From Student to Teacher: Cadet teacher senior Hannah Todd engages with precalculus students through interactive teaching

Senior Hannah Todd handed out blank sheets of paper to every student in math teacher Elizabeth Landry’s fifth-hour Honors Precalculus class. She instructed them to draw a four-by-four chart — they were preparing to play “Unit Circle Bingo.”

Todd, a cadet teacher for Landry since the beginning of the school year, spent two days brainstorming the format and design for the game, getting inspiration from “vocabulary bingo,” a game she played in English. She wanted students to have an interactive way of practicing a key calculus concept — unit circle values.

“Starting second semester, Mrs. Landry was like, ‘Do you want to be doing more activities?’” Todd said. “And I was like, ‘Yes, I would love to!’ So, I started coming up with ideas. I was like, ‘Oh, crosswords.’ But I wanted something more engaging to stick in your brain, so I thought bingo would be something they would remember.”

Todd displayed a list of trigonometric ratios on the classroom TV and told students to select 16 values to write on their charts. She then called out prompts such as “sine of pi over three” or “cotangent of five pi over six” until a student marked four in a row and yelled, “Bingo.”

While taking Landry’s IB SL2 math course last year, Todd realized she enjoyed Landry’s entertaining jokes and effective teaching style. Landry maintained a lighthearted atmosphere while breaking down each new topic. Todd decided that being a cadet teacher would allow her to focus on teaching others rather than just taking notes and completing homework for an additional class.

“I thought it would be fun to refresh my knowledge and help other students, or just help out the teacher,” Todd said. “It’s a different type of learning environment than sitting in a classroom while the teacher lectures, something different than regular class.”

Todd assists Landry with creating lesson plans, organizing papers, making answer keys, printing materials, giving feedback on assignments and creating math-related activities. Todd even hand-labeled students’ names on more than 100 folders for Landry to sort tests and classwork.

Landry appreciates the additional help and having an extra person to answer students’ questions by guiding them step-by-step through math problems.

“Having Hannah for another year, being around her, having conversations with her, seeing where life is taking her, what she’s going to do next and seeing her next steps are just things that help keep teachers keep going and pushing forward, because ultimately, we’re in it for them,” Landry said.

While Landry explains math concepts and students take notes, Todd listens in the background, completing her own homework or sorting class materials. Hearing and observing Landry teach reinforces concepts in her current math class, Calculus BC.

“I’ll be like, ‘Oh wait, I forgot about that,’” Todd said. “And if we’re doing something kind of similar, I can use that technique that I forgot about in my math class.”

Since taking precalculus as a sophomore, Todd has mastered concepts like graphing trigonometric functions and memorizing the unit circle. As a cadet teacher, she aims to communicate these same ideas clearly and help students with problems.

Junior Campbell Norris has noticed a positive difference in having an additional person to ask questions to in class. In challenging classes, Norris feels that it’s hard to receive a sufficient amount of teacher support, but Todd guides her through problems while Landry assists other students.

“Hannah explains it in a different way than Mrs. Landry,” Norris said. “It’s helpful to see a different way of doing it or get a new perspective on the problem to make [us] understand it better.”

Todd hopes the experience will help her improve her communication and speaking skills. She believes verbalizing her thought process and connecting with Landry will benefit her as she pursues her neuroscience and engineering goals. Todd wants to develop technology for brain research, so having the ability to explain her ideas clearly is crucial.

“Being able to share my knowledge will translate to what I’m doing in the future,” Todd said. “It feels good to be able to successfully explain things, and I get to help a teacher who really helped me when I was in my math class.”