Learning to identify allies

Through my i-search paper for Secondary Curriculum and Instruction, I think that I built an important ally. My topic of exploration was looking at how working professionals actually use mathematics in their workplace. As I thought about who I wanted to contact, medical and business applications came to mind and both of the individuals who I talked to were more than willing to help me out and were interested in what I was trying to look at. I found a great book called "She Does Math!" which details real-life math that female working professionals do. Many of the problems had to do with engineering, but I didn't think I knew any engineers to contact. Suddenly I recalled a new teacher at my former high school who my mother (who is an administrator at said high school) told me about.

Her name is Gail Anderson and she worked in aerospace engineering prior to obtaining her teaching license just a few years ago. Not only did she understand my quest to find out how math is used in the real-world, it is also something that she strives to incorporate into her teaching. She assigns a paper to her students asking them to explore this topic on their own and she actually requested to add my i-search paper to her body of resources to share with her students.

I certainly hope to use her as a resource again and perhaps I will have the chance to observe her classes sometime when I visit home.