Remember the brouhaha over whether we should allow prayer in schools? Every now and then, the debate bubbles up again.
I like what someone quipped, “As long as there are math tests, there will always be prayer in schools.”
Amen, for me.
My seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Nanelle Bacon, loved to tell Alan, Emily and Eric, “Your daddy almost flunked math in my class.”
“Why, Mrs. Bacon?”
“Because he couldn’t do decimals. But then I told him to put a dollar sign in front, and he never missed a problem.”
And every time she repeated that story, I replied, “Mrs. Bacon, I just didn’t know what decimals were for.”
I can do old-school math—add, subtract, divide and multiply. Every now and then, I skip using a calculator and do the figuring with a pencil. It’s a check to see whether my brain still works.
But that’s a different story for algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus.
Somewhere, there are students—just like me—who are praying, “Lord, please help me. I must pass this test.”
And then I think about Wyatt, our oldest of eight grandchildren. He majored in math at Young Harris College. Now, he’s in UGA graduate school, pursuing a master’s in environmental engineering.
A math degree in our family?
How’d that happen?
Then I remembered. His other grandfather graduated from Georgia Tech. By blending genes, the hybrid models are often smarter. That’s certainly the case with Wyatt. With Zoom, he’s made pocket money tutoring math students online.
When his Uncle Alan was at UGA, he had to hurdle trigonometry and calculus classes. Neither Wyatt nor Zoom was born. I was zero assistance, except for helping to find a tutor. When Alan conquered his calculus class, he celebrated saying, “This ‘C’ has set me free. I’ll never take another math class.”
Amen, Alan.
That’s how I felt when I finished my one algebra class in college. And to do that, I had a stealth plan—avoid a giant class at UGA. One summer break, I drove back and forth to Waycross Junior College to satisfy my single math requirement.
A big plus in that strategy was going through Screven, home of my high school math teacher. After algebra 1 and 2, plus geometry, C.W. Collins probably thought he was done trying to teach me math. But instead, he invited me to sit around his dining room table for extra instruction.
Let’s stop right here.
There are teachers.
And then there are teachers with the heart and passion of C.W. Collins.
Students, if you have one—hopefully a multitude—of those extraordinary educators in your life, take full advantage of the opportunities. And when you finish their classes and move on, don’t forget to go back to them and say, “Thank you.”
Let me tell you about Mr. C.
He was born in 1905, as autos and planes were coming of age. He lived to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. He died in 1980, before the internet and technology shrank the earth and beyond. He might not have understood all of today’s gee-whiz gadgets, but he understood his students.
I was a challenge for him. The last time that I saw him was in Screven’s tiny post office. We swapped stories for 20 minutes, and we walked away laughing. He reminded me of what I said to him on my second day in freshman algebra class.
“Why, Mr. Collins, you explained it so well that even a moron could do these problems. But, you know, he couldn’t.” Forty-six years later, I can still hear him laughing.
If I were sitting in a math class right now, I could promise you two things:
Mr. C’s encouraging spirit would be with me.
And I would be praying.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com