Time flies by for most students over the course of their high school years. One moment, they are asking a teacher for directions to a class they haven’t set foot in before, and the next, they are thanking them for letters of recommendation and saying their final goodbyes as they head off to college. For some students, that teacher is Mr. Dow. Imagine being in a classroom that is filled with color. You see graffiti covering the walls, and hear upbeat music playing in the background while working. That is an average daily class experience in Mr. Dow’s classroom. Mr. Dow has made a huge impact on the graduating class, so much so that they have asked him to be the guest speaker at the 2026 graduation ceremony. This honor has been bestowed upon many others in the past, such as Mr. Yates (the previous principal of DHS), and now it is his turn. Mr. Dow teaches in the math department, and he is also in charge of the after-school weight-lifting program, where anyone can meet after school to work out with different weights and exercise machines from 2:50 to 3:45.
In high school, Mr. Dow was on the golf, baseball, and soccer teams; however, academically, he wishes he had tried harder and applied himself more as a student. Dow knew he wanted to go to college since he was the very first person in his family to ever go to college, but he had no idea what he wanted to do. Dow started at Penn State as a business major because it would help him get a job in some sort of business field. However, after a year of going to Penn State, he transferred to Salisbury for a girl who is now his wife. A year and a half into his business classes, he grew bored. However, back in high school, he had a math professor who told him that he would be an excellent math teacher because he saw Dow helping other students in class with assignments. At the time, he thought those words of wisdom were nothing but words of encouragement; however, in college, he found himself enjoying his math classes. Then he heard his high school professor’s voice louder, and thought, “Maybe if math was kinda easy for him, and maybe because [he] liked it, [he] could make a future career out of it.” He began to slowly hear the voice grow louder, saying he would be a good math teacher, so after all these signs pointed him toward a career in mathematics, he switched his major to math.
It has been 26 years since he first took the job at Damascus, and he was initially drawn to the small town and community-centered atmosphere. Mr. Dow teaches five classes each day, covering four different courses. Mr. Dow teaches Calculus AB first thing in the morning, then spends the rest of the day teaching Honors Algebra 2, Hon. Pre Calc, and On-level Pre Calc. Dow believes that from his experience, “Calc is a very difficult math, but what makes it difficult to teach is different than an on-level Algebra 2, which makes that difficult to teach.” However, math alone isn’t what makes his job more challenging; it is “sometimes …dependent on the people that are in the class, sometimes that can be difficult, whether a chatty or a math-based difficult class.” Dow wouldn’t use the word difficult but more so the challenging aspects in the classroom. Dow teaches all grade levels throughout the semester and loves teaching them in different ways. He believes that “freshmen at the beginning of the year [aren’t the best to teach] because they still think it’s middle school…[he] think[s] juniors are a good grade to teach because they still have another year to go and have been around the school and know the routine and program. Once you have a senior who has been accepted and only has a couple weeks left, they are mentally checked out.”
After school three days a week, Dow supervises the weight-lifting club. Dow is the club sponsor of the weight club because he “raced motorcycles and when [he] first started [he] wasn’t strong enough to hold onto the bike and had to put on muscle mass and weight to not get hurt or crash anymore, then that intern became a new hobby.”
Other than Dow’s after-school extracurricular involvement, in the classroom, there are so many different knick-knacks and posters that take over the whole space. Almost 50% of the items he has on display are from students that he has taught. Dow believes the reason why people give him items is to say thank you for taking an interest in their lives outside of the classroom. Dow shared that he “has that motorcycle helmet [on display by his desk] that was previously owned by [a previous student], who rides streetbikes. [He] like[s] motorcycle bikes so [he] had an instant connection with [his student] and [he] always ask him about his races and how he is doing and where he’s going, and one day out of the blue he shows up and says ‘here this is for you cause I know this is something your interested in and you take an interest in my life.’” That is one of the unique aspects about Dow is how he makes connections with his students, he expresses how he tries “to be a real person and form relationships with [his] students and realize math isn’t the most important thing their doing so [he] tr[ies] to know [his] students on a personal level.”
Mr. Dow was selected as the speaker for Damascus High School’s 2026 graduation ceremony. Dow stated that “Last year in Calculus…the class started to talk about guest speakers at graduation… and then someone nonchalantly asked if [he] wanted to [be the guest speaker].” Dow then went on to respond that “that’s actually one of [his] goals as a teacher to be the speaker at graduation.” The class jokingly said that they would make it happen for him next year when they would become seniors; in hindsight, Dow thought they would forget. However, ever since we were chosen to be the speaker, he believes that a few of his students actually remembered him saying how it was his goal to become a guest speaker at graduation, and they made it happen with the help of the rest of the student body. Dow expressed how “[he] really do[es] think [he[ owe[s] it to last year’s calculus class that made it happen.”
Outside of the classroom and weight room, Dow loves fishing in his free time. Fishing is the complete opposite of what he does in the day. Fishing pulls him away from the loud noises and people asking him for things; it is just him on the water with the only noise being birds singing, with nothing from the modern world distracting his thoughts.
Next year, Dow is transitioning to a new role. He will serve as the regional coordinator for students completing internships. Dow described what his new job “every school in the county is going to get their own special program and then for example we will get music… if you were apart of the music program at Clarksburg but you want to be apart of the music program at Damascus this will help you get transferred and go through our program and [he] will be the director for our area.”
Before he leaves the math department, Dow hopes the one thing that students take away from his teachings is “that hard work always pays off, it might not be today it might not be tomorrow, you might be grinding on weeks on end not seeing any results but… eventually it will pay off and you have to have that never give up attitude and you can’t let people tell you no, you can’t take no for an answer you just keep going and keep going and eventually it will be off” and that “If you don’t really take things seriously or you don’t work hard don’t plan on taking the rewards of life.”
Mr. Dow may be leaving the math department, but he is still going to be among the students he has mentored and taught. Dow’s impact on students will be represented once he makes his farewell speech to the graduating class of 2026.
“If you’re gonna be dumb, you need to be tough.” -Mr. Dow
