At HHS, there are always new faces. Whether it be new students or teachers, everybody’s likely to see a new face in the halls. One of these new people is 23-year-old Daniel Ruether-Affor, better known as Mr. R or Coach Dan. He prides himself on providing many educational activities for today’s students. In such things as speech and debate, substitute teaching, and watching over in-school suspension, you can always find Mr. R.
Mr. Ruether-Affor was once a student here, taught by the lovely Ms. O’Malley, Mr. Day, and Ms. Clark. In an interview with The Nugget, Mr. R said, “The biggest struggle is I don’t know if I can call them by their first name or not. It’s hard seeing them as my colleagues because, in some sense, I will always see them as my mentors.”
Mr. R has currently picked up a job as an ISS para in room 28. “Working here is really in my line of interest, and being in ISS is nice because it allows me to see what it’s like teaching here, and I can do my college homework.” Mr. R is majoring in math education at Western Governors University online. He says he would ideally like to teach algebra, but he would settle for any math position here.
When asked what made him want to teach math, Mr. R said, “A lot of my teachers left a big impact on me, even though I wasn’t very good at math in high school. My big aha moment was when a UM professor told me that ‘everyone can be a math person; it just requires a bit of a change of mindset.’”
But Mr. Ruether-Affor is more than just a teacher or college student. During the speech and debate season, he is known as Coach Dan, pushing his debaters to become better at what they do. Coach Dan also runs a middle school camp for 7th and 8th graders who hold interest in joining speech and debate. One-third of Coach Dan’s debaters lettered this year, proving his spectacular coaching ability.
Coach Dan even had a speech and debate career of his own as a wunderkind high-school debater. He held many awards, even going to nationals his junior and senior year in extemporaneous debate, an event where both parties have no more than 30 minutes to formulate a case, or argument, justifying the stance that they were given. It is truly a very difficult category, and given Coach Dan’s experience with it, he has become a disciplined and knowledgeable coach.
As a former student at Helena High School, he has some observations about HHS. “Lots has changed,” he reminisced. “Administration is generally the same, but things are smaller in some ways. When I was in high school, it seemed like a mosh pit in the hallways. But because lots of people have left, there’s fewer electives, and everything feels so empty now.”
He shared similar feelings about speech and debate, saying, “Speech and debate is smaller across the state, and now there’s a widening achievement gap.”
When we look at new faces in Helena High, sometimes we only see that: faces. But upon closer examination, the people behind these faces are incredibly deep, each with their own stories of where they came from. Thank you for taking the time to read about Mr. Ruether-Affor, and seeing that he is more than just Mr. Ruether-Affor; he is an awe-inspiring coach, a hardworking college student, and an alumnus of Helena High who wants to give back to the community he came from.
