SPOTLIGHT
Ali Mattison Mathematics faculty Ali Mattison wants Brooks to
“[Professional development funding] makes me feel that Brooks has faith in me, that Brooks cares about my development and that Brooks cares about me as a professional and as a person.” English faculty Steph Holmes
be “on the forefront of innovative teaching.” She’s using professional development dollars to pay for coursework toward a master’s degree in mathematics for teaching through Harvard Extension School. The program teaches strategies that will improve Mattison’s ability to teach her students mathematics skills: It builds deeper knowledge of mathematics content; teaches tactics that can improve student motivation; and develops an enhanced understanding of what it means to learn math. “This is about me becoming a better teacher,” Mattison says. “If there are new techniques out there that we can learn, that’s only going to benefit us as teachers and our students at Brooks. We can all recognize that students learn differently now than even I did in high school. The math itself isn’t changing much, but the ways in which we understand brain development and learning styles are changing, and we need to adapt our teaching to the way that science is discovering that students absorb material the best.” Mattison plans to bring her new knowledge back to the Brooks mathematics department. “There’s a direct correlation between this program and our kids learning new things, and that’s what’s really cool about being able to do this,” she says. Mattison also notes that she’s able to set an example for students. “It’s nice for the kids to see that their teachers are invested in their own education,” she says, recalling sitting side-by-side with Brooks students in the library to do her homework. As a female math teacher, Mattison also feels a duty to be a role model for girls in a field that she observes is populated mostly by males. “When I first started teaching, I wanted girls to feel passionate about math and feel like they could be good at it,”
is. There are plenty of teachers here for whom that grant to go to that conference is, for them, just as good as money. They probably would have paid for that conference themselves — that’s how important they feel it is. We should be helping them. In either case, the students benefit. If you keep great teachers, reward them and help them grow, that has a direct impact on the student experience at Brooks.”
The Future Faculty
A healthy endowed fund for professional development would help craft a faculty that, McVeigh says, would both lead and resonate with Brooks students, and that would do its work secure in the knowledge that Brooks encourages them to explore their own boundaries. First, McVeigh sees the faculty as a microcosm of the increasingly diverse and interconnected world Brooks students graduate into. “We want a faculty that our students can see themselves in, and can see their experience in,” he says. “On the flip side, I also want our faculty to be people who don’t look like our students, but still be people our students can learn from and interact with. We want a faculty that prepares kids to step out into the world, that has had different experiences and viewpoints, and that constantly offers new perspectives and ideas.” Second, McVeigh says, he wants Brooks to be “the kind of place where every teacher feels like they have the opportunity and tools at their fingertips to be the best teacher they can be, and where every teacher knows that the school will support them as they evolve and change, and as the world evolves and changes around them. I don’t want any teacher to be the same teacher that they were five years ago. We want them to continuously improve.”
she says “I think that building my own competence in math and different teaching styles — it trickles down.”
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BRO OKS BU L L E TI N