Life
Influences...
Mr.
Giles
by
Monica Blackwood
I can’t
tell you exactly when my path first crossed with his… It
could have been church. It could have been at one of
the NKEA events. But by the time I had him as a teacher
and ASB Advisor in junior high, Jay Giles was already a
familiar figure in my life.
Mr.
Giles’ (I can’t help but call him that) greatest
influences on me – the ability to entice creativity and
to actively define “supportive” – formed through those
junior high years. In class, his encouragement of all
left students feeling like quadratic formula wasn’t such
a beast, and that the trips to Seaside were worth every
second spent over logarithms. The support Mr. Giles so
subtly gave to each of us, even as we worked through the
wrong way to reach the correct answer, is one of the
biggest things I learned in math.
As the
Advisor for ASB, well, Giles had much faith… As a few
of us officers found, it’s hard work to motivate a large
group of 13, 14, and 15-year-olds! Many hours were
spent in the ASB office, brainstorming different avenues
to reach each demographic found within our school, in
order to reach some goal we had set for ourselves.
Those brainstorming sessions led to some pretty creative
(and very crazy) ideas, which almost always had the
support of our leader.
Now,
years later, I’ve learned that, like math, there is a
correct answer to life – and that is to celebrate
it. There are many ways to reach this answer, but the
support and encouragement to create our “formula” from
everyone else will allow each of us to achieve it.
Thank
you, Mr. Giles, for helping me to create my formula.
