Sheila Hardin doesn’t teach high school math for the money or for the fame — though she’s at least got the latter.

In October, the Oak Park River Forest High School veteran of 31 years was named the state’s best math teacher by the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics, her peers. But it’s not even for her colleagues that she walks the same hallway she’s walked since she was a student in ninth grade.

“There’s never a day I don’t find joy in what I do,” she said. “I went to this school. I graduated from OPRF High School and I take strong pride in the students and staff. No school is perfect, but there is never a day I go home there isn’t a moment I don’t laugh, or there’s never a day without joy.”

She gives joy as much as she gets.

Mary Wiltjer, a math teacher at Glenbrook South i

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