I never thought I would rely on a marker to decide my homework assignment for the night. That is, until I was in seventh grade pre-algebra. “Expo controls your homework, much like Pudge controls the weather,” Mr. McHargue always said before writing our homework assignment on the board. If the class had been nice to Expo, our homework was reasonable, but still present. But if we happened to get on Expo’s bad side that day, not only was our assignment horrible, but our nightly social lives tended to suffered greatly. This would be the hardest year of math I had come to, but the math gods just happened to be on my side this year.

I had known Mr. McHargue for several years because we went to church together, so I wasn’t expecting anything different. My mind changed the first week in his class. I don’t think it was all because of him, our class just fit. We were all loud and outgoing which seemed to be a perfect match for Mr. McHargue’s personality and teaching style. I’d like to say that I never had trouble in pre-algebra because I most certainly did, but I had an awesome teacher who worked with us every day to make sure we understood and succeeded.

Mr. McHargue loved playing poker so naturally he worked in a lesson about cards. He passed out small colored blocks for chips and a few deck of cards. We all sat around, only a few knew what to do. He started explaining a betting game to us that was nothing like poker, he worked in our algebra formulas to it. We had a blast, and everyone forgot we were even doing math.

Another time, a boy named Jose had been mouthing off to him and Mr. McHargue challenged him to a wrestling match. About 2 minutes into it, all of the boys in the class went up to participate. We were all having fun until a cranky history teacher walked in to ask us what the racket was. We all though it was hilarious to see our teacher silently beat up 15 middle school boys!

One day we had a substitute who had no idea what was going on. My friend Lauren and I understood the assignment and were helping all of our classmates. The next day when Mr. McHargue came back we told him that we understood it so we got to teach the lesson that day. It was so much fun getting to teach our teacher and deciding what homework to do…or not to do in our case.

Mr. McHargue definitely affected the way I do math. He showed all of us interesting ways to see and do it. His approach at teaching was refreshing and fun. I did so well in his class that the next year in Algebra, I made a 100 average the whole year, and I thank Mr. McHargue for that.