This month's Spotlight features Suzanne Chan, a high school math teacher at North Plainfield High School, and a recent graduate of NJCTL's Mathematics Alternate Route program.

Suzanne's path to teaching was not traditional. After studying mathematics and computer science in college, she worked as an accountant before stepping away from her career to raise and homeschool her children for nearly fifteen years. As she guided her children through their education, she discovered that teaching was work she really loved.

After her children left for college, she pursued teaching professionally, starting in as a paraprofessional in a middle school special education classroom. "Teaching is learning," she says. "It's a lifestyle. I keep learning so I can teach well." After attending an educator conference in 2022, she discovered NJCTL and began her path to becoming a certified math teacher.

For Suzanne, NJCTL's program played a key role in helping her bridge her prior academic knowledge with classroom practice. "It's a very practical program," she says. "Even though I majored in math, it was a long time ago. This program helped me refresh my subject knowledge and gave me tools to apply it directly in my teaching."

Through NJCTL, Suzanne found value in the emphasis on structured lesson design, classroom strategies, and collaborative learning approaches that could be used right away with students. She describes the experience as tightly connected to the realities of teaching. "It's like on-the-job training," she explains. "I learn and I teach at the same time, and I can use what I learn immediately in the classroom."

Now in her fourth year teaching high school math, Suzanne teaches a variety of math courses but she is especially drawn to Algebra for the way it builds logical reasoning and step-by-step thinking. "It helps me think more logically," she says. "I like the way it helps me see the connections between things."

Beyond her classroom work, Suzanne is passionate about making math more hands-on and accessible for students. One idea she has been developing is a "math museum" designed especially for special education students, featuring interactive, tactile learning experiences centered around puzzles and problem solving activities.

She often draws on her own interest in puzzles as inspiration for how students can engage more deeply with mathematical thinking. "Puzzles are a good way to start," she says. "You're putting pieces together step by step until it makes sense. That's how learning mathematical concepts can be as well."

She has also begun envisioning a mobile version of this idea, a traveling math museum that could bring interactive, puzzle-based learning experiences directly to different schools and communities.

For Suzanne, teaching math is closely tied to curiosity and persistence, both in the classroom and beyond it. Whether working with students or imaging a new ways to make math accessible, she continues to approach the subject as something active and meaningful. Include quote about Learning is LIfe...

We are proud to spotlight Suzanne for her commitment to her students and her insightful vision for making math engaging and accessible to all learners.