• Welcome
  • Welcome
• Background
  • Why Teaching?
  • Teaching Philosophy: College Not a Goal but a Fact
  • Professional and Educational Background
• Experiences in Education
  • Introduction
  • Breakthrough Collaborative Sacramento
  • A Better Chance Program
  • Boston Collegiate Charter School
• Academic Work at Hamilton College
  • Introduction
  • Mathematics Major
  • Hispanic Studies Minor
• Educations Studies at Hamilton College
  • Introduction
  • Issues in Education
  • Curriculum and Decision Making
  • Ethnography and the Learning Enviornment
  • Education Practicum
• Resources
  • Inspriring Instruction and Pedagogical Techniques
  • Bibliography

Introduction

When hearing I am a Math major and Education Studies and Hispanic Studies double minor, people are always impressed and confused about why I concentrated my academics on these areas. In this section, I focus specifically on my accomplishments within my Math major and Hispanic Studies minor. 

I became a Math major because I have enjoyed the subject since high school and excelled in the field. Also, since I knew I wanted to teach Math I felt that having a strong background in my subject area was key in being a successful teacher. The reasoning behind my choice of focusing on Hispanic Studies was surrounded by the fact that I wanted to heighten my Spanish language skills. Many students and families in this country speak Spanish as their first language. During my time at Breakthrough I realized having knowledge of this language helps when trying to connect with both students and parents. At one point I had even conducted a parent teacher conference in Spanish. I saw the joy on the parent's face because I was really trying to reach out to them even though at that time my Spanish skills were not very high.

The combination of this major and minor were all based around what would make me the best teacher possible. In the following Mathematics section I talk about my accomplishments within the math field, such as my senior project on election polling data. This project was important to me because it demonstrated how I can put my math knowledge and apply it to real world applications, which is something I continually stress upon in my own math classes. In the Hispanic Studies section I chose to focus on two artifacts. The first is a poem that I wrote that describes the my journey as a person. Knowing myself, I feel, is a strong suit as a teacher. To be able to admit my wrongs and see how I have grown is necessary when mentoring students. The second artifact was a group paper that I wrote in Argentina about Sexual Education. I chose this because it showed my depth of knowledge about issues in our education system and abroad. I am happy with my decision of becoming a Math major and Hispanic Studies minor because I believe I have grown a tremendous amount intellectually because of the challenge of Hamilton courses.