Math Teacher Day

My high school calculus teacher, Lou Kokonis, recently passed away at 91 after 64 years of teaching in the Alexandria City Public School system.

Mr. Kokonis was not the most personable teacher -- he would quietly slip into the school with his head down and make his way to the classroom where he'd immediately begin writing the day's formulas on the chalkboard. His hands and glasses were perpetually caked in chalk dust. He had trouble remembering people's names so when someone was acting up in class, we'd hear, "Uh, Nate, I mean, John, I mean Derek, please stop talking when I'm teaching".

I think his dedication to math was stronger than his dedication to being a teacher, as he didn't always have great pedagogical ways to get the material across. Still, he was still teaching at age 74 the last time I visited the high school in March 2006 -- I saw him from a distance, gliding down the hall with an oxygen tank in tow.

Mr. Kokonis was big on graphing calculators and I got on his good side by knowing how to program the TI-85. He came to me after class one day with a TI-82 program for graphing with polar coordinates and asked me to port it to his new TI-85. (He was unaware, and probably would have been less impressed to know that I was creating all of the games that people were playing on their calculators during class). Later, we were the only two people to own the boondoggle TI-92 although he had not realized how many of his test questions the TI-92 could solve automatically by the time I had graduated.

Every year in May, there'd be crew regattas that required a few days of travel time, like the Stotesbury Cup. Whenever I told Mr. Kokonis I'd be missing some classes for crew competitions, he'd earnestly say, "Oh that's too bad. Well, I hope you all lose early on so you don't miss too much class time," and then go right back to preparing for his lessons.