The hard community Ella Hereth honored by the National Science Foundation

Ella Hereth, professor of geometry at Harshman Middle School of IPSlearned this month that she won the Presidential prize for excellence in mathematics and science education.

Recognition of the National Science Foundation is one of the best prices in the country for math and science teachers, and it is delivered with a price of $ 10,000 and a trip to Washington, DC

Hereth, 42, is one of the two secondary school teachers of Indiana to receive recognition this year. The college teacher entered training after a previous career in health care.

THE Teach for America The Alun began his teaching career in IPs before leaving the district for a few years to teach in schools in the canton of the region. She returned to IPS of IPS in 2020 to become president of the department and helped inaugurate a new wave of high -capacity mathematics courses brought to the school The stronger initiative of reconstruction of the IPS.

Mirror Indy met Hereth before the course last week to talk about the stronger transition, how she makes mathematics fun and her reflections on teaching in the AI ​​era.

The responses were modified by brevity and clarity.

Settle in stronger reconstruction

Tell me about what you are teaching.

I teach mathematics and I am the president of the department of mathematics and educational coach. I returned to Harshman to lead a mathematics department here in 2020. I have always taught mathematics, always the math of the college. I spent a year in a high school.
We spent last year to a new programming as part of the stronger reconstruction, so we are home to all the high level programs of the college and the programming of the double -language college for the district. My students are eighth year, but they take secondary geometry.

How is reconstruction stronger so far?

We just have very strong staff, so I think the whole transition was great for us. I know that the college is really difficult, but even if these children are new to us, as staff, we have taught college for a long time.

We are the longest college in the district. Thanks to a whole bunch of different transitions, we have continued to be a college, and now we have just added the sixth year to our seventh and eighth year.

I am always interested in explaining to teachers why they choose the notes they teach. For you, why the middle school students?

They have the context and maturity of joke, and they understand sarcasm. You can have a kind of fun joke in your class which, I think, would be difficult in primary, but they are also very excited to resolve a mathematical puzzle in a way that secondary students do not always have .

I feel like I have dream work in terms of someone who really likes to teach mathematics because my children are really excited by content and mathematics, and I teach these mathematics courses of higher level To students who are really excited to be there.

Make mathematics attractive

I am not mathematics. I have always leaned for writing, and I think the college is when I really discovered that mathematics are difficult for me. As a teacher, how do you go to your exciting lessons and try to reach these children where math is not their favorite material?

My class will be so different from what was probably your own college mathematics experience. When I went to school, when I was a math student, my teacher was doing problems on the board of directors, then we were trying 10 of them with different figures that were alike. We were really good to imitate.

We live in a culture now that AI can do it faster than humans, so students no longer need to know how to imitate. We must be able to think, so what you will notice is that I am not telling my students what to do before doing it. I will start by doing the problems. They could solve it in different ways. Ideally, they do, then we can compare.

I have a lot of vertical white paintings around my class, and these are not for me. They are on students. I am able to watch them do mathematics and help them establish links, so that they learn from their own work and the work of their classmates.

They will have a lot of conversations, a lot of group work. It is very collaborative. It is a bit chaotic sometimes and stronger and more disorderly than what we could imagine a classroom, but I think it is more productive because of this.

Do you have a favorite lesson you are teaching?

I have not taught geometry for a while, so I relearn how to teach geometry. I don’t know I have a favorite. Many of my students had really different experiences last year because we are new with stronger reconstruction. Some of them had a long-term submarine for algebra I, so they are struggling with the content.

At the very beginning, we always start with an algebra review, and I think this subject is really my favorite. They just look at the models, and they try to identify whether a motif develops in a linear way, exponentially, in a quadratic way by looking at the forms.

Support other teachers

You are also a coach. Tell me about that. What is it to coach other teachers?

We have a small mathematics department. We are five, including me, so there are four other mathematics teachers. I support their learning in their class. This means that sometimes I observe other teachers and give them comments on what they do.

But, I think more than that, I am not only an educational coach for mathematics teachers. It also helps move a school culture. What are the best practices in teaching? How can we engage children? How can we make sure that our mathematical standards are integrated into other places?

We have a high -capacity intervention course called Golden Hour, where they work on passionate projects. We used this to help review the content in mathematics that children could have jumped because they were accelerated through mathematics courses sometimes a little faster than perhaps useful for them.

It’s really like 100 million things, but it grows in the classrooms of other teachers who are not even math teachers, to work with social study teachers and to help them understand how graphics and Cards are actually mathematical standards. This helps teachers think about all the places we use in mathematics.

Did you have favorite teachers as a student? How did they influence you as a teacher today?

I’m still talking about my chemistry teacher in high school. She also changed her career. She was a scientist. She was therefore new in teaching. But she had this whole career doing research in chemistry to Westinghouse – I grew up in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania – and what I liked is her was really always believed in us and challenged us.

I went to a small high school and there were only two AP classes. You could take the story AP English 12 and US in 11th year, and that was everything. These are your only options.

I remember that she was with a group of us saying: “No, we are going to pass the AP chemistry test. You are ready. I will create a chemistry II lesson for you, “and the district having no confidence in us and saying:” We do not think they will pass “, and it really has 100% confidence in us and By saying, “No, they will pass.

She had to go to the school board and fight for this, and all five or five of us who did it, we all got Fives, which was the best score. Then they let her teach the class the following year.

I just think that sometimes people can have a kind of deficit spirit on students, and students really need teachers who believe in them and know that they can do it. I’m glad I had that, and I’m trying to be that for students too.

What advice would you give for new teachers?

It takes a lot of time to be good in teaching, years, years and years. It is difficult to do it quickly. You just need to really commit yourself to improve, to think about what you do. Even if you have been teaching for a long time, you can always improve in what you do.

This is what makes the difference between a good teacher and no. You have to stay and you just have to be ready to think and improve in what you do.

Mirror Indy’s journalist, Carley Lanich, covers early childhood and kindergarten education in the 12th year. Contact it to carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow it on x @carleylanich.

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