Best Teacher Ever

Running head: THE BEST TEACHER I HAVE EVER HAD

The Best Teacher I Have Ever Had

Design and Delivery of Training

Abstract

This is a paper about a teacher who I feel had the greatest positive impact on my life, not just for the way he taught, but for the passion he had for life and how he shared that through his teachings. To this date I consider Steve Segar the best teacher I have ever had.

The Best Teacher I Have Ever Had

He stood 6'6", perhaps, and his protruding stomach seemed nearly as wide as his legs were long. A toothy half-smile almost always peered out from behind the beard. Steve Segar looked like Paul Bunyan gone native, and he lovingly towered over 29 years of high school math classes before his passing in 2002 from brain cancer, at the age of 62.

It was high school and I was suffering through everything that high school is -- raging hormones, catastrophic depression, extracurricular catatonia, social neurosis, academic pressure, peer pressure, and the impossibility of just trying to wake up in the morning. He had taught at my school seemingly since it had been there and was as much of the institution as the bricks and mortar. Montini Catholic is a respected private Catholic prep school training the children of professors, doctors, lawyers, and professionals to get into a good college. Steve didn't care: he wanted us to love learning. Dropping knowledge like a Zen master and looking like ZZ Top, for 50 minutes a day, he succeeded.

His classroom reflected his appearance: messy, computers everywhere, geometry projects ("three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects," he explained happily) hanging from the ceiling, one whiteboard for teaching and one adjacent for math meet schedules, favorite quotes, and other things; in his closet was a MIDI keyboard, behind his desk a broken sitar. He was unselfconsciously slovenly, had a childlike passion for math, and an overwhelming desire to share his enthusiasm with everyone who came into his...