MARS, Pa. — It’s just after lunch on a snowy January day, and the math teacher in Room 222 is sketching Pascal’s triangle on the whiteboard.
Andy Bednar did not go to Cornell to teach advanced algebra. He went there to pitch for the baseball team, kick for the football team and study civil environmental engineering. But after spending his 20s sampling soil and groundwater around landfills, Andy, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, wanted a job that gave him more time with his kids. So he got his teaching certification and eventually landed this job at Mars Area High, teaching math and coaching Fightin’ Planets baseball and football. Colleagues tease him: “Think you overdid it with the Ivy League degree?”
Andy and his wife, Sue, still live in the ordinary two-story house they bought when they moved to Mars. Andy has taught in Room 222 since before his current students were born. He’s beloved in the math and science wing, a big guy with a grin and graying hair who peppers lessons on polynomial functions with corny jokes.
The classroom’s cinder-block walls are covered with college pennants, most of them gifts from former students away at school. But the pennants hanging in two columns behind Andy’s desk are different. Amarillo Sod Poodles. Fort Wayne Tincaps….
