Educator of the year

During middle school the sixth grade went by really fast and was somewhat boring. I ended up getting decent grades at the end of the year. When summer was over and 7th grade I didn’t know what to expect. I was kind of nervous on how my new teachers were going to be. That first day of school was going smoothly, and then I went into math, one of the subjects I find boring. There stood a somewhat tall blonde woman that looked in her early 20’s, she introduced herself and told us the rules of the class, and at first she seemed strict and threatening so I really wasn’t looking forward to that class.

Seventh grade was where I started to slack off more often, I was smart but didn’t feel like doing anything. During math I would daze off and start thinking of other things besides school. I didn’t do any homework and when I did I would lose it. During 7th grade I had a feeling my math teacher didn’t like me that much, she would always yell at me, now looking back she yelled at me for not paying attention so she really was yelling to try and help me. She would try to push me so I would do better because she knew I wasn’t dumb, I just chose not to do anything, but I just wasn’t interested in school, especially in math.
The moment I remember most about Ms. DeNenardo’s 7th grade math class was when the guy sitting next to me was getting a bunch of questions right, so she gave him tickets, which was like the school currency, and he just handed them to me, so I thought he wanted me to make little hats because at the beginning of class I should him how to make a hat out of paper. Question after question he kept handing me tickets, so I kept making little hats, he didn’t know what I was doing, he was too concentrated in the lesson. After a while he turns around and sees me with a hat in every finger and like 50 more on the desk, laughing he said, “Dude what are you doing?!” at the exact same time Ms. DeNardo walks to us. With a really scary face she says, “Why are you doing that?” I just shrug, she then tells me to quit it and to unfold every single ticket. I think she lost it when I unfolded the tickets and as she walked away I looked down at my lap and there sat a little orange hat staring me right in the face, talking to myself I said, “Oh, I missed one.” then my friend breaks into the laughter that he was trying to contain, that’s when she got really mad and told us to move. The rest of the year was horrible; I went through the year barely passing. Almost at the end of the year Ms. DeNardo told the class she would be teaching 8th grade next year, when I heard that my hopes and dreams sank.

Eighth grade came and I walked into Ms. DeNardo’s new classroom. She introduced herself mainly to the people that didn’t have her the year before. That year I started doing my work in math and Ms. DeNardo really helped me. Unlike the year before that year she didn’t seem like she totally hated me. She could take a joke and she would not get mad, the class had fun but we would go back to work. I really enjoyed her class and it was pretty fun. She would explain everything so that it made sense, and if someone didn’t get it she would try and help you until you got it. I used to think math was boring, but she made it interesting to me. My favorite part of the class was when we played jeopardy to help prepare for quizzes or tests that were coming up, we were learning and we had fun. Ms. DeNardo would still yell at me here and there but it was mostly because I did or said something stupid, during that year she really got close to the students and everyone liked her.

That year was over and in my opinion it was my best, I really enjoyed myself in math, something that I hated very much. The one teacher that was my least favorite at one point became my favorite. She is a really good teacher and thinks about others. She really wanted for everyone to do better, not just me. I never thought I would say this about a math class but I’m really going to miss that class.