I had the privilege of working primarily under the mentorship of Kate Shepard, a middle school math teacher with twenty years of experience in the Worcester Public Schools and infinite  wisdom and support. Starting at the beginning of the school year in August, I began co-teaching Miss Shepard’s eighth grade numeracy class, as well as co-planning lessons. In grades 7 and 8 at Claremont, students take two math classes: a numeracy class and an integrated grade-level math class. Numeracy classes at Claremont serve as a supplement to the grade-level math classes. Due to a variety of factors, most of the middle school students at Claremont are a few grade levels behind in their computation skills. Thus, the numeracy class is designed to support the development of those remedial math skills that the students need in order to understand the grade-level curriculum.

Although Claremont as a whole has untracked, heterogeneous classes, my numeracy class had a more intentional student make-up than the average Claremont math class: it was designed for approximately 15 students who did not need the sort of remedial help for which numeracy class was created. The students in my numeracy class were at or above grade level, so we were able to cover more advanced material in more depth. The one exception to this was Edward, a student who transferred to Claremont from Life Skills at Sullivan and was randomly placed in my numeracy class. Although he was many grade levels behind in computation and basic number sense, as the year progressed, he began engaging in the material more and his classmates put a lot of effort into helping him reach at least some level of understanding.

Almost all of my numeracy students were self-professed math lovers, and their capacity and desire to learn new information excited and impressed me throughout the year. Their easy success in math, however, often led to a lack of perseverance on more complicated topics. Simply put, they expected everything to be easy for them, and when it wasn’t, their first instinct was to give up. One of my biggest challenges with them was to make them appreciate and persevere through the inherent struggle of learning something new, as well as understand that that struggle is normal and in no way means that they are bad at math.

I also worked with Adam Strogoff, another middle school math teacher at Claremont who teaches seventh and eighth grade numeracy and integrated math classes. At the start of Quarter 2 in November, I began teaching Mr. Strogoff’s eighth grade integrated math class. This was an untracked, heterogeneous class; it included students on Individualized Education Plans and 504s, along with English Language Learners. As such, this class presented a diverse set of needs and an overall lack of self-confidence in math. They pushed me to explore the idea of making math meaningful and relevant, create more engaging and tightly structured lessons, and develop classroom management skills.

In March, I started working with Adelina Zaimi in her ninth grade algebra classroom to provide support to English Language Learners. With a class of thirty students, one-third of which were low-level English Language Learners, Ms. Zaimi understandably needed help meeting the needs of all of her students. Until the end of the school year, I assisted in her classroom, mostly working one-on-one with students and using my Spanish fluency to help explain concepts. As a teacher in my other classes, I rarely had the time to sit down with one student and give them my undivided attention for more than a few minutes at a time. Having the opportunity to work with individuals or small groups of students for extended periods of time in Ms. Zaimi’s class was extremely valuable. It allowed me to figure out what exactly was tripping up a student – the math, the language, or, most commonly, a combination of both – and then address those misunderstandings as effectively as I could by implementing  a variety of strategies.