Lakewood math teacher
had formula for teaching
Richard Lester
remembered for showing
students how to think
By joyce blay
Staff Writer

CHRIS KELLY Richard Lester conducts a lesson in his final week as a teacher in the Lakewood school district. He is retiring after 43 years in the district.

By his own admission, Richard Lester, 70, of Brick Township, is not good at math. That hasn’t stopped him from using mathematical concepts to teach his elementary school classes in Lakewood for 43 of his 46 years as an educator.

After almost half a century of instructing children, Lester will retire at the end of this month.

"My wife, Irma, is a professor of writing and women’s studies at Brookdale [Community College in Lincroft]," Lester said. "She just retired after more than 30 years of teaching."

Just as noteworthy is the career of Richard Lester, which began in 1957, when he was graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Upsala College, East Orange.

"I went into teaching because I liked kids," said Lester, the father of three grown children. "The reason I enjoy teaching all these years [later] is because I try to make learning fun by teaching students educational games."

In 1960, Lester applied for a teaching job in Lakewood. He still remembers his interview with Hillman Harker, the superintendent of schools at the time.

"He asked me what the three things are that every reading lesson should have," said Lester, trying to recall the conversation more than four decades later. "I remember saying motivation, vocabulary and I forget the third, but he liked my answer and hired me right then and there."

Lester was assigned to the fourth grade class at Clifton Avenue Elementary School, when Robert Wright was the principal. It was the beginning of an associa­tion with the Lakewood school district that years later has elicited high praise from Sheldon Boxer, principal of the Oak Street School, where Lester is currently em­ployed.

"Mr. Lester is a great math teacher [who] can use mathematical concepts to get people to think, and not just about math," said Boxer. "It’s interesting that when I go shopping and talk to former stu­dents [I meet in the supermarket], they al­ways ask about Mr. Lester. He’s had a positive impact on many of them."

It is a mutual feeling, said Lester, who attended Rutgers University in the 1990s to earn a master’s degree in math education.

"Some of my former students have come up to me while I was visiting Stockton State College two years ago and they told me they were going into math be­cause I got them interested in it through my teaching," Lester said. "That made me feel good."

The key to maintaining students’ atten­tion all these years, Lester said, is through the application of the same rules that gov­ern both science and math to explain life principles as well.

"I’m reading a book right now about Copernicus," Lester said. "It takes a lot of thought to come up with a different way of looking at things, as he did, and that’s what I try to teach my students."