I would say that, ever since I was young, math came to me naturally. I didn’t want to do math, I wanted to become a pilot. That was the plan. However, after school…I was looking for work. I applied for a math job, and I got it. I was like, “Okay, maybe this is my calling,” because I come from a whole line of teachers. My dad was a teacher back in Ghana. I do have a whole lot of relatives who are also teachers. Either I was trying to run away from a calling, [or] I was drawn back into it. I would say that’s where the passion stems from… Over the years, I’ve just honed that skill and tried to impact others who love it.
That’s a long story. I think in 2006, I was looking for a summer internship, and like I said, I was looking for non-related math, but I [found] myself [applying] for a math gig. There’s this program called Math and Science for Minority Students, MS Squared, so I applied. Then, I came over here from Florida. Now, when I got here, this place literally blew my mind. It just felt like a mini community college. Then, to work with amazing rising 10th, 11th, and 12th graders from across the country blew my mind. So, I was like, “Wow, what would it be to be in this place to work with kids from all over the world with such talent?” Over the years, we kept in touch. I’ve been coming to MS Squared for the past 18 years, including my ten years here. When an opportunity came for a full-time job, I gladly applied, and that’s how I got here.
I would say one teacher that has influenced me here on campus is Mr. Pat Farrell. When I came here in 2006 as a TA for the MS Squared program, he was my mentor… The way that he taught and made things so clear, and how students were easily able to feel comfortable with him. I learned a lot from him that way that I would want to steal one or two ways that he taught. I still use those things that I learned from him in my classes, like how to break students into groups and how to reach out to kids when they are struggling. All those things rubbed off of me, and I always use them in my classes. Also, if I think about other teachers who have helped me, if I go way…back into my high school days, there was this amazing teacher, and he helped me when I was struggling. I always remember when I see kids who are struggling that there’s always that one teacher who can always help you out. I try to be that kind of teacher that kids can feel comfortable coming to and know that when they walk away, they’ve gotten the help that they needed.
I tend to listen to a lot of Afrobeat jazz. I really am not a big fan of words, so just beats and instrumentals come to me… [Other] kinds of music that I listen to… [are] instrumentals, classic jazz, smooth jazz, anything that has to do with jazz. When I was a kid, my dad used to play just classical music in his car, and I thought I didn’t like it. But as I grew older, that was the thing that would calm me down and make me more relaxed. As I’ve grown older, I’d find myself going back to listen to Beethoven or try to get something hip that is classical that has no words, just [the] tune, the rhythm, and that is how I kind of found my way into this kind of genre.
The Tang Fellowship gives teachers an opportunity to be innovative. In the math department, we’ve been grappling with how well we support our kids, [and] how well we bring new innovation in forms of teaching and feedback. We have this group of teachers that are dedicated to figuring out what feedback looks like and how that works for our kids. Personally, for me, during Covid[-19], I discovered that just giving grades wasn’t for me, that giving feedback was a way for me to reach out to kids, for them to understand better the concept versus chasing me down for, ‘What grade did I get and what do I need to do to get that one point back.’ I’m part of this group that is working towards Feedback First, how does that look like and how would students take that and walk away feeling like they’ve learned something more than just a grade?
The Learning In the World trip was an opportunity to give our kids to further learn for themselves the idea that we embody on campus, the idea of inclusivity, the idea [that] we are youth from every quarter. So, going to Ghana was to give the kids an opportunity to see Ghana from a different perspective, its people, its culture, and its heritage. I think what I learned about that trip is that we do have some amazing kids on campus who can put together a good program. We planned it, me and Dr. Cleare, but I think the kids made it better because their interactions with the different places that we went and the briefing activities that we went through indicated to me that they were learning a lot. As much as they were having fun, the goals that we set for that program, I could see that materialized for ourselves, that the kids were actually thinking about different perspectives of thought, different cultures, like comparing for themselves what they have over here versus what they were seeing on the ground. Those were things that I thought I learned most from just watching the kids express what they were learning.
It’s the community that we build that brings [me] the most joy. At the end of the term, we have kids that come into the dorm in the beginning of the Fall Term, and you see them grow in different roles that we give them. By the Spring Term, you actually see maturity from the different things that we do in the dorm. Obviously, there are going to be one or two things that we are always correcting, but overall, what we see from our kids living in the dorm, their interactions, and building community. It’s like I’m always telling them, it’s all about us building a culture that we all respect. As you can see, we have rules here that they try to abide by, and anytime that they are not, it’s like I’m their “big daddy” on campus, and I’m there to make sure that they’re having a great time here, and also learning a lot of things about what it means to be living with each other, what it means to be respecting each other’s voices in the dorm. When I see that, it’s like I know that you’re going to leave the dorm, go somewhere else, and I know that you are prepared to be in any of our spaces on campus.
Recently I’ve been trying to catch up on reading because most of my readings are either from a textbook or trying to find something to help me, but right now I’m trying to get back to something that I used to do a lot, as in leisure reading. Trying to get back into the habit of reading things outside my field is something that I’ve been looking forward to. Something that I’m looking forward to this summer is trying to pick up some books, maybe outside of math, for example. I think I’m looking into something in science, into data science, something in computing… It’s not math-related, but I know [it] can help me be a better person.
I play tennis every now and then, just recreational tennis, and I’m an avid fan of Arsenal, the football club. I tend to watch a lot of soccer matches.
Barbecue ribs. It’s been a while since we had something in [Paresky] Commons. It’s one of the meals that is delicious. I enjoy a good crunch, you know. So, yeah, that’s probably one of my favorite meals, just barbecue ribs.
