2011 Major: Mathematics, Visual Art (with distinction), and Education Certificate with License to teach in NC (K-6 primary, 6-9 math)
"Math at Duke taught me humility, tenacity, and how to resource myself. Formerly conditioned to getting "good grades," I got the lowest grades of my life to the point where I had to laugh at myself and learned a healthy perspective of what is important and what I value. (Did I get something out of it? Am I proud of myself? Grades aren't necessarily a reflection of me.) At the end of the day, I got a math degree from Duke and that alone is impressive to people. As an educator, I can commiserate and relate to people who struggle with their academics and learning a concept. The perseverance I had to employ in the math program is the teachable skill. While most people dropped out of the program, I stuck with it because I learned how to resource myself - forming study groups and going to every office hours possible. That helped me build relationships with my peers and my professors. It was very clear that pursuing an academic math career was not in my future (e.g. research), but I inherently enjoyed math, even though I wasn't always "successful" in my classes. One of my missions in life is to heal the culture of math trauma, to shift our culture to one that appreciates and loves math, where "not being a math person" is not a thing. I want people to have delightful math experiences, where they feel self-motivated to engage with math, not only because it's "useful," but also just because - in the same ways we engage with social media, crosswords, or TV. So, to have some influence towards this mission, I found myself in educational technology, designing experiences and content to learn math. And I knew having a math degree would help me both in my personal and professional endeavors.
"For the past decade, I've been in educational technology, more specifically designing math content and curriculum for students. It's the perfect blend of my degrees in math, art, and education. Mathematically, I have a solid and deep conceptual understanding and can connect concepts to build the web of math, rather than teaching math concepts as one-off, unrelated ideas. (E.g. how fractions are ratios, are proportions, are rates, are slopes, etc.) While I've been in primary education, the mathematical insight needed to build curriculum that does not reinforce misconceptions is deep and sophisticated, which I think my math training at Duke provided. My education certificate allowed me to get licensed to teach in North Carolina, where I started my career. In my first year teaching in Durham Public Schools, my 4th grade class had twice the passing rate in the End of Grade math tests than the other classes. That classroom experience was the foundation needed for me to establish my career in edtech. I often say that I use my art degree more than any of my other degrees. The ability to receive feedback, iterate, and develop and share a creative practice has been integral in my career. I learned this from the many art critiques we had in each of the art classes I took. My visual art skills and basic fluency in Adobe Creative Suite allow me to draft and mock up my ideas to communicate with engineers and artists. Ultimately, I'm an "ideas" person whose superpower is my imagination, dreaming past our current reality of what is possible. But really, I feel like this confluence of math x art x education was something I designed for myself at Duke."
"There is power in the intersectional. Math is awesome on its own AND so much more can be unlocked when combined with other disciplines. That's the stuff that no one else is doing. Math and civics could help impact social justice. Math and policy could help inform better and more effective policies. I've seen the delight and insight unlocked in math and dance, math and art, in all the ways I like to bring in and highlight math in my personal and professional life. It's also so much more than the actual specific math you're learning in each of the math classes, but rather the attitudes, habits of mind, and approach to thinking is what you take away and can apply to practically anything. It comes down to mathematical thinking, which you can develop while in the math program at Duke."
