Hair-Raising Teaching Tactics
NEIRAD enilno edition
Load printer friendly version
- Profile: Patrick Dooley
- Hometown: Bernardsville, New Jersey
- Family: Married with four kids, Maurice, Tico, Cinderella, and John.
- Alma Mater: Fordham University '91
- Favorite Part of Job: When you see the light bulb go on above a student’s head. That’s a great moment.
- Favorite Sports Team: NY Football Giants, and Fordham Basketball.
- Future Plans for Math Department: I plan to violently overthrow Mr. Sullivan as the Supervisor and give myself the title of “Darien Math God”.
Around Darien High School, math teacher Mr. Patrick Dooley is known for his comic attitude. Just look at his description of his favorite pastimes. “Outside of my job, I play basketball on Fridays with some of the faculty members and I am a nationally-ranked domino player. I also collect Hannah Montana memorabilia.”
Dooley has been teaching at Darien High School for eight years now. And this is his 13th year teaching overall. “Teaching was my back-up plan after my tryout with the New York Knicks ended in a brawl with Patrick Ewing,” Dooley said.
Most students say that Mr. Dooley has a very distinct voice: loud. Senior, Ali Shaw said, “It’s funny because it keeps the whole class up and interested.” Dooley says he talks loudly because one of his professors in graduate school told him that the best teachers talk the loudest. Based on that adage it makes Dooley the best teacher on the planet!
Mr. Dooley is also known for shaving his head on St Patrick’s Day for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a group that raises funds to cure kids’ cancer. Out of all of his students, whoever donated the most money got to shave part of Dooley’s head. For Dooley’s period 6 class, senior Will Bruno donated $40 but decided against shaving Dooley’s head. So instead, senior Kelley Peace got to shave part of it. “After seeing Mr. Dooley with his head shaved like it was, the entire class could not take him seriously,” Peace said.
Now for yet another comical Mr. Dooley story: senior Jeff Peters decided to show up 10 minutes late for Mr. Dooley’s College Math Topics class on the day he was admitted to college at Ohio Wesleyan. Dooley found out from some of Peters’ friends that he was quoted saying, “Now that I got into my number one choice, I don’t need to worry about math and especially that uber-geek Mr. Dooley.” To get back at the uber-confident Peters, Dooley wrote a fake letter to his college telling them that he was rescinding his letter of recommendation and showed him the letter. “He got really upset. It was great!” Dooley said. Let us close with Mr. Dooley’s letter……
Mr. John Brundel
Ohio Wesleyan University
61 Sandusky St.
Delaware, OH 09877
March 5, 2008
Dear Mr. Brundel,
Please accept this letter on behalf of Jeffrey Peters, a senior at Darien High School in Darien, Connecticut. About two months ago I wrote Jeffrey a letter of recommendation to attend your fine university. I would like to rescind that recommendation.
Since Jeffrey was admitted to Ohio Wesleyan, he has completely slacked off in my math class. As a matter of fact, today he cut my class so that he could go to the cafeteria and eat lunch with his “friends.” (Even though I don’t think he has any) That is completely unacceptable and goes against everything I wrote about him in my letter of recommendation. Only a person who has low moral standards would cut my class.
Please consider a year deferral of Jeffrey’s acceptance.
Thank You,
Mr. Patrick Dooley
Math Teacher
Darien High School
