I wanted to gouge my eyes out every time I entered my math class. I went through a time in my life where I was so fed up with this subject that I seriously thought about dropping out of school. I can honestly say that Mrs. Allen is the only reason that I ended up finishing my junior year math class. There is now hope for me and my upcoming college math classes that I will be taking because of the skills and techniques I acquired from Mrs. Allen.

Math was a subject that I could not stand. It gave me headaches just thinking about how useless and boring the equations were-- the equation of finding the area of a rectangle is engraved in my head even though I have never once used it in a real life situation. During the middle of my sophomore year, I remember sitting in a room for 45 minutes straight, listening to the words coming out of my teacher’s mouth but not understanding or comprehending one single bit of it. All I heard were noises coming from a very dull and monotone voice. I thought I was going insane. Although I was exceptionally good at math, I didn’t find it near as enjoyable as some people do.

All of the negative feelings I had accumulated towards math were about to change drastically. It was the first day of my junior year when I took a look at my schedule only to find that my next class period was math. I took a deep sigh and said to myself, “here we go again.” Noticing on the schedule that the teacher’s name was Mrs. Allen, I said a quick prayer to myself pleading before God that this teacher might be different from the previous tedious teachers. Indeed, God had answered my prayer when I first experienced Mrs. Allen’s energetic humor as she introduced herself to the classroom. Immediately I was amused by her personality and her lively teaching styles. Math became more clear to me because I could actually focus on a serious but also not so crucial level of thinking because the presence of a sullen, monotone was completely absent.

Mrs. Allen used fun and simple memorization techniques such as singing songs or presenting acronyms to help me learn and enhance my math skills to a point where I too was enjoying math just like the people who I thought were crazy. Thanks to Mrs. Allen, I am now well prepared to take on any math class that may be hard to focus in or just plain boring because I have the skills that will liven up things and ultimately benefit my education.