The Woman Who Taught Me Math

The following is part of a series of columns devoted to the writer’s past teachers. 

Something changed when I turned twelve: I stopped being able to understand math concepts in a natural way that didn’t require extra cognitive exertion. It seemed as if overnight, my ability to quantitatively reason disappeared and I wasn’t able to “see” math like most of the other kids. Tackling math problems made me so anxious. 

When you’re a kid and you’re struggling with a particular academic subject, you often feel sad, hopeless and unmotivated. I felt broken. I also felt scared, wondering if I would ever be able to understand math again. My only consolation was that I was doing well in English, especially with creative writing projects. 

I spent the summer after sixth grade miserable and anxious. And then, on the first day of seventh grade in fall 1995, I entered Horace Mann Elementary and Middle School in Beverly Hills and checked a class list taped to a wall. I found my name beneath a math class taught by Cheryl Katz. 

I squealed and jumped up and down. It’s hard to believe that a kid would squeal over a math teacher, but Mrs. Katz was legendary. I believe the woman could have taught math to a potato. And I felt I had won the lottery.  

That year, Mrs. Katz, in all her wisdom, patience and knowledge, brought me back to math, as if reconciling two old friends and treating a painful wound. When I saw a math problem, I became anxious, but Mrs. Katz taught me to see math beyond numbers and to imagine applying it to the real world. For example, when we learned about unit rates, percentages and ratios, she told me to imagine shopping at the supermarket (one of my favorite pastimes because I’m a foodie). If, at the “25% Off” aisle, I bought a box of cookies for $2.50, what was the original cost of the cookies? And if there was a sales tax of 7.25% (thanks, California in 1996), what’s the total cost of the cookies? Numbers scared me, but who would be afraid of cookies? From then on, I pretended that every math problem about percent increase or decreases involved baked goods. 

I also spent so much time with Mrs. Katz because she had also taught my middle school elective classes. Her room, with its string art math projects and dozens of posters made by her loving students over the years, became one of my happy places. She helped me unlock one of the most important gifts a teacher can offer a child: renewed self-confidence. Even if I sometimes needed a few extra minutes to solve math problems, I no longer felt broken. 

I loved Mrs. Katz, but there were many other students at Horace Mann who were even closer to her. They had a unique bond that was nearly indescribable. And last week, thousands of us were left heartbroken when we learned that Mrs. Katz had passed away on January 8, after a prolonged battle with several illnesses. 

It was too much. Mrs. Katz was a legend, and legends don’t die. Her students often scored 100% on standardized tests, whereas other students in the state scored half that amount. But there was something else: Mrs. Katz, who didn’t have children of her own, was like a trusted mother to her students. 

Graceful, but commanding, she wasn’t scary, but you knew better than to cross her. She wasn’t overly complimentary, but you knew that she was always on your team. Above all, Mrs. Katz was elegant. 

Sometimes, she was outshined by our larger-than-life male teachers, but she always held her own. In fact, the school probably would have fallen apart without her (she was also in charge of the school schedule, student council, graduation ceremony, academic awards and our eighth grade honor group, the Spartans). 

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a bond between Horace Mann students and teachers that I call “a golden age,” though I know I’m biased. I loved my male teachers, but there was something about a woman, Mrs. Katz, as the ultimate master of math that excited me, especially since back in Iran, most math teachers were men. And Mrs. Katz was fabulous and beautiful, with exquisite nails that made Barba Streisand look like she had worked all day with her hands in an onion field.

Horace Mann was special. It wasn’t uncommon for graduates to visit their former teachers year after year. It was so exciting to sit in Mrs. Katz’s class and watch her former students, whether in high school or even college, suddenly enter, stand in the back and smile as she taught a prealgebraic expression. I’m not sure this occurs at most schools. Of course, they respected her too much to ever speak while she was teaching a lesson.

At the time, there were many Jewish children at Horace Mann who had escaped Iran. And when you’re a refugee in a country that becomes your new home, your teachers play an extra special and important role in your education.

At the time, there were many Jewish children at Horace Mann who had escaped Iran. And when you’re a refugee in a country that becomes your new home, your teachers play an extra special and important role in your education, in the memories you cherish like sacred treasures and, yes, in your mental health. For me, Mrs. Katz embodied something that I lacked, but badly needed in my childhood: stability. 

But it was my older sister who had an extra special bond with her. As an eighth grader, my sister was bewildered when Mrs. Katz informed her — a pessimistic child refugee — that she had nominated her for the prestigious Junior Optimist International Awards. “I didn’t even know what ‘optimist’ meant,” my sister told me. Mrs. Katz helped my sister prepare for her interview and, when my sister surprised herself and won the award, Mrs. Katz drove her to the awards luncheon because my father had to work and my mother had just learned how to drive and feared freeways. My sister was the envy of the eighth grade because she was able to spend an entire afternoon outside of school with Mrs. Katz. When I asked her why she believed Mrs. Katz had nominated her, she said, “I think she just believed in me as someone who would actually show up.”

