SCHOOL MEMORIES
return to Loomis was the faculty, which, when I arrived on the scene in 1960, was composed largely of Master Teachers. The title of “Master Teacher” is sometimes bestowed on those who might more accurately be called “Elderly Teachers,” but the senior faculty in 1960, which amply deserved it, included most of the best teachers ever to grace the school. If life was hard for students, it was hard in a different way for young teachers. We had a lot of work to do, not only in the classroom but in the dorms and on the athletics fields. The senior faculty, who had done their time, had less to do in the dorms and in coaching, but they were priceless role models for young teachers and through their example taught them to deal with students academically and personally. One day in 1967 or so I ran into Bert Howard in the hall outside his office in Founders and asked him about the formulas for finding the area of two-dimensional figures. I knew that multiplying the altitude by the base produced the area of a rectangle, and I had never doubted that it did: I could easily divide a rectangle three units high by four units long into twelve square units. There they were, plain to see; but what about the area of a circle? There was no way to break that into square units because the thing was round. For all I knew πr2 was a myth made up by mathematicians. Bert looked at me half quizzically and half pityingly for a minute and said, “Didn’t anyone ever show you
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