I’ve never had her as a teacher, but my sister. She’s taught math to mostly 6–7 graders for at least 40 years. Whenever a school needed someone to assign the ‘difficult’ kids to, they chose her because she was the only one who could manage them and get decent grades out of them. Sometimes she got the gifted students and she loved challenging them. She routinely takes all of the phones before class begins. Kids love her because she doesn’t kiss their asses; she tells it like it is and will give them grief if necessary, but also praises them when they deserve it.
As for my teachers, I don’t remember her name, but we had a native American 5th grade teacher who ate the entire orange…peel and all. Most people don’t and I’d never seen that.
I still remember my first grade teacher Mrs. Davenau (sp?). On one occasion she said, “If I hear one more peep out of you kids I’m going to do a handstand!” Of course, that was a challenge, so I quietly said, “peep!”. She went to the wall and, in her skirt, tried to kick her legs up into a handstand. She couldn’t, but all of us kids laughed hard.
Mr. Fontana is probably gone by now…I sincerely hope he’s miserable wherever he is. I couldn’t learn math to save my life in 7th grade – fractions, decimals, etc. and he just gave me Ds, Fs and shame rather than trying to help me. I didn’t even know my times tables and could barely do division. But he doted on the ‘good’ students.