Jasper — One local math teacher’s creative methods earned him recognition as the 2011 District Teacher of the Year. Now, he discusses how he uses his Marine training with his ongoing education towards a Ph.D. to enhance the way students learn math.

After Wallace Selph spent four years as a Marine and served on President Bill Clinton’s Presidential Transport Squadron, he decided to make a change. He enrolled in the University of Florida and graduated in 2004 with a BA in Psychology. In 2005, he began teaching math at Hamilton County High School. Since then he has continued to make an impression on students and staff alike, exemplified by his recent Teacher of the Year award.

“They call me nontraditional?” he said as he poured a cup of coffee from an out-dated steam coffee pot. “I think I’m pretty old-fashioned.”

But Selph’s teaching methods are anything but.

“What is my preferred way to teach? Whatever works. I don’t pigeonhole myself into ‘this is the only way’,” he said.

“The question was posed to my class: If you have six boxes with seven circles in each box, how many circles would you have altogether? One student raised his hand and answered 42, of course,” said Selph. However, he noticed one student had drawn six boxes with seven circles in each box on a sheet of paper. “She understood the question. She made it into real life,” he said. “That’s learning. That’s education.”

Selph said he believes in celebrating every way to solve a math question.

His methods are also further testament to his training as a Marine.

“In the Marines, there’s never a missed opportunity for you to develop muscle memory,” he said. “That’s what I work with my students on … having muscle memory when it comes to math.”

Selph fosters “muscle memory” by familiarizing students with what math looks like in “real life.” For a recent lesson on measurements, he brought in milk cartons, shot glasses, and a variety of different containers to showcase a liter all the way down to an ounce. Selph also incorporates stories and reading into his math lessons to further relate math to everyday life.

Beginning this year as the Math Coach at Central Hamilton Elementary, Selph said he is enjoying utilizing technological tools made available to him by the district, such as laptops, smart boards, and other advances in teaching, to enhance learning in his classroom.

“Teachers here are on the cutting edge. They have the technology here and they aren’t afraid to use it,” he said.

These tools and methods have resulted in immense success among his students. Last year, every student in his class averaged over two years of growth. Selph, who is currently working toward a Ph.D. in education, said he largely owes this success in the classroom to lessons taught to him by a particularly tough crowd during his second year of teaching.

“I had the lowest level student twice a day, for 180 days. Most of the worst behavioral problems also came from this group. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it through the year. There were several times when I wanted to give up. It was a reflective moment. I realized it was either going to be them or me,” he said. “I was baptized by the fire.”

Selph said although he’s not sure how much he taught those students during that emotional and stressful second year, he learned a lot.

“That group taught me,” he said. “They taught be how to manage a classroom, and how to motivate kids that weren’t easily motivated.”

He added, “In a low-socioeconomic community such as this, there are kids who have never had anyone believe in them. Failure is not aiming too high and missing; it’s aiming too low in the first place.”

 But Selph said it’s an everyday “grind” to push student to reach their potential.

“The best part is when you have a student say to you ‘I hate math, I can’t stand you!’ and then a few years later you’re writing the same student a recommendation letter for college,” he said, the same day he had donated fifty dollars to buy a past-student a book for a college class. “They might hate you everyday, but you’re a rock in their life.”

In his spare time, Selph reads about people throughout history who had a dream, and through hard work, accomplished great success.

“When you work hard to accomplish your goals, others start to rise up to your level. One can model a way of success. You can show that ‘this’ can be done,” said Selph.