Most students consider math to be a subject that they do not enjoy, going out of there way to avoid it. Keeping students engaged in learning the topic and helping them understand even the most complicated of concepts is a difficult task which only special teachers can complete. Mr. Edward Potter is one of those teachers.

Mr. Potter went to College at The University of Tennessee where he studied, and got his masters in, Mathematics. After graduating, he decided that he wanted to be a high school teacher. However, he remembers his first semester in a negative light.

“The first group of kids I had were very rowdy and hard to control. They weren’t willing to learn, and as a new teacher, I could not handle them. It was so bad that I had thought that I had chosen the wrong profession for the rest of the semester,” Potter thoughtfully explained.

Thankfully, when his second semester group of kids showed up he noticed a very dynamic difference in behavior between the two classes.

“Unlike the first class I had taught, the second class was a lot more mature, and the majority of the students in the class had a willingness to learn. That was a much more positive experience and one of the things that kept me going to teach more classes,” Potter elucidated.

Today, Potter has been teaching for 15 years, gaining much respect and love throughout the many years. One of his favorite activities in class is telling jokes that many consider to be corny. Nonetheless, these jokes still manage to get a laugh in the classroom and in the teacher talent show, which he used to perform in yearly.

“One of my favorite things about this job is the variety. Where another job, like a factory worker or an office job, is similar from day to day with little room for new things to happen, I have new experiences every day. There truly never is a dull moment,” Potter explains.

It appears there is only one part of the job that Potter does not adore.

“I hate paperwork, I truly do. It piles up and by the time I finish the previous stack, a brand new one appears on my desk,” expresses Potter.

His goal is to leave students feeling smarter than when they first enter his class. He makes sure to give them the tools required to succeed, even if students don’t have a plan.

“When you are in college, try to find the work that you truly enjoy to do. As someone once said ‘when work is close to play, it gets alot easier to do it everyday’,” Potter concludes.