My sister and a slew of other students not only showed up, but also they actually arrived early to Mrs. Katz’s prestigious eighth grade (advanced) algebra class, simply to spend more time with her. In my book, that’s extraordinary. When, as a high school student, my sister visited Mrs. Katz and mentioned that she needed a job to help buy her first car, Mrs. Katz suggested tutoring younger students. She even introduced my sister to her first clients (kids at Horace Mann, naturally). My sister tutored students for decades, eventually obtained two master’s degrees in education, including one from Harvard, and now is a dean at a prominent local school. And decades later, my sister entered her beloved teacher’s classroom, pushing a double stroller and delighting the students with stories about Mrs. Katz’s famous brain teasers. 

When I called my sister to tell her that Mrs. Katz had passed, she was already sobbing and inconsolable, having heard the news minutes before. 

On Facebook, my sister shared the announcement of Mrs. Katz’s passing and wrote, “I’m beyond devastated. You were single-handedly the most important teacher to me and had a hand in every success and big moment in my life. This world is a little less right without you.”

Many friends told me that Mrs. Katz was the first teacher who helped them “make sense” of math. 

My friend, Michael Espinoza, told me about Mrs. Katz, “The story that always comes to my mind was when she explained to me that subtraction was only adding the opposite. It’s a method which I taught my daughters.” Many friends told me that Mrs. Katz was the first teacher who helped them “make sense” of math.   

At middle school dances in the nineties, we all cheered when the DJ began playing “YMCA” and Mrs. Katz led a teacher dance. In his eulogy, my former middle school teacher, Steve Kessler, said, “To see how much her students loved and respected her, one only had to look at their faces as she taught them. You could hear a pin drop as her students would hang on every syllable, nodding their heads in agreement as they learned that logical and sequential steps could help them solve difficult concepts.”

An educator for 44 years, Mrs. Katz had spent 39 of them teaching at Horace Mann (beginning in 1975) and was the school’s inaugural “Apple” awardee when the prestigious Beverly Hills Unified School District Apple Awards began in the late 1980s.

A few weeks ago, I did something I’ve never done before: I attended a shiva for a former teacher…  I now find myself counting the years and wondering how much longer my beloved teachers will be here. And that’s one math problem I can’t help but fear.

A few weeks ago, I did something I’ve never done before: I attended a shiva for a former teacher. When I saw Mr. Kessler, Horace Mann’s legendary papa bear (whom no one dared to cross, either), he threw his arms around me and simply allowed me to cry for a long time. For a few moments, I reverted back to that 12-year-old girl, and I didn’t realize how much I had needed that hug. When Mr. Kessler asked, “Will you please call me Steve?” I responded with a resounding, “No, I can’t and I won’t. You’re ‘Mr. Kessler.’” Isn’t it amazing that no matter our age, we still prefer to call our former teachers by honorific titles?

The shiva was held at Mrs. Katz’s house in Beverlywood, where she had lived for over 40 years, and Mr. Kessler showed me the kitchen table where she sat and graded all of our math homework and tests. There was a sign-in sheet upon entry and when I arrived at night, I saw that many of my former Horace Mann teachers had stopped by that morning because they loved Mrs. Katz, too. When I saw their names and knew they had been there, I felt alive. 

But when Mrs. Katz’s family and her caregiver told me how much she loved hearing from her former students, I was struck with pain. I had visited her often in high school, but I hadn’t made enough time to see Mrs. Katz once I became an adult. I didn’t even attempt to find her contact information and write to her when, several years ago, I learned that she was sick.

When I saw those names on that sign-in sheet, I was struck by the realization that I need these people, my former teachers, back in my life. I want to buy them a cup of coffee and tell them a few simple words: “You had a profoundly positive impact on my life. Thank you for everything you did for me.” I wish I had shared those words with Mrs. Katz. 

As a kid, I didn’t bother to think that my teachers had lives and hobbies outside of school.  

But when I read a short LA Times obituary about Mrs. Katz, I learned that she loved to sing and dance. And that she was a “talented, budding artist, played piano and was a downhill skier.” I had never known that my brilliant math teacher was also a talented artist and pianist. I also learned that she was active in the Jewish community. In her memory, an educational scholarship fund is being established at Hadassah’s “Youth Aliyah Villages” in Israel.

The loss of Mrs. Katz has forced me to do some math of my own, and I am now realizing that as a child of the ’90s, many of my former teachers must be nearing their seventies and eighties. Though Mrs. Katz taught me to never be afraid of math, I now find myself counting the years and wondering how much longer my beloved teachers will be here. And that’s one math problem I can’t help but fear. 

So, if you see me in LA, enjoying coffee with someone whom I refuse to address on a first name basis and smiling profusely with the glow of wonder and gratitude, you’ll know why I seem so happy. Just give me a few extra seconds to calculate the tip.

Tabby Refael is an award-winning, LA-based writer, speaker and civic action activist. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @TabbyRefael.