One of the best mathematics teachers – Miss Joyce Baxter
By Dr. Cedric Lazarus
Dr. Cedric Lazarus
When I entered KC in ’69 the only mathematics that I really knew were my multiplication tables and the other basic functions of addition, subtraction and division. With these I could get by with most of the first form work. My first form math teacher, for one reason or the other, did not leave a great impression on me and so I did not develop a great love for mathematics at the end of my first year in KC.
In second form we were introduced to our new maths teacher, one Joyce Baxter - a teacher with a presence and reputation that boys never forgot. When she introduced herself to us during our first maths class in second form, she told us that she was going to introduce us to ‘new maths’ while at the same time teaching us traditional maths. Some of us were skeptical. New math? As far as we were concerned there was no such thing. We reasoned that maths had been around for thousands of years and that there was nothing new to the subject except that it tended to get more and more difficult as one got older. However, Miss Baxter had the last word and we delved into the new math craze which was seen then as a new way to teach maths to high school students all over the world. I can’t say that I mastered it and even today, despite the best efforts of Miss Baxter, I still have trouble with binary numbers and the concept of bases other than 10. In dismissing the teaching of new maths to preteens, someone once wrote that students who were taught new maths at an early age ended up knowing everything about binary numbers but they could not tell you what was five multiplied by seven! Luckily my class mates and I did not fall into that group.
In third form Miss Baxter was still our teacher and it was then that we realized that a decision had been taken at the highest level that she would teach us up to fifth form. She was the only teacher who taught us for four straight years. We considered ourselves privileged because she was an outstanding teacher and a great lady. Boys like me who had no special love for the subject eventually came to see it in a new light and we got good grades to boot. Miss Baxter exuded a professional confidence and commanded tremendous respect from all of us – no-one joked around when she was teaching, we were never late for her class and the home-work she set was always done. We eventually heard that she was one of the teachers contracted by the Ministry of Education to teach other teachers how to teach mathematics in special seminars put on by the Ministry. We felt lucky to have her as our teacher and we did not fail to notice that she had at least three degrees behind here name from some of the world’s best universities.
Once, in a light moment in fifth form, one brave boy in the class asked her how come the members of the Baxter family were so academically brilliant. (By then we had all heard stories about her two sisters teaching at other schools in Kingston.) She replied that when they were in high school there were no televisions or radios in their home and that they were extremely focused. For good measure she also added that they were not allowed by their parents to speak to boys like us! The obvious inference was that they spent all their time studying whereas we spent much of ours watching television, listening to the radio and talking to girls, all to the detriment of our studies. The brave lad then made the sotto voce remark that times had changed, for the better! I wonder what she would make of today’s KC students and their distractions which include, television, radio, girls, video games, mp3 player, cell phone and more.
In fourth form my entire class confidently did O’ level maths and we did not disappoint her as most of the class passed with flying colours. She was elated but said that she expected it. In fifth form she introduced us to additional maths and told us that she expected the entire class to pass the subject in the O’level exams at the end of the year. Surprisingly, even the boys who were destined to become lawyers and social scientists enjoyed add maths mainly because of the way she taught the subject and most of us managed to pass it in the exams at the end of the year.
I recall that Miss Baxter had a blue Volkswagen bug. When she tried to park on campus we would stare at her in amazement as it took several attempts before she could maneuver the blue bug into what we thought was a parking space large enough for a Cadillac. We also noticed that she always held the steering wheel at the quarter to three position which as far as we were concerned one never did after getting his or her drivers licence. We would often see her in her bug going up South Camp Road at 20 miles per hour and despite the number of KC boys who would be hitching a ride at the bus stops it seemed that they never begged her for a ride, presumably because she drove too slowly or because the boys were convinced that they would be safer in the bus or that the bus would reach Cross Roads long before she did.
After fifth we graduated from Miss Baxter and she passed us on to another of the great KC maths teachers, Q.C. Edwards who taught A’ level maths. I would still say hello to her as I passed her on campus and I wondered if she remembered that I was one of those who knew little maths in second form when she started to teach me but who would be reciting maths theorems during the lunch breaks in fourth form..... “Equal chords of a circle are equidistant from the center.” And thanks to her I could prove it too.
She taught generations of KC boy’s mathematics and she can truly be called one of the best teachers of the subject at our hollowed institution.
