talk down to you when you didn't get it yet. He just found other ways to explain it because he understood the subject well enough to do that. And he was kind to every student, regardless of their mathematical abilities.

It wouldn't be until just a couple of years ago, when I took a math course at my local university to help fulfill the prerequisite requirements for the B.Ed., that I would discover that not all math teachers are good ones! The course was in linear algebra. The professor was Dr. G. Perhaps the best way to describe Dr. G's teaching was to contrast it to the points above about Mr. B:

• He was not often clear and his teaching was disconnected. Connections to previously learned material were not often made. Dr. G sometimes simply presented new theorems as facts with little effort put into explaining why the math worked as it did. Our notes were seemingly random examples - often with mistakes made that necessitated reworking them later ourselves!
• He was impersonal. Dr. G seemed unwilling to share anything of himself with his class. He had little personality that he revealed to his students. I don't think we really even knew if he loved the subject he was teaching or not!
• He was not often available for help. Dr. G simply seemed uninterested in his students as people. Since his lectures were usually unclear, we all learned to rely heavily on the textbook. By the end of the term, less than half of the students were even bothering to show up for class...

We are all shaped by teachers we have had in the past. For my future math teaching, Mr. B stands out as exemplary and worthy of emulation in many ways. I may not have exactly the same "storytelling" approach as he did, but from him I have learned the importance of clear and careful preparation, of "showing up" genuinely for my students, and of being supportive and kind. I am grateful for the example of Mr. B and his influence in my life!