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you teach them how to multiply." And while O'Bannon-Morton's tough approach may read as rude or excessive, what a lot of people don't see is the "circle back." Tat kid who got an earful after calling a girl fat? He got a big hug later on. Bertrand says she "deposits love" in the bank so that she can withdraw when needed. And that love lasts long past middle school. One day, O'BannonMorton pulls a note from her bottom right desk drawer. It dates back six or seven years. In bubbly blue ink it reads, in part: "HELP ME PLEASE! . . . I'm in the trouble with the law. I was supposed to pay a fne and/or do community service and I chose to pay the fne but now I'm having money problems. . . ." He pleads for her assistance in securing community work hours. She did. And she kept in touch through the years. Te last they talked, he had graduated from a culinary program, but the recession had just hit. He was on the bus when they spoke. She asked how he was doing. "He said, 'I'm fne, I'm fne. Te restaurant laid me of and I got to feed my kids,'" she remembers him saying. "I knew exactly what that meant." With any long-term commitment there's the possibility of disappointment. While O'Bannon-Morton has mentored many success stories, heartache visits often. In 2009, that young man and his wife were shot to death. News reports said they were dealing cocaine out of their home. O'Bannon-Morton's lost too many former students and Neighborhood Youth Board kids to count. She estimates in the hundreds. Te Atherton football player who needed a morning squeeze at Meyzeek? Shot and killed last May while hanging out at Beecher Terrace. Ten there was Cheryl. Shot and killed in November outside a nightclub. Police say a heated argument with a group of men preceded the shooting. Te murder shocked O'Bannon-Morton. On Cheryl, she'd hung high hopes. Te teacher watched her graduate high school. She'd planned to attend her graduation from Western Kentucky University. Phone conversations often revolved around her future. Te 24-year-old talked about moving to Nashville after college. Cheryl was just a few months shy of graduating with a degree in fashion design when she died. "Cheryl hurt me," O'Bannon-Morton says one afternoon. Te pain still lingers. She chooses words carefully and steers the topic to a close. "I feel like this is the gift God's given me," she says. "I'm using it. Yeah, it's hard to put yourself out there and the kids disappoint and potentially hurt you but . . . what can I do to make them see something in themselves?" O 'Bannon-Morton's yellow door is closed. But her voice carries into the hallway. "Tree-point-two times 0.5 equals?" she says in her loud-louder decibel range. "How many decimal places is the product going to have?" Hands shoot up. Rarely do kids zone out in her class. "Two," a boy answers. "Well, work it out since you know the truth!" she says with a smile. Every answer, even correct ones, must come with explanations. In the process, she mentally catalogs what steps students struggle with. "Five times two is what?" "Ten!" the whole class shouts. "I put down the zero and then what?" "Carry the one!" the chorus responds. While math comes easy to O'Bannon-Morton, she knows some kids cringe. "A lot of teachers teach it boring," says Melody Raymond, Meyzeek's former assistant principal who's now the principal at Blue Lick Elementary. "She makes it real for them." Perhaps it's turning that 3.2 into $3.20 for candy. Whatever it is, one afternoon — my third or fourth watching O'Bannon-Morton — in the empty margins of my note pad I found myself lining up decimals and multiplying. I hate math. I hadn't touched it since 1997. Like a world-class marathoner makes a fve-minute pace look comfortable, O'Bannon-Morton makes teaching look easy. It helps that her classroom feels low stress, real. Papers are scattered on her desk. Sometimes she misspells. Her handwriting's slanty and imprecise. She's not good with names. It's safe to make mistakes here. If someone scofs at a wrong answer by another student, the teacher is raw in her words. Tis room is about learning, supporting each other. She hates the thought of anyone leaving her classroom feeling dumb. A 1990 photo from O'Bannon-Morton's days at Bellarmine University, whose athletic hall of fame includes her accomplishments. It's why she dislikes standardized testing time. She knows the education system needs to track student progress and gauge how well they're grasping math skills. But she hates that one of day can label a kid as a failure or, in bureaucratic terms, "novice." "I just wish they could look at the whole child," she says one day after school. "Obviously, I live in my own fantasyland." Earlier, she had looked over an assessment test the district mandated all middle school math teachers give that day. She decided to postpone it for one of her classes. Tey just weren't ready. She was a little behind in the curriculum, but she wanted to make sure they fully understood the basics before moving on. "I'm not one to set them up for failure," she says. O'BannonMorton is stubborn. If she believes a test should be given later, she'll do it. If she thinks a kid from the neighborhood deserves a slot in the higher-level magnet classes, she'll advocate, probably at the loudermad range. Tat can frustrate colleagues. "A lot of people don't care for me because of my bluntness," she says casually. Most staf, though, admire O'Bannon-Morton. She's a teacher who will back up others in the face of accusations by parents or administrators. Her presence provides comfort as much as it demands attention. All this can make it easy to forget the reason she's employed — math. Out of the school's 10 math instructors, for the last few years she's been tapped to teach an elite class of the 31 highest-performing seventh-graders who jump into high school algebra and geometry. Remember, Meyzeek's part neighborhood school, part magnet school for kids who perform well in math, science and technology. O'Bannon-Morton's a favorite among all. "Parents from the richest zip codes to across the street request her," says Raymond. Continued on page 158 11.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 63