Favorite and Least Favorite Teachers

    I always find these sorts of questions difficult to answer. I think I was lucky enough to have many good math teachers and it doesn't feel fair to pick one out as my favorite. I do know that a lot of people have had negative experiences with their math teachers... And it seems way too common to hear stories about them being either particularly strict, unempathetic, or even incompetent. I often blame such teachers as a leading cause of the all-too-prevalent stigma against mathematics. Folks just seem to hate math. And if you ask them about it, I guarantee that 9 times out 10 they will start to tell you about one teacher who single-handedly ruined the subject for them. So anyway, I was lucky to not have any such teachers. And it's not even like I ever had a super mathy teacher that took my interest in the subject to new heights or anything dramatic like that. My teachers were simply good and decent people who made learning math a positive experience rather than a negative one. I believe I do have at least some natural inclination towards the subject, but in comparing my experiences with others, I can't help but think that an interest in math is the default factory-setting for people, which then gets crushed out of us by negative experiences at school and home.

    At the moment, I can only really think of a single time that I had a negative experience in math class... It was grade 9, and I had only completed about half of the homework. I think I had just left it until the last minute, and had basically only worked on it that morning - probably on the bus ride to school. So when I was called upon to give an answer to a specific question, I had nothing. My teacher asked me in front of the class if I had done my homework to which I replied, "kind of." In my memory, she yelled at me, asking "How do you only 'kind of' do your homework??" So anyway that was super embarrassing, and I've made a mental note to try and never embarrass students like that. Even then, I did like her as a teacher, and she was otherwise very nice and supportive. But I can definitely see how enough experiences like that can make math a bit of a sore subject for many people.