Math Teacher Sarah Armstrong

Who Says I Get Summers Off?!

Sarah Armstrong is a longtime math teacher in Orange County. Before participating in a panel on the role of algebra in the classroom and the world, she sat down in the Zócalo green room to talk cheese, Pokemon, and milkshakes.

Q:

What’s your favorite cheese?


A:

White cheddar. Sharp.


Q:

Whose talent would you like to have?


A:

I’d like to be a good athlete. Who’s a good athlete? I don’t know. Michael Jordan.


Q:

What teacher or professor, if any, changed your life?


A:

A man named Mr. Pawl. He was my eighth-grade algebra teacher. It was really all my eighth-grade teachers. I had an amazing group of teachers.


Q:

What are you keeping in your garage that you should have tossed already?


A:

My son’s Pokemon card collection.


Q:

How did you get into trouble as a kid?


A:

I found a lot of different ways to get in trouble. I was very much a tomboy. I had very, very short hair, so when the teachers would say, “Boys stop fighting!” I could continue fighting because I was not a boy, they weren’t talking to me! And I didn’t like to go to class.


Q:

When and why did you last laugh?


A:

Gosh, I laugh all the time! Usually because I’m self conscious about something, so I’m laughing to cover up the fact that I’m insecure about something. So I laugh at myself. [Laughs.] Like I just did right there.


Q:

What promise to yourself do you break most often?


A:

That I’m going to stick to my diet. I looove sugar. Ice cream. Milkshakes. Mint milkshakes—shamrock shakes.


Q:

How do you respond to people who think teaching is easy because you get summers off?


A:

I get very defensive because teaching is not easy—summer is when I do all my planning and look for activities that are engaging and nontraditional things I can do with my students. And anyone who knows me knows that I don’t take my summers off. And I also point out that teachers only get paid for nine months out of the year as well.


Q:

How are you different from who you were 10 years ago?


A:

I don’t know that I am. I’m healthier; I work out more now than I did. I had a back injury, so 10 years ago I was still very much in pain and confined to work, and that was about it. No energy, no health.


Q:

When is it OK to lie?


A:

It’s hard. I mean, you don’t want to hurt someone but at the same time—in the end when the truth comes out it hurts, too. So I don’t know … I think the only time would be when there’s no benefit to the truth, and it would just cause harm.