It is often said that we usually remember our best and worst teachers and, most of the time, forget about the average ones. This is true to a great extent.
My first memory of having a great math teacher was in Grade 9, when I had a teacher who took teaching us math really seriously and was actually worried about whether we understood it or not. I still remember learning geometry concepts from him, especially the Pythagorean Theorem, and proving how it came into existence. I used to hate math before that, and somehow, his teaching in Grades 9 and 10 helped me develop a keen interest in it. He is probably the major reason I took math even more seriously in my Grade 11 and 12 studies and ended up taking it as a major in college. I am so grateful that I had Mr. S as my math teacher in school, especially when I had a lot of anxiety around math learning.
I did not have any really bad math teachers in particular; I just had a couple of math professors in my undergrad who really did not care if we understood the concepts or not. They would just lecture, dump materials on us, and leave.
As I look back and think about being a math teacher, I realize that an educator can have a huge impact on our life trajectory. My own bittersweet experiences with math educators serve as examples of the kind of math teacher I want, and do not want, to be for my future students. As I prepare to take up the 'mantle of the teacher,' my goal is to act as a gardener in the classroom, preparing the soil for deep, concept-based understanding and providing steady support, rather than simply dumping information and leaving.
Wow, your metaphor of ‘dumping information’ is a powerful one, Parminder! And isn’t it fascinating the way we as humans remember the people who make a strong positive or negative impression on us, and tend to disregard the rest? I wonder why that is so!
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