WILLY, WILLY COOL: Batemans Bay High School maths teacher Pamela Williams has retired, to the disappointment of students Brittanee Willis, Simone Lavis and Lily Attwood. Calculations became friendlier when she turned them into hamburgers and cat’s faces.
A teacher who let “cats” loose in the classroom and used hamburgers to turn countless kids on to maths has admitted her number is up.
Pamela “Willy” Williams has retired after 22 years at Batemans Bay High School and 34 years as a teacher.
Willy’s departure on Friday provoked much social media attention, with past and present students and their parents wishing her well.
In her hands, fractions became fun and sticky sums simple, according to Year Seven students Simone Lavis and Lily Attwood.
“She gives them nicknames, like hamburger,” Ms Lavis said.
To multiply fractions, “you times the top and you times the bottom and it looks like a hamburger - it makes it fun.”
“I used to like maths, but now I love it,” a tearful Ms Attwood said.
“She gets the job done and has a joke as well.”
Willy’s diagram of a cat’s face is “a heaps good” way of remembering the rules for adding fractions.
“I have always wanted to be a teacher, my mother says since kindergarten,” Willy said. “It was a good decision, I love kids.”
However, kids had got “harder”.
“They don’t have as much respect as they used to,” she said. “Their manners are not as good, but even the naughty kids are sweet to me.”
She said her final week had been tough and “I’ll miss the kids”.
The mathematics lover had a painful moment earlier in her career when she had to concede some of the top seniors outstripped her.
“I can’t push them hard enough,” she said.
She instead loves to teach “the top Year Sevens and the middle of everything else”.
Her message to young teachers is “love your job” and she’s chuffed to hand over to her former student Brian Firth.
Next year, she’s off with friends to Tasmania and then around Australia, but will return to the Eurobodalla.
“I will always be involved with kids,” she said.
