• Undergraduate Institution: Appalachian State University
• Position: Middle School Mathematics Teacher
• Company: Ashe County Middle School
• Industry Sector: Education
• Date Submitted: 5/04

What he does:

• Danny teaches 8th grade mathematics at Ashe County Middle School.

Math on the job:

• He remembers thinking, "I'm going to teach school but I have to take this hard stuff?" He says that it paid off because his experiences with higher level mathematics have helped him as a teacher: "Now, I don't want to give you the wrong impression - I don't do Real Analysis with my eighth graders. However, when I teach things to my middle schoolers, like taking square roots, I can throw in the fact that when in high school they will learn how to take square roots of negative numbers. I can also throw in that there are numbers outside the Real Number system - Imaginary Numbers. Believe it or not, but I actually have made use of some of the "hard stuff." I have done a project with my students in the past that has them define their own operation - utilizing something I learned in Dr. Early's Modern Algebra class."

Education:

• He came to Appalachian as a North Carolina Teaching Fellow and graduated with a degree in Mathematics, Secondary Education. He is currently pursuing his master's degree.

Advice for students:

• He says, "Learn what you can, try to be positive, and keep your notebooks!! :) If you are planning on teaching, you never know what you might be able to "modify" to use within your own classroom one day!"