Mr. Deck has been a math teacher, track and field, and cross country coach for six years at DePaul Prep. He really enjoys its sense of community, the faculty members, as well as the students. “They help me grow as a person,” said Deck.

In the third issue of the Ram Page’s advice column, Mr. Deck is here to give advice and answer your questions:

What’s number one on your bucket list?

In a career sense, something on my bucket list is to eventually have my class averages be a high 89 to 90%. In terms of a personal sense, going to Greece is on my bucket list and has always been a place I wanted to visit.

Why do I hate math so much? Can you convince me to like math?

Math is just a hard subject. Typically, when someone encounters something that’s just difficult, they don’t like it because they’re not good at it at first, and it’s very hard, especially when you get older, to just be automatically good at math. Those that are automatically good just think it’s the best. Some people don’t think it’s hard, but math makes you think a lot more critically and makes you remember a lot of steps, and you have to be very meticulous with what you do. A lot of that is just patience and just trying to get a better foundational understanding of it.

Why do you love running?

I would say that it helped me meet a lot of great people in my life that helped me grow as a person and become who I am. It’s not necessarily putting one foot in front of the other that I like, but it’s the people that I’ve encountered along the way that made me like this sport and showed how valuable it is in my life.

What made you get into running? 

My freshman year of high school, I was on my high school team’s soccer team, and I did not like the coach, and I was not happy being on that team. My sophomore year, I wasn’t planning on doing soccer, but then the cross country coach actually called my house and said that it’d be a good idea if I joined the team. I said I would do it for a year, and I promised myself that if I don’t make varsity my junior year, then I’m going to quit. I ended up making varsity, and ended up loving the sport and continued from there.

Do you like teaching? If you had a choice, would you do it again?

I love teaching. It definitely is a thankless job. I would for sure do it again. I think it’s, truthfully, the career for me. When I decided to go into education instead of computer science, I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders, and I felt like everything just made sense to do that.

What should I look forward to most in college?

The experiences and meeting new people. Some of my best friends I met in college, some of the professors that I had, and people I encountered helped me become the person I am today. That was probably what you should look forward to the most. They’ll always be a place to have fun, and there’ll be a lot of great things you’ll see in college, but I would definitely say encountering and meeting a lot of people is where you should look forward to the most.

What’s the best way to beat a tough math class?

Patience and practice problems. Understanding that you’re not always going be good at it at first, and that it just takes time to get a good understanding of things. The hardest math class I ever took was number theory because it was the first math class that I had where I didn’t automatically know what the answer was. It really made me reevaluate who I am as a student and it made me become more patient with what I need to do.

Mr. Deck, why do you make fun of your students?

Because it’s fun. I think it helps build a good classroom environment. One of my favorite teachers was my APUSH  teacher in high school, and prior to that, history was my least favorite subject. The reason why I enjoyed that class and him as a teacher so much is because he was able to joke with the students, to tease the students a lot. He was able to make it more of a welcoming place where it’s just like, “oh, I can be more of myself here.” I feel like if the environment is a more free and open environment, they won’t be afraid to ask questions.

What’s the best way to become a better competitive runner/athlete?

Understand that everyone’s beatable on race day or on competition day. A lot of the time, people think that, “oh, this person is this mythological entity and they’ll win no matter what.” Upsets happen all the time, and especially in running, it’s very common for the person that’s supposed to win to not win. Just remember, everyone’s beatable on race day.