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Giang Tran

Professor Blair

Words 1103

12 September 2023

The Story About my Dedicated Calculus Teacher

At about 1:30 pm, the school bell rang, the lunch period ended, and students started to

walk from the cafeteria to their next class. It was the most exciting time of the day as I was on

the way to my AP Calculus class. “Hello Mr. S” I said to the teacher as he was posting some

math problems on the board. “Hello” he said in reply in a deep, low tone while still focusing on

writing up the problems. He was always prepared and worked hard prior to class and ensured

that his students get the best knowledge of calculus concepts out of his class. For two years of

teaching me Calculus in high school, Mr. S has sparked my enthusiasm and curiosity in learning

math, specifically calculus, which set a foundation for my future career. He was also a helpful

colleague and the most dedicated teacher that I have ever had.

Mr. S was an experienced and dedicated educator. Despite being the youngest teacher in

the math department, he taught the highest math level course at school, and he even assist other

math teachers with their classes. His commitment to teacher even extended beyond his

classroom when he generously assisted other teachers in their class.When I passed by Mr.

S’s class one afternoon, I noticed Ms. K, our pre-calculus teacher, complaining to Mr. S about

how her students were not trying hard on the recent test was quite upset as she was having a

conversation with Mr. S about something serious. As I approached their area, I realized
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that they were discussing Mr. K’s struggle with the learning challenge that the students in

her class were facing. Ms. K, despite teaching calculus, a course known as relatively easy,

encountered a significant issue- the struggle to understand system of basic trigonometry.

Precalculus, though not advanced as calculus, played a crucial role in establishing students’

foundation knowledge in order to prepare for future calculus classes. One of the most

challenging topics in pre-calculus was about learning how to perform unit circle. Unlike

algebra that only involves graphs and functions, precalculus encompasses the concept of

trigonometry, that is, sine, cosine, tangent and many more. The unit circle was a circle with

a radius value of 1, and it provides a geometric way to represent angles and their

corresponding points on the circle. It is related to the concept of trigonometric functions as

mathematical functions that relate the angles of a right triangle to their ratio. They are

closely related such that in order to know how the trig functions work, the students have to

grasp the idea of basic unit circle. However, Ms. K was having a problem that her students

were struggling with understanding and memorizing the unit circle. Although she claimed to

have students memorize the unit circle, Ms. K could see the confused look on students’ faces

when they were taking the math quiz. The average in the class was so low that Ms. K could

recognize the struggle of her students on the topic and came to Mr. S for help. Mr. S

examined closely Ms. K’s teaching plans including all of her handouts on unit circle and

quizzes given on it. He then and suggested that instead of having students memorize, she should

have explained how different radian value can be converted into degree angle, and there is a ratio

which is pi/180° that shows the relationships between the two systems. Even though Mr. S did

not teach pre-calculus, he patiently had his course plan out and showed Ms. K his way of
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teaching the unit circle as if he was the actual teacher. He showed Ms. K how to use the

fingers as a trick to memorize the values of sine and cosine on each point in the circle.

Besides, he also suggested some practice problems from his class that Ms. K could use for

her students.

Not only was Mr. S a helpful colleague, but also a hardworking and dedicated teacher.

Students hardly get a sub for Mr. S’s calculus class. Within two years of having Mr. S as my

Calculus teacher, I only had to come to class well pre-prepared and then filled with

disappointment as he was not there twice. Despite being absent, Mr. S never gave students a

chance to rest as he always made sure students kept up with coursework as he would give them

an assignment to be completed in class. Mr. S was well adored by both teachers and students at

school because of his knowledge and dedication.

Mr. S’s teaching plan can be very daunting and overwhelming for most of the students in

his calculus class. Since the AP exam tends to be broken down into small different topics, Mr.

S’s curriculum focused on how to master each single topic that could appear on the exam. His

classroom was organized in a way that ensured students’ learning was at peak. For example, he

made a table on his white teaching board that had reminders of agenda, homework and what was

due on each day of class; this helped students remember what to do when they prepare for

calculus class. For homework every night, students had to do two things to prepare for the class

of the next day: solving math problems on the old topic and watching Mr. S’s self-recorded

video on the new topic that will be covered on the next day. By doing the routine every night,

students could apply what they learned in class to do the homework and explore the next topic

that would be taught in class the next day. Although some of the topics could be learned in just
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one day, there were certain topics that were distinctively more challenging than the others. On

the last few months of AP Calculus BC course, we found the Taylor series topic ridiculously

hard to understand. Unlike basic integration and differentiation functions, Taylor series is a

sequence of terms that are added together to compute the differential value of the function at a

point. This was a relatively challenging topic in the overall course. Besides, students, in their

senior year, were burned out toward the end of school, nearly gave up on trying to learn the

concept. Mr. S, being a great teacher, carefully explained the concept multiple times; he also

generated graphs on Desmos graphing calculator to illustrate the behavior of the functions,

hoping that students would get the idea of applying Taylor series to solve the problems. Mr. S

even spent more time on the review days to focus on Taylor series, assuring students that it

would not be intimidating on the actual AP exam. As a result of his well-organized teaching plan

and dedication to solving students’ confusion, Mr. S’s Calculus class had the highest passing rate

of the AP exam, helping many students earn college credit for their class. I realized that by

passing his class and overcome the challenges, I was well-prepared to walk into the AP

exam and did my best on it.

To other students, Mr. S might be just a math teacher, but as for me, he was the one who

enhanced my high school journey and contributed to my career decision in the future. On the

first few weeks of Calculus class, I found that Calculus was very challenging and would not be

something that I like. I was struggling with understanding the concept of the subject, so I ended

up getting an exceptionally low score on my first quiz. However, before being completely

defeated, I decided to come to Mr. S and asked for help, holding the quiz that I had just got back

in my hand. Mr. S carefully reworked all the problems and diligently explained the mistakes that
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I made. Affected by his dedication, I decided to put extra attention and effort into all the

assignments in his class. As a result, I gradually developed my interest in math problems, finding

them to be attractive and fun to solve. I finally decided to utilize my knowledge in calculus for a

further career as I chose my major in engineering. Mr. S was very supportive of my decision, and

he wrote my letter of recommendation for colleges. When I chose my classes for the first

semester in college, I was hesitant to choose something new. That was when I thought back to

the time in Mr. S’s class and how scared I was at the beginning. I learned from him that no

matter how hard the course is, your experience and interest in learning new things will finally

pay off the time and effort invested.

Mr. S is truly an excellent and committed teacher. Out of all the teachers in my high

school, Mr. S was the one who left me with the most useful lessons for my future career. He was

passionate towards math, helpful toward his colleague and above all, dedicated to his

students. I hope that his dedication and passion will linger so that he can pass them on to the

new generations of high school students.