Right Wing Nation

Reading through this math textbook has resurrected vivid memories of my high school math teacher, one of the best teachers I had at any level of my education. Allow me to indulge myself and tell you about her.

Mrs. Wilson–whom we always addressed as “Mrs. Wilson” (I suspect everybody would have been shocked if anyone, even the most non-serious student, addressed any teacher, but most of all, Mrs. Wilson by her first name), was about ten years younger than my grandmother. She was a stately woman, not as tall as my mother (my mother was 5′10), but close, probably 5′8, with white hair–permed, of course, and stacked high on her head, as was the norm for older women back then. She wore grey-rimmed glasses with a silver chain that wrapped around the back of her neck. She held herself proudly, and with a great deal of dignity, and just her appearance commanded respect.

Mrs. Wilson had a BS and an MS in mathematics, as well as an MA in education (which she had to get in order to continue teaching). I know this because when I was thinking of applying to colleges, I asked Mrs. Wilson for advice, and she told me.

Politicians can’t acknowledge this, but there have always been screw-ups in school, and there always will be. We had ours. But even the worst of the screw-ups respected and liked Mrs. Wilson. Even the students who struggled the most with math. Of all the teachers at my school, Mrs. Wilson was one of the most respected and one of the most popular.

I went to a very small, consolidated rural school. Compared with what teachers deal with today, our “discipline problems” were trite. Somebody passing notes, perhaps, or throwing spitballs. Things like that never happened in Mrs. Wilson’s math class. She did not have discipline problems. Nobody would have dared to pass a note in her class.

Her bearing was professional and dignified, she maintained a professional distance, she appeared strict, and when she walked into the room you sat bolt upright in your seat and the room fell silent. Looking back on her class now, after having taught all these years, I suspect her greatest difficulty was overcoming the natural intimidation she imposed and getting students to raise their hands and ask questions, but she managed to do it. Even the slowest student felt free to raise his hand and ask for clarification, and Mrs. Wilson always gave it, and gave it well, no matter how stupid the question.

She demanded a great deal from us, and she treated us fairly. She made the same demands of every student in her class. She would always begin class by reviewing what we’d done the day before, putting a problem up on the board and having us walk her through the solution. She would then lead into whatever the topic was (if we were starting a new one) with a question, like, “What if . . . how would we solve that?” and then introduce the day’s topic. She would do several problems, after the first one having us walk her through to the solution, assign a set of problems for us to do (quietly, and not in groups) over fifteen minutes, then call on us one by one to come up to the board and write down our solutions. She would then critique our solutions and our logic, and solicit comments from the class.

Mrs. Wilson would always ask if there were another way to do a problem. Mrs. Wilson would always put a similar, thought slightly different, problem on the board and ask us to compare the two. Mrs. Wilson always made us think about the mathematics.

Her desk was always open. If we were quietly working, and one of us had a question, he could always approach her, and she would always help. She was professional, somewhat distant, and formal, but she loved her students, and we all knew it. She was always quick to help any student understand.

Her exams were famously difficult, and in addition to the problems from the book she assigned, she also gave us additional problems. She wasn’t the only teacher in our high school who piled homework on us every night and over every weekend, but she was the only teacher whose students all did the homework. Not once did a student say he didn’t do it, or finish it, though many student did problems incorrectly. But every student did as much as he could for Mrs. Wilson, because she did everything she could for us.

I’m sure she passed away years ago. But in addition to math, I learned a great deal about teaching from Mrs. Wilson. I’ll never forget her.