One of my fondest memories at MSJ comes from my senior year Calculus II class. Mr. Cegelski was our teacher, and he encouraged us to do our best on the assignments. Most of all he encouraged to be competitive with each other by trying to out “brown-nose” each other. We loved it. We would try to be the first to get to class, so we could get control of the blackboard to write the homework solutions for the class review. We continued to try to one up each other all year long.
At Christmas, we arranged to give a recital in the band room. Mr. Cegelski was the guest of honor. We wrote original songs or rewrote the lyrics to our favorite Christmas song, making Mr. C the focus of the song. It was great. I rewrote the Clement Clarke Moore poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” My version was renamed, “A Visit from Mr. Cegelski.”
Mr. Cegelski had a way to both motivate us and make learning calculus fun. In fact, he inspired me to major in mathematics in college.
