My friend Fred retired this year after several decades brilliantly teaching Calculus. While we didn’t get to interact as often as I would like while he taught (we were both occupied with reaching our own students) he has become a perfect example to me of what a great teacher looks like. Here are some of the things he demonstrated every day.
Care Deeply.
Fred is passionately invested in the success of his students. That meant scheduling his prep hour over the three lunches, so any student could spend his lunch reviewing Calculus with him. It meant spending hours before and after school with students every single day. It meant keeping informed of students’ other passions, and engaging with them as human beings.
Deflect Praise to Lift Up Others
Fred is among the most consistent people I’ve ever met in his deflection of praise. He redirects it to his students, his colleagues, his community. The consistency and the intent behind it leads to everyone around him being lifted up, and I think it helps to create a proximity zone of gentle kindness and positivity.
Reinvent Yourself
Fred didn’t start out as a teacher. He was called to teaching as a second career, and reinvented himself to become the best Calculus teacher you can imagine. (That’s not opinion–he’s received awards and universal praise, and is, I think, the only teacher to be inducted into the Rockford Public Schools Hall of Fame while still actively teaching!) Fred reminds me that when a voice says, “You need to do this,” you can do it.
Fred reinvented himself again this year. Unable to find a way to safely teach in-person during the pandemic, he created a home studio and has been teaching his entire curriculum on YouTube. I’m following along, though I can’t come close to keeping up with his pace – he’s posting 30-minute Calculus lectures, sometimes more than one in a day!
Teach Fast
One of Fred’s most remarkable innovative ideas is one I just learned about this year. Fred teaches fast. Like, way fast. His typical strategy was to cover the entire curriculum for the AP Calculus Exam by February – two or three months before the exam. That left weeks and weeks to review and solidify the materials by working on interesting problems. I’m sure it felt like drinking from a firehose in those early months of his classes, but the end result is that there were regularly years when virtually every one of his students earned a 5 on the AP exam. I really do think that his firehose approach is a vital part of his success, and one that I have leaned into since learning about it.
Here’s what he said to me several years ago about this teaching strategy:
I go as quickly as possible through Calculus techniques like solving derivatives and integrals. Instead I emphasize the understanding of their basis in great depth, and then I spend significant time on coming up with challenging problems for which derivatives and integrals are needed to solve them. I get through the entire curriculum as quickly as possible, so I can give problems that students don’t know what techniques are required for a solution. That way they need to have a solid overall understanding of Calculus.
Teach the concepts as fast as you can, and then give lots of opportunities for students to combine those concepts in new and unexpected ways. It’s a great strategy.
Prioritize Creative Problem-Solving Over Domain Knowledge
Fred understands that not all of his students are going to become scientists or engineers. That’s why he said this in that same email:
I want students to understand how to attack a difficult problem which they have the tools to solve but have never seen a question like this before. Technology has made the basic computational abilities learned in school of little marketable value. What is really valued is a student who can analyze a situation and use their knowledge to make good recommendations.
There can be an impression in any class that the teachers are focused on preparing their students for basing their life about their subject. Instead, we can prioritize meta-skills that are applicable regardless of which directions our students head. That’s as true for music as it is for Calculus, history, or biology.
Be Silly To Engage
Yesterday being Halloween, Fred’s YouTube channel featured a sub for his lecture – the legendary Captain Derivative. His willingness to be silly in his quest to reach and engage his students is fundamental to his personality and his persona as a student.
Exude Love For Your Subject
Fred hardly sends a note or has a conversation without making a Calculus pun. (Maybe something about “limits.”) And I’ve seen many of his students reflect back that joyful love for his subject in notes to him. At RHS Commencement a couple of year ago, he flashed me the legal pad he was using while in his cap and gown during the ceremony. On it was a new multiple-integral problem he was working on. His enthusiasm for Calculus, for teaching, and for his students, is infectious every time we speak.
Fred is an inspiration, I trust that’s clear by now. I’ve been lucky to watch and learn from him from the other side of Rockford High School for the past dozen years, and to have shared numerous students along the way. His brilliant educator’s mind and passion for his subject has changed the way I teach and approach my own subject.
I’m beyond grateful that he pivoted to teaching when he did. I’m beyond grateful our paths crossed. I’m beyond sad that he had to retire before he was ready – a loss in a long list of losses to COVID-19.
And I’m really glad I didn’t have Fred as my own Calculus teacher in high school. Odds are, if I had, I wouldn’t be making music today – I’d be making numbers dance in a parallel universe.