Many students get a little queasy walking into math class so Granville schools are especially happy to have Sue Hoben on the high school teaching staff. Students actually seek out her algebra and trigonometry classes.
"It takes a lot of patience to teach math. It takes hearing it again and again and again. Once you get their confidence up, it's amazing what they can do," the 23-year veteran teacher told The Gadfly. "Kids who walk in thinking they're lousy, walk out thinking, ‘I finally got it.'"
Good teaching is transferable, even to students in the toughest and lowest-achieving districts, said Hoben, who taught in a low-performing district in Michigan early in her career. "Once (students) feel like they can do it, they behave better, they want to do it. That part doesn't have to take a lot of money," she said.
