Education & Nonprofit
Scroll through the blog posts and stories below to learn more about Hamilton student and alumni experiences in this industry. Finally, meet with your career advisor and explore the Career Center curriculum to learn how to network with alumni to discuss your interests and learn more about their work.
Education & Nonprofit Career Blog
Building Confidence on the Hill
By Sarah Downey '21
February 10, 2023
Tags Education & Nonprofit
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to teach and as I got older, I became more and more interested in teaching mathematics. However, I never imagined my students would be only a few years younger than me. My desire to teach flourished through playing school in elementary school (and always being the teacher), peer tutoring through the National Honor Society in high school, tutoring mathematics and eventually becoming head research tutor in Hamilton’s QSR Center, and mentoring the calculus I course taught by Professor Kantrowitz during my junior year at Hamilton.
My steadfast career path into education was not always so clear. At Hamilton I was interested in pursuing a career in architecture and took classes in the art history department, eventually completing an art history minor. While my passion for architecture did not subside, I was drawn towards the more analytical side of architecture and confirmed my desire to teach and help to build young students’ confidence in mathematics.
As I applied to teaching positions across the northeast, I narrowed my search to private and boarding high schools which would offer me a chance to teach more specific higher-level math courses instead of general mathematics taught in K-6 schools. I accepted a job at Brooks School, a boarding and day school in Massachusetts, to teach Algebra 2 and pre-calculus, and linear algebra as well.
It didn’t quite click at first that these students, mostly sophomores and juniors in high school, would be anywhere from only three to six years younger than me. I quickly realized creating and maintaining a sense of authority as a 23-year-old is incredibly challenging, especially when trying to help them develop a love of mathematics. I have grown to realize that confidence is key, even if it’s a bit fake at first. Looking back, my advice to my Hamilton self would be to build this confidence earlier. Even though I’ve slowly but surely developed real confidence in my ability to teach and mentor over the past year and a half, this skill would have been a great help at the beginning of my career.
Fortunately at Hamilton, I never hesitated to ask lots of questions both in and outside of the classroom. Now I can encourage my students to do the same in order to become the most curious, intellectual, and well-rounded versions of themselves. Making the transition from student to teacher in the span of only a few months was more challenging than anything in my academic life or career, but also rewarding, inspiring, meaningful, and albeit humbling.
Your mentors at Hamilton might just present the opportunity that could change your world, in my case guiding me towards a career in mathematics education. My academic and personal experiences at Hamilton have undoubtedly brought me to where I stand today, a confident teacher whose main goal is to help her students gain their own sense of self-confidence in the classroom.
