2021 Teaching Personal Statement

Our world is changing at an astounding rate.  Children begin their lives with a screen in their hands that provides access to free and unlimited immediate gratification and unfiltered information.  Constant social connection impacts the development of individual identities and strong peer relationships.  Distance has become incorporated into daily routine.  Kids watch their parents adapt to an ever-changing world and wonder what lies ahead.  How will the world continue to evolve, and what part will they play in writing the future narrative?

Although these are challenging questions, they lead us to empowering solutions.  Our response to a world that is evolving at an unpredictable rate is to not necessarily prepare our children to specifically be doctors, lawyers, or teachers, but to get them ready for anything and everything.  As teachers, in every discipline, we must produce students who are inquisitive, ambitious, creative, fearless, and who possess a profound ability to think laterally.  These students are not only going to take part in the world of tomorrow; they are going to create the world of tomorrow.  I am proud to be a part of this process.  It is a privilege to be able to use my influence as a teacher to guide students towards rewarding futures that benefit from technical proficiency and to teach them the tools required to excel and stand out in what will be an intensely competitive job market.

With over a decade of experience in the classroom, I believe that I have developed a highly effective and unique skill set that allows me to connect with students with a wide range of abilities and learning styles.  I can reach the ambitious, the disaffected, and the ones who try their best to fly under the radar, equally well.  I feel strongly that teachers must also be advisors and that in both capacities they must know how to earn trust in the classroom and in the hallways.  Knowing full well that our students are used to immediate gratification and sensory stimulation, good instruction must be truly captivating.  My classroom is alive with conversation and humor and it is a safe place to explore ideas, develop theories, and ask for help.  Students learn that failure only truly occurs when you admit defeat, and that mistakes are central to the learning process.  They develop self-reliance and discover the link between hard work and exceptional results.  Every child will feel a powerful sense of connection and relevance.

I have spent the past fourteen years teaching mathematics at the middle school level and I am proud to say that I am just as excited to teach the quadratic formula today as I was when I was just cutting my teeth in the classroom.  Nonetheless, every year I gravitate more and more towards project-based learning.  In my last few years as a math chair I found myself spending almost all of my spare time in our maker space exploring and conceiving of projects that breathe new life into mathematics.  What I discovered was that because the maker space has such a tremendous ability to connect multiple disciplines that it really needs to be the center of modern education, as opposed to merely a small-project room that supplements specific units from time to time.  For this reason, I have devoted this past year entirely to professional development focused on building a skill set tailored specifically to the maker space.  My hope is to encourage children to discover by doing, and to empower students to both imagine and build the world they in which they want to live. 

I hope to find myself teaching in an environment that matches my educational philosophies.  I believe in the power of community and I feel that independent schools typically do a wonderful job of creating and supporting this community.  I hope to be able to teach, to advise, to coach, and to participate in all of those activities that make a school feel less like a job and more like a second home to faculty, staff, and students.

Thank you for your time and consideration.