"My name is Mr. N. and I help students succeed in math.

I have spent over 30 years in the classroom teaching 7th and 8th grade math and advanced Algebra to middle school students. For students to succeed in any class, they need three things. They need to have the material presented at their level in terms they can understand; they need to have a teacher who cares about them and who they are comfortable working with; they need time to practice what they’ve learned with opportunities to learn from their own mistakes. As a classroom and online teacher, I have devoted myself to listening to my students’ concerns and helping them find their own paths to success. In my classes, I allow the pace of the instruction to be determined by the students’ abilities to grasp the new material. I don’t need students to be fast; I need them to be sure. Because math topics are all built upon previous topics, there is nothing to gain (and much to lose) from moving on to the next lesson, before mastery is achieved in the current one.

I graduated as a Mathematics major from SUNY College at Geneseo with a minor in English, and immediately went to SUNY Albany to get my master’s degree in Math. Throughout my career I have learned and implemented the ever-changing guidelines in mathematics education up to the current Common Core and Next Generation learning standards. In addition to my time as a public-school teacher, I worked for Huntington Learning Center as a tutor and SAT instructor and for Erie Community College where I taught Algebra.

Good teachers have a role in ensuring today's youth of a solid start. We need students to replace rote drills and memorization with original thinking patterns, so all students can reach their own personal potentials. While this can be difficult to achieve in a classroom with students of varying abilities, it is much easier with remote instruction where student and teacher can discuss things one-on-one, face to face." less...