Teacher Appreciation Week
Posted in Back in History on 05/04/2010 12:07 am by Ronnica
Today is Teacher Appreciation Day, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s intentionally scheduled for the beginning of May to get teachers through the home stretch. I grew up with a teacher, so I know that it’s a lot of hard work (and usually thankless). Today I’m joining Christa at The Dark Side of the Chalkboard in showing my appreciation for the hard-working teachers out there.
The teacher that I want to highlight today is the primary person responsible for my desire to be a math teacher one day. Her name is Mrs. Reeves, and she was one of my high school math teachers (I’m thinking it was Algebra III..but that hardly matters).
Math was always a subject I enjoyed, but since it’s something that comes easily to me, I wouldn’t usually try very hard. There’s a reason why the only F I’ve gotten on a test was in a math class…I tend to take pride in my grasp of the subject, and as we know, pride comes before a fall.
But Mrs. Reeves wouldn’t let me get away with it. I remember one time getting an extra credit question on an exam marked wrong, even though I had the correct answer. I wasn’t too happy with that. I certainly didn’t need the boost to my grade, but that wasn’t the point…I wanted to be right.
When I approached her about the issue, she told me she marked it wrong as I hadn’t used the method we had learned in that chapter to solve the problem. She told me to solve it this way, and she’d give me back that point. (And yes, I did and she gave me that point.)
By challenging me, she was helping me to not only practice the skills I was learning in her class, but also to improve my problem-solving skills, something that would outlast my academic career.
Mrs. Reeves worked hard to reach all kinds of students. We had to do in-class labs (I’ve never enjoyed group work or hands-on things, but I know many kids do). She shared with us creative ways to remember mathematical rules (like a man (Y) can have more than one woman (X), but a woman can have only one man…this is the definition of functions, but a poor rule of society). She showed us practical applications of the math we’re learning by graphically showing us the distribution of grades.
I’m thankful for Mrs. Reeves and all the other excellent teachers I’ve had over the years. I hope to be among their ranks some day.
This is by no means a new topic here on the Ignorant Historian. [Time out. Should there be quotes around a blog title? Italics? Seems like it should be treated like a book or a play, and the post titles be treated like smaller works like articles. If anyone knows of anything about this, I'd love to hear it. Actually, this goes nicely with the theme of this post!]





