Short version
I taught high school math in Utah for 8 years, spending the last 3 as the department head at one of the largest high schools in the state. I hold both an active educator certificate through the State of Washington (mathematics endorsement) and a master’s degree in mathematics education. While I am no longer in the classroom, I still work in education by designing courses and assessments for a nonprofit university.
Long Version
I spent the better part of a decade teaching middle & high school math in Utah. I began my professional career right as the Common Core took hold in secondary education. As a first year teacher I hit the ground running, helping to redesign long-established curriculum to meet the new standards. Some courses were taught by a team of teachers, allowing tons of collaboration and shared work. Others were low-enrollment courses so all work and decisions were on me, the one and only teacher of that course.
Now with years of classroom teaching experience, I have designed, iterated, & redesigned hundreds of math lessons in alignment with state requirements. I have built countless original instructional materials (e.g., video lessons, learning activities, lecture presentations) and both formative & summative assessments to measure student competency. I have provided direct instruction to thousands of students across my teaching journey, both in person and remotely.
I loved teaching, thriving off of the sense of community I felt at the high school level. I taught a variety of classes, including all of the “standard” courses: algebra, geometry, precalc, calculus. My favorites though were the specialized remedial classes. The ones for students who were labeled as “math adverse”. Students that needed a slower pace, alternate approaches, and understanding.
During the last third of my teaching career I served as the math department chair. That means I was involved in hiring new math teachers, providing mentorship to early or struggling educators, and creating teaching schedules for the upcoming school years. With control over my own schedule, I never left those remedial classes. It is hard to help someone who does not want help, but I loved helping those simply waiting for the right help. Plus they kept my days interesting!
Part of my duties as math department chair involved working with the school district, THE largest in Utah. I sat on a monthly education panel focused on enhancing mathematics education for the 20+ middle & high schools in our district. These monthly explorations informed my approach for my own math departhment, namely the emphasis on a coherent student journey. Teachers must be aware of the important concepts students entering their classroom learned the prior year, as well as how they were taught those concepts. Similarly, teachers must be aware of how their most important concepts of today will evolve at the next year’s course. Without coherency, we are simply learning facts to regurgitate and forget. Math is too useful, too interesting, and too important for that. The connections between seemingly separate math concepts is half the point!
Math is worth knowing, and things worth knowing shouldn’t be miserable to learn.