The teacher I remember best

On the first day of the 10th grade I sat in Mr. Walker's College Algebra class for the first time. As the year went on I learned that this teacher was no ordinary math teacher.

Jim Walker was a tall gray-haired man who walked with a slight limp. He almost always wore a white lab coat while teaching. He said he was a full time sheep farmer and a part time teacher--though he taught full time. He hailed from a fairly unknown small town in the southwest corner of the Salt Lake Valley. But this is not what made this teacher stand out among the others.

He stood out among other teachers due to his enthusiasm for teaching math.

That first year I got a taste of this enthusiasm as we solved polynomials and memorized digits of pi (at least the first 5 or 6 digits) and learned the quadradic equation. Interwoven into our lessons on the Pythagorean theorem we learned more about who Pythagoras was. We learned about how Pi (3.14159265...) came to be defined. As his students we made it a goal to calculate the digits of pi out 100 digits.

In 11th grade my schedule would not accomodate the regular trig/analytic Geometry class so I found myself (along with 2 others students) in an independent study math class held in Mr. Walker's class room during his off hour. I barely passed math that year. But, oh, we still had fun with Mr. Walker.

On occasion he would ask us to run down the hall to the vending machine to get him a Coke or some other soft drink. The first time he asked us to go we gladly took the opportunity to escape the classroom for a few minutes. On the way back that Coke was tossed and rolled and otherwise well-shaken.

On this particular occasion he was onto us. He deduced what we had done and tapped the top of his soda to lessen the severity of any explosion that might occur due to our little "shake-up."

A few weeks later the same request was made. Again, we all jumped at the chance to get out of class for a few. And again, that Coke was tossed and rolled. But this time, due to being obsorbed by correcting Calculus examination papers, he paid little attention to the abuse to which we had subjected that aluminum can.

Needless to say, the Calculus students found a sugary substance on their corrected math tests the next day.

But all this was still only a taste of what this teacher was about. My senior year found me in Mr. Walker's Calculus class. There were 16 of us in his class that year-- 8 boys and 8 girls. This was a class we could get college credit for if we took a test at the end of the year and passed it.

Though I struggled to wrap my brain around that daunting subject, I thorougly enjoyed the class. Though there were days when I really didn't like doing calculus, I always loved going to Mr. Walker's class. I probably paid more attention to his lessons because I enjoyed the class than I would have if I had dreaded going to that class.

As the final advanced placement examination loomed, Mr. Walker gave up a Saturday or two so that we could have a couple study sessions. These were times where we could cram our hearts out with the benefit of having the teacher there to answer questions or review a difficult problem. Perhaps it was the pizza he provided or the real need to study for the exam, but nearly every student was there for those study sessions.

In late summer 2001 Jim Walker succomed to cancer. I attended his funeral. In 2004, just before Christmas, I moved to that small town in the southwest corner of the Salt Lake Valley that was home to the teacher I remember best.

Mr. Walker's home town is not so small any more and his legacy lives in his son who sits on the city council in this once small town.

NOTE: Jim Walker's son is no longer on the city council, but his daughter in law now teaches math at Herriman High School.  Right here in our not so small town.