Former McHi teacher publishes memoir

McALLEN — Numbers have always come easy to Leo A. Ramirez Sr.

Where some people see a complex string of symbols and letters, Ramirez sees patterns. In his freshman year at Mission High School, Ramirez quickly spotted them in an assignment his teacher gave him and developed short cuts to solve those problems in his head – tricks he would later teach to generations of McAllen students.

For 32 years at McAllen High School, Ramirez, now 58, outlined his system to students, leading some of them to numerous state math championships and academic competitions. Now he’s compiled the tricks and chronicled his experiences as a math teacher and coach in his new self-published memoir, The Wizard Maker.

Ramirez said his wife suggested he write down the stories he had about how his students overcame obstacles to excel in math and the competitions to inspire his own grandchildren. His notes became his memoir.

“My hope and my dream (are) to get enough money to promote the book,” he said.

Ever since he was in elementary school, Ramirez said he knew he had a knack for numbers and loved helping his fellow students with problems. He wanted to be a teacher when he grew up and would observe every instructor he had to see how they motivated and inspired their students, he said.

After he graduated from what was then Pan American University in 1973, Ramirez took a job teaching math at McAllen High School.

“They gave me the worst math students,” he said.

Ramirez taught a fundamental math class his first year, but that only inspired him to find a way to help his students understand mathematics.

He used reverse psychology.

“I wrote 15 problems (on the chalk board) and answered them in seconds,” Ramirez said. “The students asked, ‘How did you answer (the problems so fast)?’ I said, ‘Short cuts.’”

His students then asked him to teach them short cuts in solving problems. By the end of the six-week grading period, he was teaching his class how to extract square roots of numbers, Ramirez said.

“Again, my thinking was, how do I use psychology to get these low performers to believe in themselves?” Ramirez said. “It was a tool I used to motivate them, inspire them.”

He used the same approach with his advanced math students.

“The students became fascinated with math because I was fascinated with math,” he said.

During his three-decade teaching career, Ramirez also wrote workbooks and other materials to help other educators teach their students the same tricks and short cuts. Since retiring in 2005, Ramirez has written more than 20 workbooks and has traveled all over the state to train teachers different techniques for solving problems and equations.

One former student and “math wizard” Javier Garcia credits Ramirez for getting accepted into Stanford and making a better life for himself.

Ramirez not only helped math make more sense for his students by explaining problems in a step-by-step process, he also made sure they didn’t interpret any defeats as a negative experience, said Garcia, who graduated from McAllen High School in 1988.

“He pushed us to be better people,” Garcia said. “Without Mr. Ramirez none of us would be in the position we are in now. … He took a bunch of kids from the south side of McAllen and turned us to be better than what we should’ve been.”

Ramirez now tutors Garcia’s 11-year-old son Andrew for math competitions. The sixth-grade student works on eighth-grade-level math and some geometry, Garcia said.

Ramirez’s book is only offered online. The book can be purchased at www.thewizardmaker.com or at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com or other Web sites that sell books. His workbooks can be purchased at www.rammaterials.com.

The books cost $19.95, plus tax and shipping fees.

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Jennifer L. Berghom covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.