It’s the first day of real snow, the car slipped and slid around the corners driving up to the campus where Martin is teaching grade 11 mathematics this afternoon. I’m in a spot next to a window (and a heater!) opposite the large screen. There are four tables, each with four chairs, and together they pretty much fill the room. There’s a path in the shape of a Swiss cross between them. Whiteboards line three of the walls. They are full of formulas in green and red marker.

I think they are going to go over homework, because the top left of the screen reads “A section of a toy roller coaster is in the shape of a cubic curve with equation f(x) etcetera, lots of numbers. The students were to plot the graph, find local maximum and minimum values of the function …. there was more but I got distracted because the students locked the door to the balcony. One of their friends is standing outside, in the snow, looking in. Imploringly is too soft an adverb. They giggle and open the door. Martin starts class.

As class starts, the four students closest to the teacher are immediately with the teacher. Those a little further away take just a little longer to get ready. It’s a matter of a minute or less before they are all with him. He steps them through the roller coaster problem, helping them see that it isn’t all that hard. 

I notice three large envelopes with half sheets of paper stuffed into each. They are labeled Level I, Level II, Level III. I think: Congrats to the Romans that their number system is still in use. And another congrats that I hesitated when I wrote the plural formulas in the first paragraph up above, wondering if I should write formulae. Too stuffy, I decided, as you already noticed. Then I think: The students must get to choose which problems to work on, based on what sort of challenge they feel they are ready for. Sure enough, Martin pulls one of the half sheets out of Level III and tells everyone that he has a second job. He’s not only a math teacher. He is also a Math Contractor. 

“People call me,” he says, “to get help answering questions, and I charge them.” 

“People? What people?” challenges a student. There are a lot of smiles, some really good rapport going on here. 

“Just people. I can’t disclose.” He waves the half sheet of paper in the air. “All of these are also questions people have asked.”

Such a subtle humor with the students. Every teacher has their own approach to connecting with students. As long as you connect, all is well. The students obviously know Martin’s humor, they play along, it’s comfortable in the room, not just due to the heater and the swirling flakes outside.

The students discuss, Martin explains, there are a few questions, and then students get down to graphing the problem they’ve been looking at. Martin starts to circulate to see how they are doing. “Maybe you need to … What about ,… Can you change this …” One student says she doesn’t have a calculator, Martin says, simply,  “1.” That must be a behavior grade – if you aren’t prepared for class, well, you get a 1. He takes a calculator off his desk to give to the student, just as she pulls out her own. “Oh, I have it,” she says. “4,” says Martin with a smile.

I watched the movie Stand and Deliver when I was in grad school, over pizza and beer, with some of the other students. In the movie Jaime Escalante, played by Edward James Olmos, is a math teacher who coaches a class of at-risk students (at-risk for everything less than ideal – drugs, jail, dropping out or school, failure) to high scores on a standardized test. Their results were so good that they were accused of cheating. Statistically, probably a good call for the testing agency to have their doubts. In reality, they just had a great teacher, and like every student, they were capable of learning math if someone believed in them. Highly capable. Martin believes in these students, but has a much different style, sort of a calmly assured, “we got this” sort of feeling. I remember Jaime Esclante motivating a student by telling him to do the work or “I break your neck.” Tough love. This is not Martin’s approach at all. He’s their friend, mentor, and on the weekends, he’s probably skiing with them out on the slopes. Just cross your fingers for more snow.

Martin sits down next to me while the students are working. It doesn’t last long, but it’s nice when the students are working and the teacher has time to collect their thoughts. That means there is also time to check in with students, to treat them individually, like Yong Zhao, from the University of Kansas, tells us is absolutely necessary. We don’t teach a class, we teach an individual, every one of them unique. Martin circulates in the cross between the tables. “I got your email … Think of it like this … So if you take that into consideration …” He nods affirmingly, smiles, points with his pen at what the students are doing. “Exactly, there you go,” he says to the student to my right, as her eyes brighten with a personal Aha.

The calm in the room is so nice. Students are working, a few are talking, a few of them are wearing headphones or earbuds to block out the conversation. A couple of Spanish speakers at the front confer in Spanish. It’s easygoing, no neck breaking anywhere in sight. I think of the Turkish phrase a friend taught me, Kolay gelsin. It’s not so easy to translate into English, but “may it come easy to you” is pretty good. The Turks use it at the beginning of any sort of work. Maybe it’s a mix of what English speakers mean when they say good luck or keep up the good work. 

A student pulls out two more Level II questions from its envelope at the front and returns to his seat. Two others to my left are stuck but trying to help each other. Martin sees them. “Thanks for your patience,” he says as he approaches their table. They see me smiling at them and of course they have no idea what I’m thinking. Martin helps them out, with what they tell him is a Level I question. His manner is all calm assurance. It conveys to them: you are going to get this.

Here is what I am, in fact, thinking: Kolay gelsin.