Math Teacher Multiplies His Life Pleasures

Missiles and children have a lot in common for Robert Walker, a former thermodynamic engineer and retired teacher.

“There are no bad kids,” said Walker, a volunteer tutor at the Pacoima Community Youth Culture Center for 20 years. “There are no dumb kids. But just like missiles, some are misguided.”

With pen and paper he showed how he can fix a guidance problem.

“I used to take the so-called dumbest kid in the class,” said Walker, who retired in 1990 from Parkman Junior High School in Woodland Hills. “I’d show them how to multiply without multiplying.”

On a piece of scrap paper, he writes 363,636, then jots down 25 below it. But rather than multiplying the two numbers, Walker uses a shortcut involving division and fractions to find the answer: 9,090,900.

“The point is to start out with something that is easy rather than complicated,” said Walker, who uses math tricks like this to entertain and engage the students at the community center, where he also helps with English homework and other subjects.

Walker, who taught mathematics at the elementary, junior high, high school and college level, was honored recently with a Golden Rule Award from the Volunteer Center of the San Fernando Valley and the J.C. Penney Co.

“He is fun,” Rigasi Coffee, a seventh-grader at Pacoima Middle School, said as he worked on his pre-algebra homework at the center. In the past year, Walker’s help has pushed Rigasi’s grades from Cs to A’s and Bs, he said. “He shows you the easy ways of doing math.”

Walker is an Oklahoma native whose mother was Jamaican and father, a railroad laborer, was Choctaw. Watching his overworked father inspired Walker to pursue an education, he said.

“I will never work hard, not like that,” Walker said he told himself. He was accepted to medical school, but he said he couldn’t afford to attend and had to drop his first dream of becoming a doctor.

Later, however, he earned a doctorate in mathematics.

“Most people don’t like mathematics,” said Walker, a former Pacoima resident who now lives with his wife, Jessie, in Palmdale and still works as a substitute teacher. “It’s easy. It’s universal.”

Now 69, Walker began teaching in 1951, then worked as an engineer for 12 years before returning to teaching in 1966.

With seven children and 23 grandchildren, Walker often uses one of his daughters in his math examples. When his daughter was 1, he said, he was 20 times her age. When she was 10, he was three times her age. At 20, he was only twice her age. “You tell me when she’s going to catch up with me,” Walker said he would ask his students.

“This is the kind of stuff that keeps kids interested,” Walker said.

Keeping kids interested was what made his career so much fun, he said. He hated retirement at first.

“The first year was very difficult,” Walker said. “I’d get up in the morning and get dressed and then realize I wasn’t working anymore.”

Walker said he never felt overworked or stressed out.

“I never got tired and exhausted because I loved doing it,” Walker said. Teachers need to enjoy the work, he added. “If they don’t enjoy the work, don’t teach. Find another vocation. . . . That’s life, summed up.”

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