Welcome to CaptainMath.net!This website serves as a hub for information that I wish to provide to those with whom I connect in the different worlds I live in. Since 1986, I'd been a teacher of Mathematics in Pennsylvania public schools: the first five years I taught in the Oswayo Valley School District in Potter County, PA, and since 1991 I've taught in my current home in the Delaware Valley School District in Milford, PA. I taught Honors Geometry for every one of my 34 years of teaching in PA public schools. I enjoy the challenge of making the subject real to students and helping them to discover Geometry and how it applies to their everyday lives. I also teach AP Statistics, a subject that allows me to further show students how we really all use Math every day, and prepares them for the widest range of courses of study in college that any Mathematics course could cover. I love seeing my students grow through these courses and watching how it shapes their thinking not only about data but about the world they live in. So many have told me that they find themselves thinking about data and statistics all the time even when they're not working on this class, and I'm also blessed to see quite a few of them pursue and enter Statistics as a career. I've also served as a Reader for the AP Statistics test, and the experiences I've had and the friends that I've made through that work has been one of the more rewarding ventures I've enjoyed in my career. I believe students learn mathematics best when they discover mathematics for themselves and communicate what they've learned, both orally and in writing, to others. They need to apply, justify, and interpret their results, not just get answers. I love teaching with tools that enable students to explore, conjecture, and experiment with Mathematics. Teaching Mathematics is not for the faint of heart; too often challenges arise in students' lack of mental discipline to persevere, sometimes due to their belief that they cannot succeed, sometimes because they lack the will to accomplish something great. This is the challenge of the Math teacher.
I love the subject I teach and while I enjoy talking about a wide variety of subjects, there is no subject I'd rather teach. Someone once said that Mathematics is the study of pattern, and I really believe that's a good description of this subject. I love it when students make the connection that two or more seemingly disparate contexts are the same mathematically - essentially that they are isomorphic. There is no other subject in which this happens. And that is the beauty of Mathematics. Thanks for visiting! "We all use Math every day!" |  |
