Most students know Mr. Richard Frost as the loud, calculus teacher.

But few wonder how he became that devoted teacher. He has always been outgoing, in high school he was a three-sport athlete, involved in multiple choir groups and was involved in math club, drama club and band. He went to college and met Dr. Carlson, “She challenged me to think outside the box.” Dr. Carlson talked about letting students work together to learn and leaving time in class to work together.

Through Dr. Carlson, he met Dr. Feldt. Dr. Feldt thought that classes shouldn’t be teacher versus student. He thought the teacher should help the students. This means not spoon feeding students information in a powerpoint but teaching it.

After graduating UW-Stevens Point, Frost took his first job at Waupaca High School. He was 23 and the only calculus teacher. He said, “Nobody wanted to teach calculus so the new guy always taught it.” Being only five years older than the kids he was teaching, was nerve racking. One lesson he just gave a work day because he didn’t quite know how to teach the material. “At that point it was just surviving through the classroom,” he recalled his days at Waupaca. To increase the difficulty of his class load he taught four different curriculums: Calculus, Integrated Math, Algebra Two, and Advanced Algebra Two.

Fast forward to any class today and you’ll see Frost doing things a little bit differently. He could be playing music to hint at the lesson or he could be allowing the students to teach themselves by giving difficult problems of the day. He remembers the lesson taught to him by Dr. Carlson and Dr. Feldt. He sums up these lessons beautifully by saying: “I want you to feel like you guys (students) have control of where the class is going.”