My Best Teacher

1987

My favorite teacher was Mr. Spatz. I had him in 9th grade for geometry class, and I was the only freshman in a class full of sophomores. Mr. Spatz is the teacher who is responsible for making me fall in love with math again. I had some pretty awful math teachers in middle school, and so I was down on myself going into high school. However, Mr. Spatz had such a captivating presence and really made me want to learn. I was a little intimidated at first in the class because I didn't want to stick out as "the freshman" in the class. But as the year progressed I got more and more comfortable answering questions in class, and Mr. Spatz was highly encouraging of this for me. I kept in contact with him all throughout my high school years, and even into college. He even helped me on a project by filling out a survey for me during my sophomore year of college. Due to my amazing experience with him, my brother requested to have Mr. Spatz as his geometry teacher as well and was rewarded with having him during his very last year of teaching.


On the first day of class Mr. Spatz handed out a questionnaire asking about our previous math classes (what they were and what grades we earned), who we knew/were friends with in the class, and where in the classroom we might like to sit. He used this information and on the second day of class we were put in our assigned seats, where we miraculously stayed the entire school year. We were assigned homework every day except for Fridays and Mr. Spatz got us into the routine of taking out our homework at the beginning of the class period and checking our answers with those he had posted on the back whiteboard. If we had a test a day or two earlier, we knew to check the "Honor Board" posted at the front of the classroom to see who earned an A on it.

My class was during 4th period and we had lunch right in the middle of class. Mr. Spatz would teach for half an hour, we would have lunch for half an hour, and then he would teach for another half an hour. Since we had the longest class period of the day we had a little more leeway in getting back to class after lunch let out. I suppose that Mr. Spatz's best classroom management skills were knowing where to place students in the classroom to eliminate as many distractions as possible and having a big presence in the classroom. He would stand at the front of the classroom and use the overhead projector almost every day and as such he was facing the class while he taught rather than facing the whiteboard.

I plan to emulate Mr. Spatz in my classroom as much as possible. I really like how he gave out a survey on the first day of class to gauge students' knowledge/abilities as well as where to place them in the classroom. I also liked his ability to teach entirely while facing the classroom, though I don't know how plausible this will be with technology becoming more prevalent in classrooms. I hope that I can have a good presence in the classroom, and have a lot of withitness like Mr. Spatz had. I also hope that my students like me as much as we all liked him. I want to be that teacher that inspires students to like, or at least tolerate, math just like Mr. Spatz was for me.