Ms. Carmen Ernest, a first year teacher at NAHS, sees math as more than just a subject or a class required to graduate.

By Josie Harris

“There’s always something to learn,” Ernest said. “You could study math your whole life and still not know all there is to know.”

Even though she sees math as very important, Ernest says she was not the best math student.  She still sees this as a positive, as she says that once being a struggling math student she can better help her own struggling students.

“So much wouldn’t be possible without math,” Ernest said.

Being a math teacher, she sees the math behind things that others don’t.  She gives the example that buildings wouldn’t be built efficiently and technology couldn’t be advanced.  This may be why she is concerned that some schools are trying to make math an elective class.

Ernest says a world without math would be like the movie Idiocracy.

“People would sit around all day trying to hammer a round nail in a square hole until…” Ernest says pausing, “their hand fell off.”

Ernest says that people learn more from math than just how to solve equations and graph points, such as structure, and problem solving skills.  The high regards that she holds this subject to contribute to why she became a math teacher, but she says she would still be a teacher, even if she didn’t see math as being so important.

Ernest says that she wanted to be a teacher since she was six.  She says if she taught a different subject she would not change her method of teaching much, and she would still “try to make it as challenging as possible.”  Once being a struggling math student, she even asked me how I was doing in math at the end of the interview.