"I Had a Lot of Responsibility in the Navy with Billion Dollar Warships. Now it's Changed to Billion Dollar Lives."  
by Andrew Kerr
April 2006

Timothy Gant has been a mathematics teacher at Southwest Christian Academy for four years, and has completed two summers in the Georgia Intern-Fellowship for Teachers (GIFT) program. I spoke with him on Good Friday in order to discuss his background and his philosophy of teaching.

Have you always been a teacher in your adult life, or have you explored other careers as well?

I was a controls engineer for Clorox. I only did that for about fifteen months. And prior to that I was in the U.S. Navy and I did that for five years.

What places did you see while you were in the Navy?

I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. I was deployed for about two and half years. I was all over: Persian Gulf, Spain, France, the Mediterranean, Israel, Turkey...When you get over to the Mediterranean they give you a three to five day port call every ten to fourteen days. I worked from 18 to 20 hour days--at times 22 hours.

Was this during Iraq War I?

No; this was actually 1998 to 2000. I had two stints in the Persian Gulf for a total of about eight months. Four months in the Mediterranean and four months in the Persian Gulf.

But the first time I was there we were about five minutes from launching Tomahawk missiles into Iraq. It was a UN inspections issue. President Clinton gave us the order to send some missiles, and five minutes before our launch we received a phone call saying, "Don't push that button!"

I don't want to tempt you into saying anything too controversial, but seeing that you are a former Navy man who was deployed in the Persian Gulf I would be interested to know what your feelings are about the current situation in Iraq.

It's really hard to gauge because I think that the American public they can't get a real sense of the information that the military is getting. I know when I was over there and we would have all our intelligence briefings, I saw a real reason to be in Iraq. Now because of the media and because of some things the administation has done these issues have become too clouded. I don't know which side of the fence to be on.

How did you go from the military to working at Clorox? And what did you do there as a controls engineer?

Right after I got out of the military I did some interviews. Whenever a plant is being set up or they want to make an adjustment to a production line, a controls engineer will come in and basically program how the conveyor belts work, how the motors work, and make sure that everything's working in sync so that a product can go through the line. Everything that has to happen to that product a controls engineer would have to program; programmable logic controlers to ensure that everything happens correctly.

And how did you wind up leaving that for teaching?

It was actually a layoff—"last one hired first one fired" sort of thing. My wife worked at the school, but even before then I was volunteering at the school doing SAT classes. I did that probably about two years before I started to work there. After I got laid off, the head mistress called me and said, "Hey we got an opening! Would you like to come on board?"

When did you find out that you had an aptitude for math?

I think it was about second grade was when I began to find my love of math. A teacher saw that I was pretty proficient at it, so instead of doing what the class was doing she moved me as far ahead as I could and allowed me to go into a third grade class. I loved the logic of math, loved it, loved it, loved it! But what I enjoyed about it most was that there was one answer, this one answer that I could go in and pursue—just like a hunter.

Tell me about what you've done over your two summers in the GIFT program.

The first year that I did it I was sent to Beijing, China. The mechanical engineering program at Georgia Tech was doing a teacher exchange program at Tsinghua University in order to open up a relationship between the two schools.

While you were over there did you spend most of your time observing high school classrooms or college classrooms?

It was a little bit of both. Unfortunately I didn't get to see as much of the high school as I wanted to see; when I got there I mainly stayed at the university. I was only able to talk to a few teachers and an administator. What they did do was they set up a round table and I was able to talk to five or six students and ask them about their education, look at their textbooks to see where they were mentally and emotionally about academiccs and so forth.

Of course, China has a communist government. Some readers might wonder if the students you spoke with were allowed to be frank with you.

It was very sincere—absolutely very sincere. I think the kids were very honest. I think most of the people that I met in the university system were pretty honest about everything.

It makes sense that they would be, actually, since they wouldn't be able to reap the benefits of your experiences if they weren't. What was the biggest surprise you had in talking with these students?

I think that my biggest surprise was how serious they are about their academics. When I talked to these men or women they said that their parents would get them tutors on weekends to they could prepare themselves for the testing to go into the major universities. So, even though they did well in class, and were at the tops of their class, they were determined to go farther. Generally, in America, if the kids are doing well—that's it—they don't do anything extra.

It wasn't always all about academics. They had fun and would go out. But when it was time to do academics they put in 110%.

One question this might raise is the possibility that families with higher incomes could afford to give their kids tutors that folks in the lower income brackets couldn't. Was that an issue?

One of the things I was surprised by was that in the test that they give to go to university, a person in the city had to make a higher score than a person living in a pretty rural area. So they had different levels and different standards to give everyone an opportunity. Primarily I think this is determined by geographics.

Sounds sort of like affirmative action.

This is basically their way of affirmative action.

Did you learn anything else about teaching from that experience?

One of the things that, when I initially started teaching, was really hard for me was when a child would say, "I just don't understand. I just don't get it." It wasn't until I went to China and I had to learn Chinese that I began to understand. Because I just could not get it! I actually didn't learn any Chinese—very little. It just hit me one day; I was riding my bike to work: "Now I understand what these kids were trying to say!" I understand how they could not get it.

GIFT allows you to go into another environment and really be challenged. After you've been teaching for a few years you don't get a lot of those challenges, but when you come out of your teaching and go into a different enviroment you have to use skills that you really haven't used in a while.

What about your last GIFT experience?

I've taught statistics for two years before this year, and you always had an idea about how statistics are used in business. But not until you actually get into the real world can you clearly speak intelligently about what's really happening and how they're using statistics. I worked with Dr. Dave Stimley at Scientific Atlanta, and I learned that statistics drives everything in business, based off of market research, product performance, things of that sort. This alllowed me this year to communicate with more confidence to my students that this stuff is really important.

It goes back to your original enthusiasm about math, regarding its appealingly empirical, one-true answer nature.

You know you can speak with confidence. You know that what you're telling people is the gospel.

What do you like about teaching?

I understand the impact of a teacher. Sometimes a teacher can have a greater influence on a student than even a parent can, and that's an awesome responsibility. You can encourage a student to pursue a particular career, a particular subject, and just help them daily to overcome some difficulties they have.

I had a lot of responsibility in the Navy with billion dollar warships. But now it's changed to billion dollar lives.

You've already led a varied life. Do you see yourself continuing on as a teacher, or trying out some other things?

Right now I am a teacher until the passion is gone. And that doesn't look like it's going to be for a long time.