The Best I Ever Had!

Many teachers have had an impact on my views of education and my decision to become an educator. There was Mrs. Davis, my first and second grade teacher, Mrs. Palmer my Third Grade teacher and Mrs. Aydlett, my senior year AP Calculus teacher. However, the teacher who stands out in my mind as the one who really impacted me and my decision to go into teaching was Mr. Duncan Moore. Known around the school by students as Duncan or Coach Moore, he was a high energy, down to earth teacher. He cared about his students, taught the mandatory material in Physics and Chemistry, and he made it fun for all students, even those who struggled through the material. With test scores always over 70 percent of students passing Physics and Chemistry EOC's, Mr. Moore had free reign in his classroom from administration to do whatever it took to learn the material. This is one of the reasons I liked Mr. Moore the most. He was not afraid to go out of his way to apply what we were learning to our lives and give us real world examples. If it meant he was going to ride on the front of a grocery cart down the hall and have someone stop it immediately and him jump of because of the force caused, or that he was going to play baseball with skittles in the classroom to prove momentum, Mr. Moore wanted us to learn the material. I use this inspiration as a way for me to think about teaching and finding ways to involve my students in the learning process.

A great aspect of Mr. Moore's classroom was that you knew what you were getting when you walked in the classroom door. He was not shy about making the work first and play second in his classroom. Coach Moore started the school year always by taking a day to get to know the students, talk over class rules, class procedures, and the syllabus. This allowed students to become relaxed in his classroom and understand who he was. From this point on he expected you to respect him and he would respect you. He talked to the students as if they were adults and knew how to take care of themselves. If we needed to ask a question about the material there was no need to be afraid because he made it very comfortable to be open and learn from him as well as other peers in the classroom. Most of this classroom management and climate was created on the first day when he took the time to get to know us an individuals rather than trying to rush into the material and letting the student to teacher relationship come later. His management was driven by the way he started his classes each semester and they tended to be the better and more managed classrooms of my high school.

One item that I would maybe not borrow from Mr. Moore would be his crazy tangents away from classroom material. While at some points these are needed for students to relax and take a break from the material, they sometimes came so often that there was material that did not get covered by the end of the semester. On the other hand one item I would borrow and like to take from Mr. Moore was his willingness to go the extra mile to have students understand some of the material covered. Even things like taking a trip to Busch Gardens so we could time and use gravity formulas on roller coasters to better understand the material. Yes, there was obviously fun involved in these extra effort assignments of learning, but we better understood the meaning of the concepts and their relation to real world happenings. Coach Moore was a great teacher and he is by far the best I have ever had!