Yes, in keeping with the theme of the latest anthology I have contributed to, “Will Work for Apples,” this is a post about teachers, but really just about one teacher, in particular.
Mrs. Carol Tribus, life-changer.
I was a good student in school. Not a great student, but a good one.
I definitely had the brains, I just didn’t always choose to apply them in an academic way.
I was the kid who teachers would say “If she would just use her powers for good and not evil, there’s no telling what she would be capable of.”
Studying was just not my jam, and I spent more time trying to get out of it than I did actually doing it.
I had good teachers, growing up.
Teachers who were fun, who were challenging, who were engaging.
I had a really solid educational background, I just didn’t choose to be everything I could be with it.
My biggest downfall, however, was math.
I get math. I love math. I am INTO math.
I just don’t have the kind of math mind where I can do it all in my head, or I can see the problem and then immediately see the answer.
It takes me a minute, and I need to write it down.
Because of this, my math grades were usually B’s, instead of A’s.
Respectable grades, no doubt, but not where they could have been if everything wasn’t always based on how fast you could get it done.
And then 8th grade Algebra rolled around and I wound up sitting right behind Michaela and I spent the entire year passing notes and drawings to Michaela and talking, instead of following the copious notes that Mr. Rutkowski was writing on the board in his unmistakeable, all caps, handwriting.
I earned a C that year, in Algebra and my parents said no way was this going on my permanent record, and that I would have to retake the course as a freshman.
I was not pleased, but what choice did I have? In those days, the parents made the rules, not the kids (in our house, the parents still make the rules, but I know way too many homes where the opposite is true) and so off to Algebra I went for the second year in a row.
Enter Mrs. Tribus.
Mrs. Tribus started off our class on the first day of school by calling out a long, rambling math problem that we would have to solve in our heads.
Fantastic. Exactly the thing that I struggle with, and this is how day one begins?
Turns out, that was how every day began in her class.
“5 plus 7 times 3 minus 20 divided by 8”
And hands would go up and kids would be shouting out answers with glee.
And I would sit there. Silent.
Some days, they would be short problems, like that one. Sometimes they would go on for a full minute before she would stop and call for an answer.
A few weeks in, she kept me after class for a second and said that she noticed I never participated in that part of class.
“Yeah, I’m not good at math. This is my second time taking this course, and I still don’t get it. I can’t do the math in my head like that,” is what I told her.
She told me that it was too early in life to decide I wasn’t good at something and gave me some tips about how to do those types of problems in my head. Visualize them on the paper, think of your ready math facts, etc. She said that the next day, she was calling on me for the answer whether my hand was up or not, because she knew I knew the answer.
I literally didn’t sleep that night, worrying about the stupid math problem at the beginning of class. I played sick in the morning, but my Mom was a teacher, and so if there was no vomit actually coming out of my mouth, I was going to school.
I had her class at the end of the day, and it was all I could think about.
Note…teacher’s bring their own experiences to their classrooms…I never poo-poo or say a student’s anxiety about an upcoming assessment or lesson is silly. It’s real. I know of what I speak.
When we got to class, everyone was ready for the problem, and I was terrified. I missed the first few numbers that she called out, so I definitely didn’t know the answer. I think she saw the panic on my face, because she suddenly stopped and said “Hang on, I lost my place. Let me start again.”
This time I was ready, and I followed and kept the numbers straight and by the end, had the answer. I knew it was a soft ball question, not as hard as the ones we had worked up to at that point, but I didn’t care. I knew the answer.
I raised my hand and she called on me and I confidently said the answer. And I was right.
It may seem like a small thing, but I can’t even begin to tell you the difference it made for me.
I didn’t always raise my hand, and I didn’t always get the answers right. But I tried. And I used her methods and tips and tricks, and it started to come a little easier to me. I started to enjoy math again, and started to look forward to the end of the day.
When I had questions, I would ask for help, and she would show me that I was on the right track, just needed a shift in my thinking.
When I would get back a test that I had done well on she would write “I”m so proud of you!” and if I didn’t do as well, she would write “See me” and she would show me what I had done wrong so that I could do it better next time.
Throughout the year, my confidence built, and I remembered everything I had always loved about math. By the end of the year, I found myself turning around and helping the kid behind me when he was stuck, or leaning over to whisper how to solve a problem to the girl across the row.
I got my math groove back. And I earned an A in the course.
For the next two years, I had a different teacher, as I took Algebra II and Geometry. Totally different kind of math, and I earned a B. This, too, was an excellent teacher, but spacial things like Geometry and where to put the furniture in a room, are just not my thing.
Example A: Every room in my house.
Senior year, I took Trigonometry and wound up with Mrs. Tribus as my teacher again. And as we learned foreign words like sine and cosine and tangent, I rocked it.
And when I didn’t, she helped and guided and gave me confidence.
She asked me to help kids who were struggling, and I did.
And my best friend and two cute boys were in that class, and although we chatted and passed notes and giggled, we also learned. We learned all of it.
Toward the middle of the year, Mrs. Tribus asked me to stay after class and asked what I was planning on studying in college. I told her that I was going as a vocal and piano performance major and she said that was wonderful, but wondered if I would consider at least minoring in math.
Excuse me?
Like, make math a main course of study in college?
I said that it honestly hadn’t crossed my mind, and she told me that I had a wonderful math mind and that she actually saw me as a math teacher in the future.
What?
Me? A math teacher?
She was adamant about it, and I said I would consider it.
I ended up with an A in Trigonometry, that year, and went to college and majored in Music and minored in Education. After freshman year, I started to think about what I could really do with a music degree and switched to music education. Because once she put that idea about teaching in my ear, I couldn’t shake it.
Then, I began to see music programs being cut all over Ohio, where I was in college, and self-preservation won out and I switched to history education, and never looked back.
But, math never left me.
In my first teaching job, it was a residential school and I taught all subjects to a group of high school girls.
My favorite thing to teach them?
Math.
In my first long-term teaching position, I taught social studies, but then got moved to science and taught that for five years. My favorite topic to teach in science? Chemical equations, because, math.
I have now been teaching history for almost more years than I can count (okay, I CAN count them, because I rock at math), but when someone leaves an Algebra worksheet in the copier, while my copies are running, I complete the worksheet. I love to help with math homework, until I can’t, because math is super different today than it was when we were in school.
But the teaching? That’s all her.
Yes, yes, I come from a long line of teachers.
But I never thought of it as something I could do, or even as something I wanted to do. Until Mrs. Tribus said it was who I was. It was what she saw in me.
And you know what? She was right.
It 100% is who I am.
I love my job. I love the students, I love the subject, I love the people with whom I work. I love the moments, every day, where someone gets it. Where someone tries. Where someone fails, but they pick themselves up to do it again. I love everything about teaching.
And I truly believe that I was led to this profession by Mrs. Tribus, so this is my public thank you to her.
I’ve thanked her before.
When Kim and I graduated, we gave her a picture frame that said “The Wind Beneath Our Wings” because she inspired us both so greatly. Mrs. Tribus was invited to, and came to, my wedding. We play Words With Friends against each other (when I remember to open the app). I teach with her niece in the same school where I earned that C in Algebra, which propelled me into her class and her into my life.
So, yes, I’ve thanked her before.
But I’m not sure you can ever really thank a teacher who makes a difference in your life enough.
So, thank you, Mrs. Tribus. And just know, that my story is most likely one of a hundred stories of students whose lives you changed for the better.
