My Favorite Math Teacher

My favorite math teacher was Dr. Allan. I had him for pre-calculus and calculus in 11th grade. He didn't do anything in particular that stood out-- he was just really nice and patient. His only teaching method was solving example problems on the dry erase board. His door was always open to students. He was very respectful to us, even though there was probably 60 years between him and the students.

Even though we all thought Dr. Allan was great and we learned a lot from him, he isn't the person that I try to copy when I teach. There really isn't a teacher that I try to copy exactly when I teach, because I don't think it would fit with my students or my personality. Of course I try to be nice and patient, and I invite students to come before or after school. I do use the dry erase board, but I also use transparencies and worksheets. Dr. Allan didn't have any rules in his classroom-- he's one of those teachers that just doesn't need rules. I, on the other hand, need my rules and my procedures and my whole crazy organizational system (labeling, color-coding, ...). I move through the room a lot more, and ask more questions. I put problems on the board and then send students to the board to solve them after everyone has had a chance to work them out on their own.

Dr. Allan was a great teacher-- perfect for the kind of student that I was-- but my students don't learn as much by just watching me solve a problem. Also, a lot of my students need to hear the information to be able to understand it. After the first week of school, I really changed the way I taught by saying as well as writing, and by making sure the students tried problems on their own before we worked them as a group.