[sschuler1]

I was always an under achiever in school. Never did my homework, got by doing as little as possible. When I was in 8th grade, our math teacher let anyone who wanted to do independent study sit in an empty classroom and take 8th grade math at their own pace. The only proviso was if you fell behind the class, you would have to return to the regular classroom. At least 75% of the students took him up on that offer. Well, by the second week of school there was only myself and one other girl that was left in the independent study. We decided to take the tests for the rest of the year and just get it over with so we could goof off the rest of the year. So we took all the tests for the rest of the year..and then we proceeded to goof off during that hour. The seventh grade math teacher had his classroom right next door to the empty room we were goofing off in. He caught us playing hangman on the blackboard one day, and came in to find out why we were always in that room during that hour. We told him that we had tested out of the rest of the school year, and he made it his mission that we were going to learn something that year. It turned out that his prep hour was at the same time as our independent study. So every day he came in and taught us algebra, which gave me a huge head start when I started high school. I ended up going to a state competition in math when I was a freshman. The 7th grade teacher's name was Mr. Kladder.