Math Teacher

Four Maryland teachers were among 210 nationwide who were named yesterday by President Clinton as recipients of the 1999 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.They are Brenda Hines Hammonds, a math teacher at William Tyler Page Elementary School in Silver Spring; Kathleen B. House, a math teacher at Frederick High School in Frederick; Jennifer Ellen Cofone, a science teacher at Deer Crossing Elementary School in New Market; and Coit Taylor Hendley III, a science teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt.

STUDENTS, TEACHERS and parents will be "Putting the Park" back into Severna Park High School from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.Led by math teacher Kathy Kubic, a co-sponsor of the Class of 1998, the recent graduates have donated $2,500 to help spruce up the school's exterior.The money is earmarked for new landscaping at the high school's three primary points of entry: the main entrance, the band entrance and the athletic entrance.You might have noticed new plants near the front entrance, but the real effort happens Saturday when the high school becomes "landscaping central."

FOR YEARS, I have been told that I look like an English teacher -- or that I don't. In a world of logic, neither observation should mean anything to anyone, least of all to me.I love my profession and feel honored to be an English teacher. But after 25 years I have decided that it is now or never if I am to decipher what people mean when they say to me, ''You look just like an English teacher,'' or ''You don't look anything like an English teacher at all!''I have an uncomfortable feeling that looking like an English teacher is not a good thing, at least not by the standards of traditional feminine beauty.

IN MY HOUSEHOLD, there is one parent who paints T-shirts on the kitchen table with the kids and their friends, and one parent who buys books as birthday presents.I am that latter parent, and my approval rating shows it. Two out of two children do not approve of the job I am doing as their mother.In other words, 100 percent of the minors in my family are #F dissatisfied with how I am handling the responsibilities of the mother.I have a problem only children's author Jon Scieszka can solve.

After more than half a century of unraveling the mysteries of algebra and calculus for midshipmen at the Naval Academy, Professor Theodore J. Benac sees no reason to quit now."I guess I just love talking to a captive audience," said the 83-year-old teacher, the oldest faculty member at the academy.While most people in his generation are winding down, Dr. Benac is still going strong. He rises every morning at 7 o'clock and walks the mile and a half from his Annapolis home to work."Why should I retire?"

Twenty-six years after beginning his career as a math teacher at Marley Middle School, John R. Kozora finds himself back, this time as the school's new principal."

Susan Howe says she has the best job in the world -- and in Howard County, at least -- she's the best at it.Ms. Howe, an 18-year veteran math teacher at Oakland Mills Middle School, was recently named Howard County Teacher of the Year. Now, she's competing against 23 other teachers the state Teacher of the Year award.No stranger to this sort of thing, Ms. Howe was a finalist for a similar national award last year and she was chosen as Maryland's outstanding Middle School Math Teacher in 1990.

This year, Dan Ortmeyer will cram five weeks' worth of Shakespearean tragedy into three weeks for his students at Chesapeake High School.That's just one example of how class time will be affected as the Anne Arundel County school begins its experiment with four 85-minute classes a day, compared to six classes lasting about 50 to 55 minutes each.Mr. Ortmeyer isn't worried though. "Once they get into the second act of Macbeth, they're hooked."In essence, Mr. Ortmeyer and the other Chesapeake High teachers will be trying to condense two semesters worth of work into one semester.

It was a bet the eighth-graders of Patuxent Valley Middl School couldn't resist: If 75 percent of them passed the Maryland Functional Math Test, they could shave off math teacher David Santoro's hair.Yesterday, about 170 boisterous eighth-graders watched hairstylist Linda Scholsburg give Mr. Santoro a buzz cut in the school gym."We want bald, we want bald," chanted the students, cheering and applauding as they watched Mr. Santoro's locks fall to the floor."This is great," said guidance counselor Judy Girod as she and several other teachers looked on in amazement.

Dixon Miles MarrianGilman teacher, coachDixon Miles Marrian, a retired teacher and coach, died of a stroke last Thursday at the Fairhaven retirement village in Sykesville. He was 90.The Baltimore native began his career in 1927 at the Gilman School, teaching mathematics and coaching athletics, mostly baseball."He was a very good baseball coach and, because he was a math teacher, he made sure very detail was taken care of," recalled Charles Gamper, retired dean of students at the school. "However, the students thought he was the roughest teacher they ever had and after they graduated, they realized that they had had one of the best."

