She
has formula for job success
Teacher up for statewide
award.
Monday, July 04, 2005 • By MEGAN ZARODA •
The Express-Times
EASTON -- If you walk past Leigh Nataro's
North Hunterdon High School classroom, you might hear her
students singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." But on a closer
listen, you'll realize they're singing the quadratic
formula.
Combined with her exuberance and
flexibility, the creative mnemonic device could be what
propels the local math teacher to the top of her
profession.
Nataro, of Easton, was named a 2005 New
Jersey finalist for the Presidential Award for Excellence in
Mathematics and Science Teaching in June. Come April 2006,
Nataro will learn whether or not she is the state
winner.
It was two days before school let out for
the summer when Nataro received the notification in the
mail.
"When I got the award, I was very
excited," she said.
Then Nataro giggled. "I jumped up and
down and screamed a little."
Nataro is one of four New Jersey
educators to be recognized by The National Science
Foundation for their individual excellence in the math and
science fields. The overall winner will receive
$10,000.
The 14-year teaching veteran sat in a
leather chair in a corner of Lafayette College's Skillman
Library Thursday, having just finished a "Math Excursions"
class for a Johns Hopkins sponsored summer program. Clad in
a blue T-shirt with a Johns Hopkins insignia and khaki
shorts, Nataro said the program's gifted 12 to 16-year-olds
spend up to seven hours a day in class in the intense
three-week program.
Sheila White, the academic dean for
Hopkins' Easton campus, recently spent an hour evaluating
one of Nataro's classroom sessions. During a test review
game, White said, "students were scrambling to call out
answers, hands were going up everywhere" and some even did
victory dances after their team chalked up
points.
"That kind of enthusiasm about
mathematics can be very hard to find," she said.
White described Nataro as a "master
teacher."
"The level of creativity is really
important, and Leigh really shows us that," she said. "The
way she can cajole her students to push the work out, she
encourages every one of them," White said. "Students are
made to feel they can push the boundaries of their knowledge
all the time."
Nataro, now in her third year teaching
for the program, said her most rewarding experience has been
working with her teaching assistants -- being able to serve
as their mentor.
It was a similar one-on-one experience
that sparked Nataro's interest in teaching math in the first
place. Though she said math has always been a skill, it
wasn't until she began tutoring in high school that she
found her calling to teach.
One of Nataro's most unique and
challenging teaching roles was devising problems for the
foundation's online Math Forum. While on maternity leave,
Nataro created a weekly, current event-related problem.
Member students worldwide submitted solutions, and Nataro
would reply with her comments.
Nataro said the "global classroom"
allowed her to see varied approaches to the same problem,
something she didn't see in a traditional classroom where
students learned the same methods.
"I was able to learn new things myself,
new approaches," she said. "Students would do things that
were unexpected."
Nataro's husband, Chip, has been an
assistant chemistry professor at Lafayette College for six
years.
"(Leigh) is a math nerd, no doubt," he
said. "We've driven around in parking lots looking at
hubcaps, taking pictures so she can use them in her math
class."
He said his wife has had an extra spring
in her step since being named a finalist.
"This award helped me to realize teaching
is definitely the place for me to be as a career," Leigh
Nataro said.
© 2005 The Express-Times. Used with
permission.
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