The Best Teachers are Supportive Hard-Asses

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The best teachers are supportive hard-asses. They force students to take the class seriously. They are hardcore and demanding, while simultaneously encouraging and supporting their students to rise and meet the challenge.

My wife had one such teacher in high school for AP calculus:

“Mrs. Ong was known for being strict and demanding, and her classes were known for their difficulty. There was even homework during the preceding summer to shore up prerequisite skills.

Every day brought a new calculus topic, followed by practice problems in class. Every day there was homework, and 5 random questions were graded for accuracy the next day.

All topics were covered by the end of March. April was spent doing AP practice questions every day, plus two full-length timed exams.

When the AP exam arrived, no one felt blindsided by the questions. We had already seen and practiced every type of problem. Nearly everyone earned a 4 or 5.

Mrs. Ong knew that rigor upfront prevents panic later. In most other classes, we were lucky if we got through all the content by the time the AP exams rolled around in early May.

She understood that students’ precalculus backgrounds varied and that math skills decay over the summer. She knew that you couldn’t take a summer off from doing math.

Mrs. Ong was also kind. She wrote wonderful college recommendation letters and greeted students with a smile.

But her greatest kindness was making sure her students were more than prepared for the AP exams and college-level mathematics.”

Further discussion: Math Academy Podcast #6 Part 1: Why Can’t College Students Do Middle School Math?

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