Mr. Doll, a 60-year-old ex-carpenter, was not just my sixth grade math teacher, but also a figure of inspiration. He was dedicated to ensuring his students' success in the classroom, in life, and in their futures; while his first profession was not teaching, he had a special way of connecting with the children and knowing what each one needed in order to find individual success. He found incentives to encourage his students, making us motivated to complete our weekly assignment of 10 complete topics on ALEKS - a self paced math program. Perhaps his history in a separate field gave him the ability to treat us as equals, not just students whom he had total authority over. 

While many other math teachers expected students to all follow the same pace, Mr. Doll allowed us to move ahead and complete assignments weeks in advance. He would happily meet with you to discuss any questions you had about a difficult question or something you had gotten wrong on a test. I remember once asking him a question about Heron’s Formula, a simple formula to solve for the area of a triangle in terms of the perimeter and side lengths, compared to the easier formula 1/2ab*sinC; I had always been awkward when talking to teachers, but Mr. Doll talked to me as if I was a colleague rather than a child, making me feel more comfortable. I had never experienced such a professional, yet caring, relationship with a teacher. I believe what separated Mr. Doll apart from every other teacher was the personalized emails he would often send to each student in his classes to assess their progress and where he saw each of us going in life. It was in one of these emails where he had said to me “the sky’s the limit for you.” From that point on, I was determined to show my enriched love for STEM, and prove to him that I was everything he saw in me.  

On the first day of school, Mr. Doll presented us with a small plastic circle with triangular cutouts in it. He explained that with each topic we mastered on ALEKS, we would receive a ‘piece of pie’ which represented a piece of the curriculum being embedded into our brains. Along with these small plastic triangles, he would give us a ticket which we could redeem for a free slice of pizza at lunch. I did ALEKS whenever I could, during study hall, whenever I was done with work, and at home when I was done with homework. From 6th grade math all the way to high school level geometry, I filled up 6 ‘pies’ and got more free pizza than a sixth grader could have asked for. Nothing else would have been satisfactory; I wanted to learn everything I possibly could. 

Mr. Doll influenced me in more ways than imaginable. 5 years later, and I still have an undeniable interest in math with 6 out of my 7 academic classes being STEM based. I can certainly say that I may have pushed myself a bit too hard in order to prove Mr. Doll right. But, he definitely shaped who I am today: a student with a strong desire to learn, succeed, and, most importantly, pursue a career in STEM. I hope to be able to say that, in the end, those 10 topics of ALEKS I had done each week will pay off when I get into a great college and have a phenomenal career. Mr. Doll was not only a teacher and mentor to me, he helped me find my love for math. Though I want to go into a career in physics, he inspired me to someday be a teacher, where I can someday help students find the same spark he found in me.