The math teacher who has the loudest classroom and whose students are constantly out of their seats has been awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Riverton High School teacher Melissa Brown was one of six Utah educators to be awarded the prestigious award after being named a semifinalist two years ago.

“I want students to do math, not sit and watch me do math and copy it down,” Brown said. “So, as much as I can, I try to limit the amount of talking I’m doing and have students do more of the talking.”

Carolyn Gough, Jordan District Administrator of Teaching and Learning, is impressed with the creative and personalized methods Brown uses to make math visible and tangible.

“Sometimes you see kids writing on desks with dry erase markers and sometimes you see them handling manipulatives and doing something that makes sense visually, because so many students really need to see it,” she said. “She’s not opposed to using words, having them write out their thinking. That is huge. I can’t even tell you how big of a deal that is in terms of helping students learn. Writing out thinking really matters when you’re trying to help kids be thoughtful about their approach to math.”

Brown also has fun with her classes. She’ll challenge students to solve problems to find puzzle pieces in the room to complete a puzzle or to earn facial features to turn a potato into a Mr. Potato Head character. Calculus students apply their understanding of the concepts of minimizing and maximizing to design efficient and cost effective packaging for a product. Statistics students gather data at grocery stores.

Melinda Van Komen, who teaches across the hall from Brown, said her own children, who took Brown’s classes, still remember class-specific inside jokes.

“She’s just a genius at creating a classroom culture,” Van Komen said. “Melissa just understands how important that feeling of a culture for a classroom is and she just would allow it to happen organically. But I know that behind the scenes, she’s got a method to her madness. It’s not just about being silly, it’s about making kids feel really good when they walk in her room.”

Jonathan Haag, who co-teaches a math class with Brown, said connecting with and having fun with students is the key to fostering an openness to learning.

“If they’re in a good mood and they’re involved and engaged in it, then we know we can get them to understand the concepts,” he said. “The problem is can we get them to try? If they’re not trying, then we need to do something different to get the effort there, because we know we can get it. They’ve just got to be engaged and sometimes it needs a different method.”

GAP teacher Amy Goodrich, who helps students recover credits, said she used to hear a lot of students complain about math—“I can’t do math, I don’t understand, I don’t get it, I’m bad at it.”

Several years ago, Brown worked with Goodrich to develop a curriculum for specific credit recovery classes so students could qualify for graduation. It created some good experiences and wins for students in math and the negative comments stopped.

“One of the biggest things that as a GAP teacher I see with students is they’re failing all their math classes and they just stay in that downward spiral,” Goodrich said. “And so I usually have them placed in one of her classes and then things turn around, and it just creates a whole kind of a ripple effect with everything else.”

Last year, Brown helped 117 students outside of her regular classes complete makeup work which she had customized for each of them.

Colleagues said Brown meets students where they are, is fair and always gives them another chance. She also has fun and celebrates their wins and she strives to build-up others. Van Komen said Brown’s patience is inspiring.

“She just goes back and back and back with those kids who would honestly rather be left alone, and so because I’ve seen that example, I’ll take another crack at a kid who’s really struggling,” Van Komen said.

Brown said she struggled learning math in her own educational experience and said a good teacher turned things around for her.

The fact that math is hard is what makes it so rewarding to learn and gives those who struggle a sense of accomplishment, Brown believes.

“Nobody’s going to ever come up to you really fast and ask you, ‘Can you solve this quadratic equation?’ I mean, come on, that just doesn’t happen. I’m not under some delusion that that happens,” Brown said. “But I like the struggle it provides students. I like the sense of accomplishment. I like that it leads them to try things they didn’t think they could do.”

Brown expects her students to try and her classroom is a judgement-free place where mistakes are made, redos are commonplace and anyone can answer questions.

She also expects students to learn life skills in her classes. She incorporates opportunities for students in her advanced math classes to teach the class something to help them develop skills in public speaking, critical thinking and planning.

“Realistically, I think no matter what your career trajectory or focus is outside of school, social interaction is key—how you can work with your peers, how you can communicate ideas to an individual,” Brown said. “I just think that’s so vital in anything we do. And I think technology has made it so we don’t have to interact as much with actual live people, and these students need to practice those skills. That’s what school is for, to learn skills we can use later in life. And so when I know most likely no one’s going to ask them something crazy, like, ‘Does this infinite series converge?’ No, but they might be asked to do a presentation in front of a group, or just to sit in a group and discuss a problem and come up with a plan of attack. And so I think they get a little more comfortable doing that and I think it’s really important.”

Van Komen said Brown embodies everything that makes a great teacher.

“She is a very educated educator, so she knows what she’s doing,” she said. “She studied all the methodologies, all the different ways to teach, and in addition to that, she really enjoys what she does and enjoys the kids. So it’s kind of that combination of really understanding what to do, and how to do it and when to do it, with her passion for the profession.”

Goodrich believes Brown may be one of the busiest teachers in the school.

“She puts in long hours because she’s covering so much content from lower levels to AP, so she teaches it all,” she said.

As head of the math department, Brown expects all math teachers to teach all levels of classes and to co-teach two classes a day.

Haag said co-taught classes, with two licensed math teachers customizing instruction, are more fun and engaging for both students and teachers. He enjoys co-teaching with Brown.

“She’s insanely knowledgeable about everything, so it doesn’t matter what the concept is, we’re just able to play off each other so easily,” Haag said. “It’s great because we’re both involved in the lesson—it’s not one person teaching and the other person standing in the back. We are both active in the lesson, and so there’s not really a chance for the kids to hide.”

Brown said co-teaching also shares the workload and allows for teachers to use “some strategies that can be a little bit chaotic.”

She said the co-taught classes are popular with students, too.

“Students are giving us overwhelmingly positive feedback. They like it because maybe one teacher does it one way they don’t quite understand, but they can understand the other method the other teacher did, and it’s easier to get questions answered when there’s two adults in the room,” she said.

Brown’s reinvention of the math department has encouraged teachers to rethink their instructional methods.

“She’s not afraid to say, ‘Hey, we need to be looking out for not just doing the same old, same old, and look for ways to get higher engagement, finding ways that have been proven to help students learn the concept more, not just because that’s how you’ve always done it, or that’s what you’re comfortable with,’” Haag said.

Brown has been teaching for 24 years. She shares her methodologies and philosophies with other teachers as an instructional coach. Brown credits her own mentors with helping her become a nationally recognized teacher.

“I’m not the same teacher today that I was 10 or 12 years ago, and I think that’s because of the people that had enough faith in me that I surrounded myself with that made it such that I wanted to try to change,” Brown said. “If it hadn’t been for people that I respect, who have given me so much assistance and support, there’s no way I would be the teacher I am today, or be able to do what I do on a daily basis.”

Gough, who was principal at Riverton High School for nine years, has been impressed with Brown’s deep understanding of instructional strategies and pedagogy, and her use of task-based and inquiry-based questions to make math relevant to students. She nominated Brown for the Presidential Award because she is “breaking out of the old fashioned mold of ineffective math classes” and “inspires kids to think creatively and critically.”

“The old way of doing math, where a teacher gets up at the board, they talk through the homework problems, they ask if there’s any questions, they let kids do their homework—that is not enough. It cannot be enough anymore,” Gough said. “Melissa is really keying into there has to be hands-on. There has to be opportunities for kids to teach each other in collaboration, conversation, getting up, going to a whiteboard, writing on desks, spending time in small groups, using words, talking with each other, sharing, having rich conversations about math concepts. And that’s what she’s doing. And that is not typical of an average math class. We need more teachers to think like that.” λ