The Other Thing

Today our school says goodbye to two incredible math teachers, Dana Hedgepeth and Carrie Ann Miller. Dana is retiring and Carrie Ann is moving on to a new opportunity, and while I'll be the first to acknowledge that they are each irreplaceable in their own right, I am happy for each of them. Both of them have earned it, and we all deserve to get what we have earned. When I reflect on the past 12 years of working together, many warm and funny memories come to mind. In the classroom, both of these ladies have stuck by some of the crazy ideas I've put them through over the years as we looked for the perfect recipe for improving high school math instruction. I've changed what they taught, how they taught, and who they taught along the way and they never backed down from a challenge. I'm not narcissistic enough to think that they never questioned me or even cursed me along the way, but they always showed up and for three class periods a day, they did the very best they could do. There's a lot to be said for that. 

But despite how good they are in the classroom, I'll remember them for the other things. When I think of Dana, I'll never forget how much pride she has in this school. She wants everything to be perfect. Don't dare think that you can place flowers or set the stage for graduation as well as she can. Her eye sees things mine never will. And while she endured our jokes about her obsessiveness over such things, she never stopped trying to make things absolutely perfect for students, staff, and families. She has so much pride in being from our school and she wants everything about it to be the very best. It's seen in her classroom and in how she speaks. Carrie Ann has a similar flirtation with perfectionism. Her clean classroom and aversion to germs of any kind are a hint of what lessons look like in her room. But what I'll remember most is seeing her, years before blended instruction or a need for videoed lessons became a thing, struggling to balance an iPad on a stack of textbooks to video herself going over a math problem so that her students could watch it doing their homework. Those first videos are not something she's proud of today, but if you could see how she transformed her classroom in the months that followed, you'd see that same obsessive nature. That same desire to be perfect. I watched both ladies struggle over the years with personal hardships that I would not wish on my very worst enemy. And despite the time and space offered to them, they could turn it off and try their very best to be perfect for students several times each day to teach math. 

How you teach is always going to be important. You're never going to hear anyone say that you can get away with being a bad teacher just because you care about students. Lots of people care, but doing that is only half of the job. But if there's something that I'll take away from Dana and Carrie Ann, it's not just that they are amazing math teachers, it's the other thing. It's a desire to work so hard for kids because they deserve it. It's that no matter what obstacles life throws your way, you face it head-on. They are two of the best math teachers I've ever known, but they are also two of the most resilient people I've ever met. And maybe it's that other thing that makes them great.