Q: How would you describe yourself?
A: “I would describe myself as an empathetic person. I am constantly considering the feelings of those around me and tend to put myself in their shoes a lot. Because of this, I place a large importance on mental health and try to be as understanding as possible when learning about other people’s struggles.”
Q: How has your first year teaching at LT gone so far/How has your experience in working here compared to previous years?
A: “I’m really enjoying my first year here! The staff has been very welcoming and has done a great job at making me feel comfortable and valued. It was pretty scary moving to a new state after living in Florida my whole life, but meeting other staff members who have also moved to Texas from other states has helped me adjust. Previously, I taught middle school, so there have been lots of differences between LT and my past experience! I think the biggest shock for me is how large this school is. My previous school had about 900 students with only 8 math teachers. LT has more than doubled both amounts! Another big difference in teaching here is the age group that I’m working with. My previous experience is with 6th and 7th graders, so it’s been a bit of an adjustment learning to work with juniors and seniors. Overall, the change has been very positive!”
Q: What is your favorite method of teaching and how do you think those methods benefit your students?
A: “I am a big fan of project-based learning! When I reflect back on my time in school, I remember the activities that I did more than any assessments that I took. I think project-based learning is a fun way to tie the material that students have learned to a positive experience. My hope is that when they think back to those positive experiences, they are able to also recall the information that they learned with it.”
Q: What is your usual lesson plan like/what do you take into account when making these plans?
A: “At LT, teachers are involved in PLCs, which make lesson planning a little different than I’m used to. You can think of a PLC as a team of teachers that teach the same topic. In my eyes, planning as a PLC should involve considering the goals of each teammate (teacher) and coming to an agreement on how to meet those goals. My approach to lesson planning involves asking the question “What are my students expected to know by the end of this unit?” Knowing the answer to this question helps me develop lessons that are straightforward and eliminate unnecessary information.”
Q: Do you have a specific lesson or unit you like to teach?
A: “In statistics, my favorite topic has always been Confidence Intervals! A confidence interval “shows the range of values you expect the true estimate to fall between if you redo the study many times” Sometimes, the range of values can be very spread apart, and the nerd in me always thinks it’s funny when that happens. It leads to a very vague answer! Since this is my first year teaching statistics, I’ve never gotten to teach this skill before, but I am looking forward to introducing it to my students!”
Q: Lastly, do you have any advice you would like to give the students of LT?
A: “Embrace who you are! I think it’s so important to be confident in yourself and that includes not hiding your interests just because they seem “uncool”. I really admire so many of my students for their sense of self-expression- when I was in high school, I was too worried about what my peers thought of me and even though I’ve outgrown that, I wish I didn’t let it bother me back when it did!”
