I wish I had a kind teacher like yours back in the days of being a high school student who would tell me with love that I was capable of a solving hard problems and arriving at the correct answers instead the teacher I had believed we should all have innate knowledge to understand math or maybe he felt we were all the same and are supposed to understand everything. He would just put down the sums on the board, solve it and read it out to us and that was it. At the end of the class, he'd give assignments and most of us failed woefully.
I was severally punished in school for bad grades at maths but nothing changed and I think it's because there was no loving math teacher that could help as yours did you. I do love people that have great knowledge of what I don't and while reading through your post, I was smiling and wishing I understood the harder sums with the help of a kind teacher but ....it is what it is🤧.