The Math Teacher

Welcome, dear reader.

When we are young kids, in most cases, the worst possible is expected from us. At least this was the case in my circle. The behavior of the teachers (and school staff) has always been very similar to that of the guards. This was the case with parents as well. For example, Someone takes their colored pencils out and spread them to floor to start coloring something, they are told that “You better collect them after you are finished!”. You start playing a game - “You better be finished in one hour!”. This behavior is everywhere - you are expected to not follow the rules or screw something up at the end¹.

It kind of resembles how we are using the support wheels in a bicycle. Except, in this case, someone installs them for you every time! So you never try to balance yourself.

You have never had the chance to behave yourself by your own will.

My Experience

My school life has also been like this for a long-long time. I specified “school”, as I feel like at home this issue wasn’t the case always. My dad used to give signals of trust to me. They were subtle, but I remember my feelings at one specific case very nicely:

We were at the city center, going somewhere on foot, and back then, our mother used to always hold our hands; you know, to be safe in a car-centric city. One time I broke loose from my mom, and she told my father to hold my hand. And dad was like - “He is an independent person, no need to hold hands anymore”.

Damn, I was so proud. “Yes I indeed am!” - I said to myself. And at that day, as long as this feelings were in my mind² I tried to behave myself so good!

Unfortunately, I don’t remember ever seeing this trust in my school life. Well - at least not until 10th grade³.

The Math Teacher

I won’t go into education system and kinds of organizations in Azerbaijan; TLDR is, to get a better quality education, I moved to another school at 9th grade.

It was overall a great place. But our math teacher stood out more - an older man - one would say “a grumpy old man”.

He was a brilliant math teacher. Since the first days of the school year, I was already looking forward to math class every week. He had a very good technique to teach topics - IDK why I’m tearing up 😂 - and stuff started to make sense after his classes. I admired his patience, answering every single question, over and over again.. explaining stuff numerous times.. even for the most lazy student. The dedication was exceptional.

But this wasn’t the only thing about him. He used to talk non-math topics a lot too. Sometimes politics, psychology, he gave advices on our relationships with surrounding people, and so much more. He basically taught us life course - but sprinkled with mathematics. Don’t get me wrong, the math part was more than sufficient for the school’s program.

Anyway, back to our issue. I wanted to write this whole essay for this:

One summer day we were having an exam in his class, and - by the code - he sat in the class to prevent cheating. Suddenly he received a call and had to leave the classroom. By coincidence, there was a woman from school staff in the classroom, and she offered to keep an eye on us while he is gone. Unexpectedly, the teacher replied:

Our relationship with students is regulated in an elitist⁴ manner.

The vocabulary in this sentence is rather professional one. The mimics and gestures he made while telling this sentence was extraordinary. So this naturally surprised her; she nodded and left. And it got stuck with me till this day - and now forever.

Probably for the first time someone trusted me to not cheat on my exam. He left the classroom for around half of the exam duration, and I did not cheat on that exam. I attempted one or two times, but the guilt of letting such person down was killing me.

I sometimes remember this moment as my first conscious decision to be an honest person. It felt like awakening. New neuron bridges were created in my brain.

By the way, I wasn’t a dishonest kid until that day. But I was never conscious about it until that day. I never made the explicit choice of being honest; it was always because of being scared of parents, the lie getting busted, etc.

Ah, there was one more time! In the middle of explaining functions theory, he said:

Children, always think about things. It doesn’t matter what. But try to think of something. When you go to bed at night, think about random things that happened in that day. Your relationship with people. Discuss them with yourselves. And after some time, you will learn how to think.

I also got impressed of this sentence. And actually tried doing it. For quite some time, every night I was going through my day. It was great.

So, I wanted to take my time to thank him. For me, the impact of my math teacher, my parents, and my brother on my life is equally incomparable⁵.

These are the people that shaped me, and I hope when they think of me, they are not disappointed.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any good photo with my teacher. If I had, I would proudly put it here. So, this should be my task for my next visit to Azerbaijan.

Thank you for reading until here. I really appreciate it. If you’d like to talk, please reach out to me.

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