Math, math and more math.
Even if you thought you had finally said goodbye to it, after your schooling years were done.
Remember trying to help your kid with his numbers homework during the pandemic?
On that note, just how much interest are you paying on that credit card?
And that square footage your contractor keeps prattling on about — heck, you just need your driveway resurfaced. Nobody said anything about fractions and long division.
Good luck doubling up on that recipe while you’re at it: What’s two-thirds, times 2? Anybody? Anybody?
For 25 years, Melissa Farley has been making numbers less numbing from her classroom at University High School.
In that setting, the phrase, “I’m just not a math person” — just doesn’t add up.
Her stock in front of her classroom for a quarter-century in the county keeps on multiplying, however.
That’s why Mon Schools named her its Teacher of the Year for 2024, an educational ambassadorship role currently held by Amber Nichols of Eastwood Elementary.
Nichols, who was also recognized as West Virginia Teacher of the Year, recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she met with similarly recognized colleagues across the country and took part in a town hall-styled meeting with First Lady Jill Biden, who is also a longtime educator.
Farley, meanwhile, isn’t just known for her math prowess.
She’s also an instructional collaborator for University High and the county district.
Just as Nichols, she’s no stranger to a natural audience either.
In 2021, UHS was one of just 16 schools in the country designated a “Model School” by the International Center for Leadership Education for its teaching innovations at the height of the pandemic.
Farley presented at the center’s national gathering in Nashville, Tenn., that year.
This week is Teacher Appreciation Week in Mon and across the country and Farley took to the district’s YouTube account to offer appreciation of her own.
The math teacher, she totaled on the ledger, regularly cashes in reward dividends — just by getting in her car and going to work.
“I can’t imagine anything I’d rather be doing,” she said.
“This job would be nothing without the amazing students who sit in those seats daily.”
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