All those devoted to teaching deserve praise and respect, and none more than those who teach where all the school lunches are free, where expectations have been too low for too long, and where every hand goes up when the guest speaker asks: "How many of you know a family member who's in prison?" Ed Morman was there, in a classroom at Patapsco Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore's Cherry Hill, when a former prison warden asked that question. Every hand went up again when the kids were asked if they'd ever been inside a prison for a visit.

Jennifer McBeth has been teaching at Oakland Mills High School since 1984, and she can count on one hand the number of parent-teacher conferences that have gone badly, she said. Those were the times that parents did not know their child was failing or opted to blame the teacher for a child's poor grades. Mostly, these 15-minute sessions are helpful to the teacher and the student, McBeth said. And she wishes more parents would take advantage of the format, especially the parents of struggling children.

Azur Oducayen has had to get used to a lot of new things in his first year teaching and living in the United States - children who try to cut class, calling fellow teachers and supervisors by their first names, and, well, snow. Oducayen, 31, emigrated from the Philippines last fall to teach math at Magothy River Middle School in Arnold. As his second year begins, he said, he is more relaxed and prepared to manage his class of American students. One reason is that he can do it with his wife, Maribeth, and 3-year-old daughter, Blaise, by his side.

Cradlerock School students received star-studded support as they prepared to take the Maryland State Assessment tests this month. A slew of celebrities -- including Academy Award winners Jennifer Hudson, and Forest Whitaker, comedian Chris Tucker and actress Jada Pinkett Smith -- recorded a video with words of encouragement. The students watched the inspirational messages March 13, the day testing began. The messages were put together by Entertainment Tonight reporter Kevin Frazier, a Howard County schools graduate, who attended Owen Brown -- which is now part of Cradlerock -- as a child.

Elizabeth Beer thought her high school nemesis was math. She took advanced courses, but it was the only subject in which straight A's eluded her. Her real nemesis, she later concluded, might have been her math teacher, who dished out discouragement. "He didn't think women belonged in math," recalls Beer, a third-year doctoral student in the Johns Hopkins University's applied mathematics and statistics department. The teacher's message - that women are innately math-deficient - didn't keep Beer from succeeding in the subject in the long run, but it could explain her early struggles.

Ozro Richard "Dick" Steigelman, a longtime math teacher at Hereford High School and former Air Force pilot, died Wednesday at his Monkton home after years of poor health. He was 75. Born in York, Pa., he moved to Georgetown, Del., at age 6 and graduated from Georgetown High School in 1949. He went on to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he graduated in 1954. After West Point, he entered the Air Force and flew large transport planes and also U-2 spy planes on covert missions.

Sister Rose Ellen McDade, a retired Catholic schools math teacher, died of Alzheimer's disease Friday at her order's retirement home in Aston, Pa. She was 92. Born Rose Helena McDade in Jenners, Pa., she moved to Cumberland as a girl and graduated from Catholic Girls' Central High School. She entered the Franciscan Sisters of Philadelphia in 1943, and earned a bachelor of science from Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg and a master's degree from Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind. A math teacher, she was awarded grants to study at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

Math was not Anshu Randhawa's favorite subject in school. But Patuxent Valley Middle School in Jessup was seeking a math instructor, and Randhawa was looking for a teaching job after completing a stint in the Peace Corps. So, for the past seven years, she has been teaching math to middle-schoolers in Howard County - engaging number-fearing pupils with her innovative lessons. "They needed a math teacher," Randhawa recalled. "I fell into it, loved it and never left." Yesterday, Randhawa, now a sixth-grade math teacher at Folly Quarter Middle School, was recognized as an American Star of Teaching by the U.S. Department of Education for improving student performance and making a difference in her pupils' lives.

I HATED mathematics. Math did not make sense to me. In elementary school, I memorized facts and rules. Given enough time, I could solve basic problems, but I could not connect concepts. In junior high, I began algebra. I memorized patterns. If a problem fit a prescribed pattern, I could, with some luck, find the answer. I barely passed algebra. I rejoiced because I was free from math - until my high school guidance counselor told me that I needed an additional math credit. I was disappointed and depressed.

WHEN SAM Brown walked into Baltimore Polytechnic Institute that September day in 1967, it all seemed quite appropriate. Brown, who had wanted to be a math teacher since he was in junior high school, was starting his first teaching job. Poly was in its first year at a new location, having moved to its current Falls Road site from the school's decades-long digs at North Avenue and Calvert Street. Brown has been at the same place ever since. For the past 38 years, he has taught math, acted as adviser to clubs, served as chairman of the math department, been a vice principal, been instrumental in getting the school's first black principal hired and developed the calculus course every Poly student must take before he or she graduates.