[Eric]

The best teacher I ever had was my algebra teacher my first year of university. she expected so much from us and pushed us so hard that most people dropped out of her class the first few weeks.

I decided to hang in there, even though at that point math was my worst subject. It was well worth it...

She gave us homework every night which she collected everyday. the problems had to be completely written out. You had to document every single calculator action on paper so she knew you understood what was going on. Same on tests, your work had to be completely documented (ie. one algebra problem would take up nearly an entire sheet of paper) or you were docked points.

For me to learn algebra, this was essential. And i actually learned it for the first time in my life! I actually, dare to say this, started enjoying it.

The last reward of the class was how this teacher opened up to us. The first few weeks/months of class she appeared very cold and a bit of a hard-*** would be understating her personality. She always wore black. Black jeans, a black t-shirt, black shoes, etc... But as we got to know her we realized there was more to her than we first thought. The day this became crystal clear to us was one day she mentioned she played the piano and sang in her free time. Being a liberal arts college, there was a piano in the classroom. We asked her, tongue in cheek, to sing for us. She floored us with her voice and her piano playing. We were all so shocked to see our hardcore, black clothes wearing math professor singing in this opera style voice.

anyway, she was my best teacher