Calculating Retirement: math teacher Jennifer Horn is retiring East after 26 years

Tracing her Expo maker in a circular shape on the whiteboard for her college algebra and trigonometry class, math teacher Jennifer Horn had a realization — this would be the last time she would ever teach the unit circle. 

Teaching math at East since 1999, Horn has done her fair share of explaining the cotangent of 120º to her various math classes, instructing the exact same unit circle lesson every year. But it never occurred to her that this iconic lesson would one day come to a close.

“It’s kind of bittersweet because that’s the last time I have to draw the unit circle,” Horn said, “But then I’ll never get to teach a kid the unit circle again.” 

Horn has officially decided to retire after this school year to spend her life surrounded by fishing poles and welding materials instead of logarithmic functions, the Pythagorean theorem and unit circles. 

The first time Horn stepped on the SME grounds was long before her teaching career began — she graduated from East in 1983. She had always had a passion for math. According to Horn, it was a subject that came easy.

As a math teacher, her goal was to encourage students to also understand the subject as much as she did as a kid. Her favorite class to teach throughout her time was Algebra II — a class where it seemed all the students were eager to learn the material. 

“These kids really liked [math],” Horn said. “They would hang on the end of their seat, like ‘What’s going to be next?’”

Before teaching at East, Horn was a softball coach for East. When there was an opening to teach math, she eagerly interviewed for the job.

“When I went into my interview I was like, ‘Hey, I already know the school song, so you should hire me because I’m halfway there already,’” Horn said. 

Upon receiving the position and starting her first day, she was greeted by the teachers she once had herself, an awkward experience. She realized she would now be teaching the same concepts they once taught her.

“It’s just weird to be in the same place that you went to high school,” Horn said. “It was not my goal to come back here. It just happened to work that way.”

While Horn will enjoy her days in retirement fishing at local lakes and welding sculptures she’ll miss the visits she received from students before or after school and how she could connect with them by asking them about their outside lives. 

“I tried to show the passion that I have for math within kids,” Horn said. “I think that’s going to be the hardest part just knowing that there’s not another kid I will teach math.”

Sophomore Chloe Harmon had Horn as her math tutor and is currently in her precalculus class and has connected with Horn in only the two years they have known each other. Horn has never failed to ensure Harmon was comfortable with the subjects being taught by answering her questions and validating that Harmon could perform the concepts. 

“She genuinely cared about me learning the material,” Harmon said. “She’s not teaching just to teach, she’s teaching to make sure students are learning.”

Though she will probably never need to use the unit circle in her post-retirement plans of traveling to Texas to fish with her husband or working on her various welding projects, she will miss the welcoming, positive environment at East. 

“There are so many great people that work at this school and I can’t imagine teaching anywhere else,” Horn said. “I think if I had been in a different situation, I don’t know if I would have lasted 26 years.”