Miss Lucy stands before her Lake Highlands High School calculus class fielding questions from her students. They love what makes her different – her Cypriot accent, her clothing, her free-flowing classroom discussions, her optional homework.
In fact, it’s a teaching style that has captured the imagination of her students and won Lucy Mavrokordatos much recognition, most recently as the Richardson Independent School District’s 1998-1999 Secondary Teacher of the Year.
But look beneath the fun exterior, says Principal Bob Iden, and you’ll find a teacher with a passion for her subject matter and for promoting student success.
“She’s unusual,” says senior Kelly Terry. “We can talk without raising our hands. We joke about things. She’s more of a friend.”
Mavrokordatos says she is fortunate to teach highly motivated students who care about their work. Discipline problems, academically ill-equipped students and the other negatives often described by the media are foreign to her experience. And because she teaches both pre-calculus and AP calculus, she has the advantage of working with students for two years – a luxury, she realizes, many other teachers don’t enjoy.
Mavrokordatos uses technology to liberate her students from the routine exercises that once consumed much of their time and patience. Graphing calculators, for example, allow students to perform graphing functions electronically. That leaves more time to explore why mathematical functions work as they do, rather than simply concentrating on obtaining correct answers.
It’s a process that is integral to what Mavrokordatos hopes students learn.
“The goal is to get students ready for college and life,” she says. “What I want them to get out of my class is to know how to make wise decisions.”
Her philosophy: In math, students examine the statement of the problem. They obtain important information from that statement based on their past experiences. Then they use deductive reasoning to make good choices.
Mavrokordatos made some of those herself. She arrived in the U.S. with her husband in 1977, directly out of high school and speaking no English. She not only learned the language but went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Murray State University in Kentucky. She has been teaching at Lake Highlands since 1986.
“Coming from another country, I had to work very hard,” she says. “It’s made me appreciate all that I’ve got.”
