The plethora of sharply-dressed Potato Heads on a shelf in Tracy Lasher’s Rainier Middle School classroom is the first clue that a different sort of math teacher rules this roost.
Lasher doesn’t keep all those lovable tubers within reach just to admire their pretty faces and removeable googley eyes. No, from sheeted ghosts and patch-wearing pirates to bearded Santas, the taters are there to motivate her kids.
“Years ago I brought all these Potato Heads from home because my boys were growing up, and I hated to throw them away,” Lasher explained. “Some of my ESL students didn’t speak much English, so they would do something in class just to be able to decorate one, and it took off from there.”
Lasher, 48, is part of the incoming class of teachers in Auburn classrooms this fall. Not only is she new, but so is her title: math intervention specialist.
“You have students taking math, and then you have kids that really need help. I’m going to help all those kids who are being missed,” Lasher said. “I’ll be working with seventh- and eighth-graders who need a look at what they are missing, what are the gaps, maybe kids who missed a foundation like ‘what is a fraction?’
“I’m there to individually fill those gaps. I’m going to be in addition to their math class, so when they go there, they can understand it a bit more,” Lasher added.
Her enthusiasm and unshakable love of teaching make Lasher the kind of instructor you wished you’d had when you were young and knocking your weary brain pan against decimals, fractions and other exotic math creatures.
But she did not start out to be a teacher.
When Lasher graduated in 1980 from Cascade High School in Everett, she planned to be a nurse. At Seattle University she learned something important – she did not want to be a nurse.
So she turned to hotel management at the Semiahmoo Resort in Blaine, before she got married and moved to Canada. When her marriage ended, she returned to Everett and earned her bachelor’s degree in human services from Western Washington University. She then went to work for the Everett School District in instructional technology for several years before hitting the books again to earn her teacher’s certificate and master’s degree.
Before Auburn, Lasher, who lived in Kent with her twin boys, taught six years in Mukilteo. Eventually, the commute proved too much for her and her sons, so she landed a job teaching for the Kent School District.
But her heart was set on working for the Auburn School District.
“It’s known to be a great district, not only with their schools but how they treat teachers,” Lasher said. “When Auburn was looking at a new math curriculum, all these teachers and principals came to my classroom, and I remember talking to them and saying to myself, ‘They really care.’”
What keeps her going?
“You always hear that cliché about ‘getting through to the kids’ and, ‘it’s all about the kids.’ Well, it really is, especially in math. Math is not an elective. Kids walk in my classroom, and they hate being here. So I use games and art to teach, to show the kids that math can be fun. For example, I take the nutritional information from the top of a cereal box and have them graph it, then they have to design their own cereal box,” Lasher said.
When things get squirrely in the classroom, Lasher said, she can always trot out her secret weapon: the much-feared “mom look.” Her demonstration was bone chilling.
“I started teaching later in life. It was a whole new direction. Now I can’t imagine not doing it,” Lasher said.
