When people ask, “What is your most memorable high school experience?” I would have to say it’s the bond that I’ve built with my math teacher, Mr. Stephen Sharp.
Not only has he been an exceptional teacher, but he has also been a great mentor to me.
Student-teacher relationships are extremely important to me and the relationship I have developed with
Mr. Sharp has given me a positive and long-lasting implication for my academic and social development.
Building a relationship with a teacher makes the learning environment in the classroom better and easier for both the teacher and the student.
Most students are able to communicate with their counselors about life’s problems, but for me Mr. Sharp equals my counselor.
If it weren’t for Mr. Sharp, I don’t know how I would have stayed on track these last few years. He has always motivated me to attempt to stay on course, regardless of what my personal problems were.
To borrow from writer Baltasar Gracian, Sharp multiplies my joys and divides my sorrows. I’m not sure what I’ll do without him in college.
By the way, he’s also a good math teacher. Math happens to be my strong suit, but he successfully taught me three years of high school math, including Advanced Algebra II With Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and Beginning Calculus.
He is the hypotenuse of my high school world; he is my right angle, and he is my solution when life gets me down.
The way I compute it, each student has approximately 30 teachers in high school, plus or minus a few. For me, Mr. Sharp has been the best of the heap, the square root to beat all square roots. And that’s no fraction.

Ariel Walker wrote the “Rants and Revelations” column for The Southfield Jay during the 2014-2015 school year.