Nancy Eng

I’ve never had a good grasp of math. I have mad grammar skills; I can proofread; I can spell; I can write an essay. If it weren’t for the internet, though, I couldn’t tell you what my bank balance is. I’ve never balanced my own checkbook. Never once.

So you can imagine what a burden Algebra class was for me in high school. Geometry, too. I’d get so horribly distracted during class because I understood so little.

Luckily, I had a really good teacher, a tiny young woman named Nancy Eng. The algebra class I took with her was first period, a class teeming with loud jocks seated near the back of the classroom. These guys were as loud and raucous as you’d imagine. But when Ms. Eng stood up to read the daily class bulletin (as every first period teacher did) she never had to ask for our attention. All the loud boys in the back simply went silent. No guff, no snickering, just complete attention. She never yelled or scolded. The boys just knew.

Ms. Eng was a force to be reckoned with, but her true talent lay in how much she enjoyed helping us understand the concepts of mathematics.

She clearly saw that I was struggling in this class and she took me aside one day and told me that if I didn’t understand something, I should say so. And if there weren’t enough time during the class hour to explain it to me, she’d invite me to her office during HER break or during HER lunch.

So I took her up on her offer, and would often stop by her classroom during break, where she patiently went over (and over) the material with me. And while this didn’t make me fall in love with math, it did give me enough of a grasp to pass the tests and ultimately the class. Ms Eng took the time and made the effort to help me to understand all the numbers and symbols well enough to grasp the concepts.

Ms. Eng was a really, really good teacher.