Teacher Feature: Belinda N.
Belinda’s excess of patience, care, and kindness help her math students feel supported and comfortable. Her thorough enjoyment of math is contagious, and students step away from her classes either loving math more than they already did or discovering a new passion they never thought was possible.
Keep reading to learn more about how Belinda came to be such an incredible math teacher.
About Belinda
Belinda holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Single Subject Teaching Credential in Mathematics from San Jose State University. She has over three years of teaching experience and has worked with students from middle school to college in everything from remedial to common core and advanced mathematics. Belinda also has ample experience with SAT prep.
She enjoys showing students the importance of time management, organization, and study skills through her lessons. In addition, Belinda is adaptive, empathetic and patient with students, utilizing best practice resources to make lessons interactive and enjoyable. Outside of tutoring, Belinda loves spending time with her three pugs, playing video games, and baking.
When did you start teaching and why?
I started teaching around 2014, which was when I became a Teacher’s Associate for San Jose State University. I was doing my teaching credential program there and had the opportunity to teach the Intensive Algebra classes for the math department. One of the reasons I wanted to get into teaching was to help those who were struggling with the topic form a better relationship with the subject matter and become more confident in themselves and their line of reasoning.
What’s your favorite subject to teach and why?
Math is my favourite subject to teach and to do. A lot of aspects we learn from math is real life applicable. For instance, when we have a difficult problem facing us in our lives, math teaches us to try to assess the situation before charging in. What do I know about this problem? What do I want the end result to be? These questions are things we ask when we do a math problem and, whether we do it knowingly or not, these are questions we ask ourselves a problem in our personal life.
What do you enjoy most about teaching with Pacific Preparatory?
I enjoy being able to teach one-on-one with students because I get to really know each student and cater my lessons to their needs. The one-on-one classrooms allow the student to also feel comfortable with asking questions or making mistakes, which is a win for all of us!
Can you tell me about a specific time when you saw a student thriving at Pacific Preparatory?
I have a student who is a bit shy and he often worries about making mistakes or saying the wrong answer during lessons. At the beginning of the year, he struggled with solving for variables and substituting values into the equation. After months of hard work and dedication (from him and his mother), he slowly became more comfortable with asking for help, showing his work, and in his ability to do the math. Our last module, which was on solving systems of equations, he was able to write and solve systems of equations with little to no help from me! In fact, he got a 90% on his Module 6 Assessment!
Can you tell me about a specific time when you saw a student thriving at Pacific Preparatory?
Unfortunately, a lot of math books are very… math. Sometimes that’s a great thing. Sometimes it gets too theoretical and I get lost in too much theory. But my top 3 recommendations would be:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Number Theory: A Lively Introduction With Proofs Applications and Stories by James Erik Pommersheim
Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart (I personally prefer the 6th Edition since this holds a special place in my heart)
What is your favorite activity to do outside of teaching?
I really enjoy baking, playing video games, and coding outside of teaching. There’s something really relaxing and satisfying about being able to bake something nice for the people I care about. Of course, I also really enjoy looking up recipes and re-creating them in my own style.
Additionally, video games have always been a huge part of my life since I was a kid, so whenever I have a break from teaching and the data science boot camp course I’m taking, I try to decompress with some video games like Animal Crossing or League of Legends (this is especially important when I’m having a stressful week!).
Finally, I tend to get lost in coding since it’s problem-solving and I’ve always enjoyed being able to solve puzzles. Of course, coding can be pretty frustrating when I have no idea what I’m doing, but it’s rewarding once I figure out what I need to do (and a bit relieving since it feels like a huge accomplishment to write code that does what you want it to do).
Thank you Belinda for all of your amazing work with your students. We appreciate you!