The “Fun” Math Teacher: Education major Jamie Earley learns, to her surprise, that her calling is teaching math

When Jamie Earley's eighth-grade math teacher in North Babylon, N.Y. predicted she would one day follow in his footsteps, she laughed. It's not that she didn't enjoy Ken Padgett's math class. On the contrary, he was her favorite teacher. But while Earley had known since first grade that she wanted to be a teacher when she grew up, she didn't think math would be her subject.

Fast-forward seven years. Earley has graduated from high school, earned an associate degree from Suffolk County Community College and transferred to the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, where she's majoring in adolescence education - for math. "The more heavy-duty my math classes got, the more I got into it," Earley said of her change of heart.

This year, she arranged to complete the student observation work that her degree requires in Padgett's classroom at Robert Moses Middle School in North Babylon. "Welcome, Miss Early," her mentor said with a smile on her first day. "I told you you'd be a math teacher!" Earley participated in the Joint Admission Program, which allowed for seamless transfer of her Suffolk County Community College credits to C.W. Post.

Now, as she pursues her education courses and classroom observation, the eighth-graders in Padgett's class pepper her with questions about college life. Earley is learning about the world of an educator from Padgett and his colleagues at the school, and is fully committed to the subject that she never expected to teach back in eighth grade. "Every minute spent student observing, the more excited I am and the more I want to become a math teacher," she said. "Meeting the math teachers at Robert Moses Middle School, spending time with them in the math office and watching them work, I thought, 'They can't possibly be math teachers. Here I am, hanging out with them and joking and having fun.' That's what I want to be - the fun math teacher."

Posted: December 11, 2007