Unorthodox Teaching

The name of the best teacher I ever had was Mr. Bellat. He was a grade 9-12 math teacher at Apollo High School in St. Cloud, MN.

The most unorthodox behavior that made Mr. Bellat stand out was how he structured his class to differentiate for different needs. I hate math. It is just something that I have never been good at. Mr. Bellat structured his class like this: the first 15 minutes was a lesson for the entire class. He then gave us the homework and gave students the option to stay for the rest of class if they needed more help or they could leave and go do the homework on their own in the commons or library. Most of the students would choose to leave and there would be about 10 students left in the room. He would then really slow down and reteach the lesson for us and give us time to work on the homework with his help. He also would come into school early or stay late if you needed help. I don't think I ever saw him in his room without at least a couple of students trying to learn math, even on his prep. Mr. Bellat made me feel success in math for the first time in my life. I would do the extra lessons and ask questions and I would ace all of my math tests.

I would guess Mr. Bellat had the strength of a developer. He really did believe that every student could be successful in his classroom and not only did he believe it... he did whatever he needed to do to make sure that the students felt that success. When I see a student struggling to learn something in my classroom I think about how Mr. Bellat would have moved mountains for that student and I try to do the same.