Favourite and least favourite math teachers

My favourite math teacher was my high school calculus teacher. He also graduated from the education program at UBC, and he was one of the reasons I decided to come here. 

I liked his class simply because I always wanted to challenge him. Even when my ideas were not full developed, I would raise my hand, walk up to the board, and think through the next step while writing out the solution.  He often gave us very difficult calculus problems with multiple layers of integrals that included functions like sine cosine, exponentials, and inverse trigonometric functions. These problems made me want to try and he made me feel like I could beat him, like I could solve these problems faster than he could.  At the time I really believed this, until graduation day when he showed us his UBC transcript filled with A's, can't find a single B on that paper. Now, as I study Education myself, I realize how hard and special it is when a teacher can make students feel smarter than him.

In class, he often shared stories from his university days. One line that stayed with me was: "When you are in university, don't always eat lunch with the same group of people." He explained that the campus was full of people from different backgrounds, and by hearing their stories, you could open up your perspective.

To be honest, I never really had a math teacher I disliked, because I truly love math. But some teachers were more inflexible. They didn't care if you had a clever idea or a different way of solving a problem. They just gave you one set method, the quickest way to solve the answer. Day after day we repeated the same kinds of problems, and it felt like there was no interest or motivation.