High School math teacher, Micheal Van Cleave, continues to shape the minds of students at Fair Grove through Geometry, Pre-Calculus, and Computer science, as well as in the past College Algebra.
Prior to Fair Grove, Van Cleave student taught at the rival school of Strafford. Van Cleave began his teaching career at Lebanon for one year before moving to Fair Grove. He started out his career at Fair Grove as a part-time middle school math teacher. After teaching middle school for 2 years Van Cleave moved to High School and has been there since 2014.
Prior to teaching Van Cleave led a whole other life. Van Cleave explained, “If you do the math, the years I’ve been teaching don’t seem to match my age. That is because teaching is a second career for me. I originally graduated from college with a degree in chemical engineering and worked in that field for almost 10 years prior to teaching.”
Van Cleave’s son, Lee Van Cleave (11), inevitably had his dad as a teacher throughout his high school career. Lee stated that having his dad as a teacher did not change much inside the classroom, though Lee did state, “Since my dad is a teacher, it has made my high school experience great. I know that if I ever have an issue I have my dad to fall to.”
Lee said the only issue he has run into is when his dad would ask trivia questions about himself. Lee was not allowed to answer those questions.
Along with being a long standing member of the math program at Fair Grove, Van Cleave has involved himself in many clubs over the years. Van Cleave has been in charge of the High School STUCO (student counsel) for several years. In recent years he has sponsored PROUD since it was formed a few years ago.
Being involved in these clubs, and just the Fair Grove High School as it is, calls for a lot of silly moments. Throughout his years at Fair Grove, Van Cleave has done many of these silly things including both lip-syncing and dancing, along with the two at the same time. Though Van Cleave does have a favorite silly moment, “My favorite times are probably Halloween when we go all out with our costumes. It was so much fun when we did a Mario theme last year and had a “Mario Kart” race at the end of the day.”
Even with the silly moments and the prior career. Van Cleave still loves working at Fair Grove. He stated, “Fair Grove is a great place to work and I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
