Mrs. Jockusch is without a doubt the teacher that most contributed to our success in the AMC-12 math contest. In the past three years, Mrs. Jockusch has taught us our school's Algebra II and Calculus I, II, & III courses. Mrs. Jockusch has taught math at University Laboratory High School for 26 years. Her class is infamous for being the most rigorous and homework-intensive in the school. Saying, "Gotta study for that Jockusch test," elicits hums of sympathy from all other students.
However, despite the demanding class, Mrs. Jockusch manages to instill in her students a genuine interest, understanding, and love of mathematics. Her lesson sections are polished and easy to understand from her years of experience with teaching math. Her homework assignments avoid busy work and instead help the student develop a greater understanding and comfortability with the math concepts.
As a person, Mrs. Jockusch is friendly and helpful. She shows concern when students fall behind. Her office is open all the time and she enjoys chatting with students after class.
She also lightens up the class with her quaint sense of humor. Once, when talking about converting rectangular coordinates to polar form, Mrs. Jockusch said to our class, "Whenever you see x^2+y^2, you can just plug in r^2. You don't have to substitute rcos(theta) and rsin(theta) every time. I mean, I believe in laziness as long as the laziness is clearly good mathematics."
At the end of this year, Mrs. Jockusch is retiring. We are happy to have had her for the past three years because, frankly, she's just awesome.