As a junior and senior high school student, I did well in all my classes, but math class was always the easiest. In junior high, my math teachers were two stern, former military men. They drilled us with pages and pages of problems that were like puzzles to me. Finally Elizabeth Mann, my trigonometry teacher and coincidentally my Student Council sponsor, led me toward a career in mathematics. To this day, trigonometry is my favorite course.

With no detours, I became a mathematics major at the University of Texas in Austin. Between earning a BA (1969) and an MA (1971), I taught remedial math at my former high school. My students had always failed in math, so their perspective broadened mine toward both teaching and math. During graduate school, I was a teaching assistant in two courses: math for business majors, and calculus.

Because I was so interested in education, my first job after college was as a consultant for the Texas Education Agency (the state's Department of Education). I conducted inservice training workshops in drug education and crime prevention for teachers. The goal of the program was to show teachers how to use hands-on activities that would involve their students in decision-making and communication. For example, in a US history course, students used a selfassessment instrument to determine their personal values about gun laws. Forming into small groups, they reached a consensus about what type of gun laws they would introduce if they were state legislators.