Inspiring teachers: My math instructors were among the best

  • Tuesday, April 6, 2010 8:18pm

With the recent passing of math-teaching legend Jaime Escalante, the subject of one my top 10 favorite movies ever, “Stand and Deliver” (played very skillfully by actor of “Miami Vice” fame, Edward James Olmos), it made me flash back briefly to my days as a student at Mountlake Terrace High School in the late 1980s.

All the math teachers there that I had — Mr. Farber, Mrs. Parshall, Mr. Schlaman and the late Judy Roberts (who was so faithful as the scorekeeper, I believe it was, at our basketball games as well), were all math machines who taught their subject passionately, premeditatedly and with an uncommon degree of collective skill, flair and panache.

Rick Farber was the best pure teacher of an individual subject that I ever had up until that point in my life. There were a few professors later on at Wazzu that matched him, but he was the consummate professional who took his work seriously, but also had the balance of relating to his students via a few different methods. Math isn’t the easiest subject to “make come alive” to kids, but all the aforementioned instructors were exceptional. There’s probably a few others from the department who deserve kudos as well, whom I didn’t have as a student. That being said, I salute those math teachers from the late ’80s — thank you for enriching my formative educational experience. Like Jaime Escalante, you stood and delivered, and I was better off for it.

Steve Goodman

Mountlake Terrace

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