Michaela Epstein (Cohort 2012) is striving to make sure every student embraces the value, complexity and beauty of mathematics.
In her time as a maths teacher, and now in her current role as Head of Learning at Maths Pathway, Michaela is passionate to improve maths curriculum in school and develop numeracy skills in all students.
Her journey toward education started long before she joined Teach For Australia (TFA).
“Before TFA I worked in social research and then for a not-for-profit organisation in the Indigenous sector, where we ran education programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander high school students,” she said.
“It’s through education that life outcomes can be turned around. Education can give people the tools to be autonomous and make choices for themselves that otherwise might not have been apparent,” she said.
For Michaela, the Teach For Australia program was an exciting opportunity to be on the ground working in what she believes is one of the most impactful professions that exists.
In 2012 she became a Teach For Australia Associate. Though small, Michaela loved Cohort 2012 and found the group support very beneficial during her first years as a teacher.
“Going through your first couple of years of teaching with others who are experiencing similar things really helped make the experience and reflect and learn from what was going through,” she said.
She was placed at Chaffey Secondary College in Mildura as a Humanities and Mathematics teacher.
“My experiences as an Associate was amazing, it was unexpected, it was challenging and so much more!” said Michaela.
“I remember speaking to another Associate before I started who had previously worked as a lawyer and she had told me that working as a lawyer was hard, but that it was still nothing compared to being a teacher. When I started teaching I understood what she meant,” she said.
There were a couple of big highlights that marked Michaela’s time as an Associate.
As part of a social responsibility project, she was given the opportunity to take a group of students from Chaffey Secondary College on a trip to Tonga. Michaela and her students took IT equipment over and set it up at a school in Tonga, which shared only a small number of computers across hundreds of students.
“It was a thrilling trip because we had a beautiful bunch of students, none of whom had been overseas before and some of whom who had never been on a plane!” she said.
Another highlight for Michaela was being a part of the Year 7 team group of teachers at her school. The Year 7 team worked closely with one another, pushing each other to develop professionally and improve their pedagogical skills.
“Nothing beats working with other teachers in an ongoing way where you are learning and sharing with one another… and where the conversation is not based on just administration,” she said.
As a teacher, Michaela acknowledges that it was challenging to find the balance between being the most effective and impactful teacher for her students while trying to look after herself.
“When you are a teacher it’s easy to find more things that you can be doing. But if you don’t set these limits on yourself it can impact your own mental wellbeing,” she said.
After finishing the two-year Leadership Development Program at the end of 2013, she decided to keep focusing on maths in school.
“Unfortunately many students and adults aren’t in a position where they feel confident about their skills in maths and that can be really limiting, so I wanted to focus on maths after finishing TFA to see how much more impact I could have,” said Michaela.
In her third year of teaching she became a numeracy leader at her school. Not long afterward, she took on a leading teacher role as a numeracy coach at Hume Central Secondary College in Melbourne.
“We were really targeted in how we taught students. In this time I saw the greatest impact that I was able to achieve,”
Alongside this special program, Michaela ran normal maths classes which were run in a traditional and structured way. It was through this experience that she realised there are other structures that exist in the school and education system that can work against some students.
“For example, if you think about the reporting system, students are given a mark on their report based on where they sit in the curriculum. This means you might have a student that’s years behind curriculum expectations but who is actually working really hard and is marking significant growth, however, they might be classed as an E. The effort is not accounted for in the grading,” she said.
“When I was teaching I got frustrated with some of these barriers that I was starting to recognise around me. Fortunately, I got given the opportunity to join the Maths Pathway team,” said Michaela.
Maths Pathway is an e-learning curriculum and pedagogy for Years 5 to 10 students, which is changing the way that maths is taught by allowing teachers to deliver and assess individualised maths lessons for each student’s skill level. The organisation is working with approximately 140 schools around Australia.
She joined Maths Pathway because she wanted to broaden her impact and take to scale some of the things she saw as important to teaching and learning mathematics.
“At Maths Pathway we have a vision that underpins what we do and this is something that I really strongly believe in as well. We believe in a world where every student embraces that value, complexity and beauty of mathematics,”
“If you’re of a certain background or live in a certain part of the country, you’re far less likely to go onto more advanced levels of maths in Year 11 and 12.”
“This is why I am doing the work I am doing now,” Michaela said.
Michaela wants to continue improving the way maths is taught and learned in schools across Australia. She hopes that one day all students can embrace maths, regardless of where they have come from.
Read more about Maths Pathway
