The next switch paired up AP Language teacher Kathryn Pabst with AP Calculus instructor Keith Christian.

“It was wonderful. I think the kindest thing that Mr. Christian did was that he paired me up with another student,” Pabst said.  “The student happened to be Mr. Mimms, who’s also one of my students.”

Pabst claimed that this benefitted junior Sam Mimms as well as herself when he had to explain the problems, ensuring that he truly understood the material.

    “I had to ask all of the, why are you doing that or where would we ever use these, kinds of questions that he might not have thought to answer if I had not been there,” Pabst said.

    The material itself was very interesting to Pabst, who doesn’t have a mathematics-oriented background.

    “But, the key to a really good teacher is to make something that’s very complex, simple enough for someone to enter into,” Pabst said.  “Mr. Christian, and my wonderful student teacher that day Mr. Mimms, were able to explain it to me in a way that I understood the process of what we were doing and it really made me want to go back to the room again and learn more about math.”

Christian expressed similar sentiments.

    “It was a lot of fun. Mrs. Pabst was doing a writing sample that day,” Christian said. “Students were split up into groups, and analyzed different traits of writing excerpts.”

Pabst had Christian join one of the student groups, then instructed the students to come together for a class discussion.

    “It’s been a long time. Most people don’t know that I was an English minor,” Christian said. Christian continued to explain that he found a connection between English and Calculus in the way that student’s must utilize parts of the writing or problem to understand the whole.

  Hear an interview with Pabst about the switch. [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/91272822″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]