Have you ever known a teacher who seemed to stand out in your mind more than any other teacher? Maybe this teacher took a special interest in you. Maybe they were worried about your success in their class and worked hard to make learning fun. Not many people get to have one of these kinds of teachers, but I did. I was one of those students who had a teacher that I could call my favorite for a lot of reasons. His name was Mr. Laws, and he was my 8th grade math teacher from HB DuPont Middle School. He was my favorite teacher of all so far. Mr. Laws would teach math in a way that I have never seen before, and he did it in a fun way that helped me to remember the information. Mr. Laws has not been a teacher for a very long time, but he is still one of the best teachers I have ever had. He loved math, but even more than that he loved people, especially middle school kids.

Mr. Laws loved all of his students even though he was teaching in a class where the students, like me, struggled with math. He was able to work with any student even if they had trouble learning. He was willing to teach anyone as long as the student showed effort; he even worked really hard with the kids who weren’t so good in math. He didn’t care who you were or if you had a learning disability or if you sometimes misbehaved. He thought of every student equally and he worked really hard to make everyone have success in his class. I generally got good grades in his class, but that was because he helped me and always encouraged me. He would build my confidence and keep telling me that I could do the work even when I wasn’t so sure that I could do it. I look back now and I think to myself that I was lucky to have a teacher who would allow me and other people to just focus on doing our best. Mr. Laws would give us a lot of tries to get the answers right and to pass the tests that he gave. He always made me feel smart and he always told me that I would achieve my goals if I just worked hard enough. He was right.

Mr. Laws had a lot of different ways to teach math, and he was very creative in the classroom. He didn’t just stand up at the front of the room and lecture in a boring way. I remember days when it seemed like no one in the class understood what he was trying to teach, so he would say it in a lot of different ways and even make jokes to help us remember the important ideas. Mr. Laws would tell us real-life examples of how math is used in everyday life, so we would stay motivated and focused. Sometimes when we would ask why we had to learn something that didn’t seem very important, he would explain how math fit into life and how we would need to know the information when we were adults living in the real world. Sometimes he would make us do things which were annoying, but not everything involving school is enjoyable, and we just have to deal with these things because this is what school has to be like at times.

Besides the fact that Mr. Laws taught us math he also taught me other things about being a good person. He would teach our class how to work together in teams and make everyone pull their own weight. He was friendly and would cheer me up if I seemed upset. He noticed everything and knew when any student was “off” or having a bad day. He would make sure we took care of each other in class and worked together. He would make us laugh when we were stressed and he was a role model for how we should behave and treat each other with respect.

Although sometimes he had his moments of being strict, Mr. Laws was still the teacher that I mainly looked to for help. He was the one there ready to answer any question I had even if it didn’t have to do with the subject that he taught. The way that I see it, he was the kind of teacher who would always go the extra mile to help out any student and make sure they learned math and that they were doing okay overall in school. Everyone should have the chance to have a teacher like Mr. Laws at least once while they are a student. For all these reasons and more I am nominating him for Teen Ink’s Educator of the Year.