It was my first day of 8th grade at Mount Horeb Middle School and I went to my homeroom to start my day. I walked in to find my sweet, kind, and calm teacher, Ms. Day. My sister had her as a teacher and told me that she was so kind and she was just as kind as my sister had said but where she really made an impact was math.

I wasn’t an especially strong math student. I always struggled a little bit and never fully enjoyed the subject. In the past math consisted of learning from the textbook, practicing, homework, and then taking a quiz or test but Ms. Day had a different approach. Instead of making us read and do work from the boring textbook everyday she created activities that kept us engaged. She would have us make little “books” full of information or create slideshows with shapes from our environment. These activities are what made class fun and kept it from getting repetitive and boring. In addition to the class being fun I also learned better than I had in the past and truly learned to understand some of the objectives on a better level.

Another thing that I loved about Ms. Day’s classroom was that I could always count on it to be a calm space. I remember she had all the desks in the front and in the back there was space where we could complete activities and spread out around the room. My favorite way we would use the space is when we would play the game frogger. The one where you all close your eyes and stick out your tongue to “kill” the person. It was everyone’s favorite game to play so she would let us play often.

At the end of 8th grade my parents and I were making the decision of what high school I should go to. I was a competitive swimmer so she told me that when I decided which school I was going to I should let her know so she could keep up with my swimming which made me feel good because it felt like she really cared. During freshman year Ms. Day left Mount Horeb so we went to the middle school to say goodbye to her and thank her for being one of our favorite teachers. Sophomore year came around and I decided to switch schools but what I didn’t know was that Ms. Day had taken a job there. I remember seeing an email come in from her and she said she saw my name on a paper so she decided to reach out and see how I was doing and continued to check in throughout the year from time to time.

All of this showed me just how much she cared about me and my classmates. She really tried to do everything that she possibly could to create the best learning environment and space but while also teaching us to have fun.