Major: Mathematics

Minor: UFTeach

Graduate: 2014

I am from Clermont, FL and I graduated from East Ridge High School in 2010. I have always been involved in the education career path ever since I was a child. I’ve almost always wanted to be a teacher except for a few detours to lawyer, psychologist and ballerina. I have participated in Summer Camps since I was twelve years old and am excited to continue that through Noyce at the Florida Museum of Natural History. I also cannot wait to graduate and teach high school math classes!

I want to teach because I love helping students understand concepts that they have previously had difficulty with. I also want to help ensure that students not only pass their classes but that they learn the material in such a way that allows them to retain that material years after they have taken the class, allowing them to be more prepared when taking following math classes and real world applications. I used to tutor my cousin when we were in high school. My cousin had multiple math teachers throughout elementary and middle school and none of them seemed to really complete their curriculum. Eventually my cousin was placed in remedial math courses. I began to tutor her. At first she showed no progress but after I began to explain math in terms of perfume and other things that interested her she understood the math. Being able to help her made me realize that being a good teacher is not being able to get students to understand by using the material given to you but by manipulating the material given to you to grasp your students attention and relate it to an engaging activity that the students will want to learn about.

The Noyce Program means a lot to me as it allows me to go into the Museum of Natural History and identify more applications of mathematics in the real world. Using this internship experience I can develop more real world experiences to use within the classroom and also I can find ways to relate science to the mathematics concepts being taught.