Info courtesy of The Dispatch
MSMS teacher Lauren Zarandona, who was first nominated for the national Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in her first year of teaching at the school, has won the award, thanks to her tireless effort and commitment to excellence! She has applied four times, and ended up as a state finalist three of those years, before finally winning the big one this time: “I was excited because I finally did it,” Zarandona said. “This has been an eight-year process for me.” She will accept the award in person in Washington, D.C. during the second week of September, and go home with a ten thousand dollar prize.
Lauren Zarandona, who teaches math at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, has won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, a national award that recognizes math and science teachers. Photo by: Luisa Porter/Dispatch Staff
Zarandona has taught math classes at MSMS for eight years, teaching on a variety of subjects, up to and including pre-calculus & Statistics. “That’s actually really fun as well,” she said. “Kids look forward to it. It’s a pretty popular class.”
“It’s neat when you can capture the imagination of students who don’t consider themselves ‘math people,'” Zarandona said. “I don’t think there’s such thing as a math person, but a lot of people do. They will immediately find out I’m a math teacher and (say), ‘Oh, well, I’m not a math person.’ I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I do know that for those kids, stats and logic and game theory and those other courses can be a way for them to see that maybe they’re better at math than they realized.”
Kelly Brown, director for MSMS academic affairs. Brown called Zarandona “the best of the best . . . She is the perfect person to meet those students wherever they are and help them go where they want next”
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