I decided to pursue teaching as a profession because I’ve always loved to work with people and have always wanted to share my love of math. My first formal experience teaching was abroad in Vienna when I got a chance to teach English for a semester. The experience was incredible and the human connections made me fall in love with teaching. I wanted to combine my love of math and teaching into one career and it has been wonderful to see the joy of mathematics blossom within students!”
Jenny’s Story
Teaching Discipline
Mathematics
Why Mathematics
“I’ve always had a strong connection with math. Math, to me, is the subject that is the hardest to untangle, but because of that, I really wanted to keep learning and trying to solve cool problems. When I got to college, this passion became my major and the different perspectives I gained in thinking about math, through abstraction and visualization, were incredibly eye-opening and different from what I had previously been exposed to in my K–12 education. In my teaching, I hope to expose my students to these new perspectives and develop in them the same passion for math that lives in me.”
Professional Experience
Throughout high school and college, Jenny tutored students in English and calculus. As an undergraduate, she spent one summer conducting research for Vassar College’s math department on knot theory, a field of topology that is highly visual and based on knots, and has since published a paper with her team on her research. The following summer, she worked at the University of California Santa Barbara conducting further research on knots, specifically Dehn Twists and their representations using matrices. She also worked as a teaching assistant during her senior year at Vassar College in calculus and multivariable calculus classes, holding office hours and review sessions.
For one year after college, Jenny taught at The Nueva School, an independent school in the San Francisco Bay area as an Upper School Associate Math Teacher. In this role, she worked with two mentor teachers, teaching calculus and multivariable calculus. She then went on to student-teach Algebra 1 at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California, as part of a district-wide initiative program to de-track math at the high school level.
Jenny will begin teaching at Temple High School during the 2020–2021 school year.
Volunteer Experience
Jenny volunteered abroad as part of her study abroad program in Vienna. She worked with seventh, tenth, and eleventh-grade students as an English language teacher. She was also president of Vassar College’s math majors committee during the 2017–2018 academic year and worked on student outreach with faculty.
Hobbies
Jenny is passionate about music and has been playing classical piano since the age of five. She also enjoys powerlifting.
Academic Background
- Stanford University (Master of Arts in Education)
- Vassar College (Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Music)