Cindy Boss

Cindy Boss (Facebook)

My hero is my mother, Cindy, for various reasons. She is a high school math teacher and that takes up a lot of her time. She is very dedicated to her work and gets frustrated but still enjoys her job.

At her job, she creates math lessons in order to help her students understand Algebra through Calculus. She also gets to work with students as they discover new concepts and related them to things they have learned earlier or encounter in “the real world”. She enjoys working with teenagers because they help remind her not to take herself too seriously. She also said that it is exciting when they figure out that math isn’t all that complicated.

My mom has been teaching for around twenty years. She wrote that the students in her class get information from her and then they have time to practice and talk to each other about the information. Also, they can go in before and after school for work. She is so dedicated to helping them that she may stay after school until five o’clock. And sometimes, she helps students in ways not related to math. For example, they may talk about what options they have for college or jobs and even how to get past what’s making them have a bad day or how to get past their frustration.

To know more about math, she has taken classes during the summer. She took a Calculus class one summer and still made time for her family. She has volunteered her time by helping with Vacation Bible School, coaching soccer, and serving on various committees in the district. She says that the best part of her job is when students tell her that class goes by fast, which means that they are busy getting work done. And when they let her know that this finally made sense to them.

Some things that she doesn’t really like about her job is how much time it takes outside of class to get ready for class. But, she says, it is even worse when I hear about students who are going through tough times at home or students who have made bad decisions and have tough consequences to face. She doesn’t consider herself heroic; even though former students share with her the positive impact she has had on them.

She said that the people who inspire her are her family because her husband was a teacher for many years and still works in education, lets her bounce ideas off of him. Her daughters, because they help her remember what’s important to do for students. People who inspired her when she was younger were her French and band teachers, who gave her lots of encouragement. When she was in college, her advisor taught her how not to teach (but that wasn’t the lesson).

My mom is a hero in my eyes because I see how dedicated she is to her job. She spends time before and after school helping students on their homework and additional time on the weekends working on lesson plans, grading papers, making tests, and more. And, on top of it all, she cleans the house and does activities with her family.