Two Future Letters

June 30, 2019

Dear Mr. Whitbread,
Thank you for the time you took to teach my Math class over the last school year. I began taking your class with a dislike for Math - I had had previous bad experiences. I'll never forget your first class where you encouraged us all to drop our fears of math and learn again to appreciate the beauty of the subject. You told us that most of us would never love everything about math, but all of us could learn to love certain aspects - much the same as all our other subjects. I liked that and it has stayed with me. I will always remember how I looked forward to your classes. Sure there were boring parts of classes, but you always gave me something that would make me think.

Dear Mr. Whitbread,
After spending a large number of hours in your classroom, I can't help but look back and think it was a large waste of time. It wasn't all your fault - math is just boring and I could never understand why we needed to learn it. I did everything I could to not fall asleep in class while you were working on examples. I really wish you hadn't called on us for examples and made us do group work. It made me feel stupider than I already had felt I was when I didn't know the answers to your questions. Why couldn't you just teach us like my previous teachers and make us learn things at home? It would have made me feel way more comfortable.
Maybe you can be a better teacher in the next ten years.

While I hope more letters conform to the first, I do expect some negative feedback as well. I know I am going to be teaching a subject that carries a lot of dislike by a great many students (and people in general), but I hope that my positive, good natured demeanor is able to win most over. I hope I can help those that already love mathematics to continue to learn its graces.