Math titan earns accolades for teaching, caring at Tech
MSC alumnus, Robert Boatz, makes a difference in St. Cloud school district
Glimpse at Robert Boatz during a Technical High School sports timeout, and you might see the math teacher reading a book in the stands.
It’s an example of “Mick,” as students and colleagues call him, sending a positive message to kids, according to a St. Cloud school board member.
“He’s really the consummate educator, in my book,” said Bruce Hentges, former Tech coach and instructor.
A prestigious university recently agreed.
The Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology honored Boatz with its outstanding teacher award earlier this month.
It gave three high school honors to instructors for improving science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, education and encouraging students toward careers in those areas.
“It might not be possible to overstate the positive influence Robert Boatz has had on mathematics education in the (St. Cloud) school district or even in his entire state,” read the presentation at the Indiana university.
Former students have attested to Boatz’s effects.
In 1998, 2002 and 2008 student profiles in the Times, Tech seniors cited the teacher as a favorite.
They said: “I really look up to him,” “He really cares about his (students’) lives,” and, “I think he is the greatest math teacher ever.”
A current student echoed those thoughts.
Sophomore Abby Knight took Advanced Placement calculus this year, a class typically comprised of upperclassmen. It was more challenging than others, she said, but Boatz “is a very good teacher.”
He began teaching AP courses in 1994 and uses a unique method of instruction to instill knowledge and prepare kids for tests that potentially determine if they have earned college credit through the classes.
“The worksheets are very specific to what we’re doing,” Knight said.
Those handwritten assignments have become a sort of signature for the native of Humboldt, a small town in far northwestern Minnesota.
The graduate of Moorhead State College, now Minnesota State University Moorhead, said he started creating his own curriculum in the 1980s.
Former co-worker Bob Latterell and he thought, “We can make it better than the book,” Boatz said.
An analog spreadsheet in the back of a three-ring binder shows subjects and revisions to the worksheets over the years.
With a teaching career stretching back to 1969 — he spent one year at North Junior High School and has been at Tech ever since — Boatz has made plenty of changes.
One constant has been his connections with students, two colleagues said.
Fellow math teacher Ben Thell said Boatz is in tune with students’ abilities and has a knack for seeing the big pictures, how varying subjects tie together.
“Especially in math, it’s easy to compartmentalize,” Thell said.
He’s spent more than a dozen years with Boatz at Tech. From the beginning, Thell said, his more experienced co-worker was “more than willing” to welcome him into classes. Boatz shared his carefully constructed assignments when Thell began teaching precalculus.
Boatz is easygoing and nonthreatening, Thell said — the type of guy who will grab a napkin while going out after school with colleagues and visually explain how to derive an equation or formula.
“He’s a very dedicated teacher,” said Andrea Swanberg, activities director at Tech since 2005.
Boatz develops relationships with his students, she said, asking about nonacademic aspects of their lives and regularly attending concerts, plays and other activities.
“The kids love it,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing.”
Boatz has high expectations for students, Hentges said.
Those standards and the commitment he brings to teaching set an example for other instructors as well, the Local Education & Activities Foundation director said.
And Boatz, who received a master’s degree from what was then St. Cloud State College, isn’t limited to numbers.
“He’s a doggone math teacher, and he’s read hundreds more books than I have as a former social studies teacher,” Hentges said affectionately.
“Certainly the community has been fortunate to have him at Tech.”
The feeling is reciprocal.
“I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten to Tech,” Boatz said.
When he’ll bid farewell is still a mystery.
“I’m going to be back next year,” he said. “After that, I don’t know.”
According to Thell, one point of certainty is the success Boatz is passing along with the Mathematics League program.
The Math League Hall of Fame inducted the longtime St. Cloud educator in 2010, and Tech has won its division every year since the early 1990s.
“Some year we’re going to get beat, but I don’t think it will be next year,” Boatz said.
It’s a legacy built by a “caring, funny” instructor who’s been a great academic mentor, according to Thell.
The “people person” taught him to be persistent with subjects.
“We don’t let a topic be taught, test and fade away,” Boatz said.
Students, faculty and others seem to agree: No matter how long he holds blackboard chalk in a classroom or chains at Tiger football games, his effects at Tech are bright and won’t burn out anytime soon.