At anytime in the day, if you were to walk past the last classroom in the middle school hallway at North Lake, you were bound to see a crowd of students around Mr. Byrne’s desk. It didn’t matter if he had a class or not, or if the discussion was about math.
Most young children struggle with math at one point, and because of this, there is a collective fear and hatred to mathematics. This was definitely true for newly appointed middle schoolers at North Lake Elementary School. However, that was all changed when our new math teacher, Mr. Byrne, decided to start off the new year in a rather unexpected way. Instead of giving us a list of his expectations and future class work, he read one of his favorite books, The Giving Tree. He thought this would have a more lasting impact on us students, and it did.
Reading us that story gave us an insight into the mind of Mr. Byrne. As time went on, more and more lessons from “The Giving Tree”, like selflessness and giving, were shown Mr. Byrne’s teaching style.He was the type of teacher who would sacrifice his own time just to make a concept easier to understand This was not just for one student who was falling behind in the class, but for each individual student, all the time. His way of teaching directly made each of his students responsible for their own learning, but he was there the entire way to help in any way
North Lake is a relatively small school, and it has just one teacher per subject for the entire middle school, grades six through 8, allowing the students and teachers got to know each other well over the three years. Those three years I spent with Mr. Byrne as a math teacher not only drastically upgraded my math ability, but also improved me as a person.
Right before graduation, Mr. Byrne decided it would be a good idea for him to read us his favorite book once again. As he sat there, reciting the words of Shel Silverstein, I thought back to myself in sixth grade, sitting in the same seat (I actually did sit in the same spot for three years). It was then I realized that although he never brought me apples, or gave me branches to build a house, Mr. Byrne had given us in the class everything he could: knowledge, friendship, and the desire to one day touch lives in the same way he did for us.