Ana Miguel, MA ’12, has been tutoring her peers in math since she was a high school student in Coachella Valley, Calif. So it comes as no surprise that one of her proudest accomplishments is being the first graduate of her high school to return as a teacher, to continue in that work.

“I’ve had cousins, friends, and siblings who weren’t able to go to college because of their math requirements. It has always been a gatekeeper,” said Miguel, who taught middle and high school math for 12 years before transitioning to a new role this year as an instructional math coach for teachers at Westside Elementary School. 

“I’ve been fortunate to understand math pretty well,” she said. “And when I would help my friends with it, they always lit up when things made sense.” 

In her time as a high school math teacher, she created a course that introduced her students to statistical concepts by applying them to social justice issues. One unit in the course connected data analysis with the U.S. Census and its impact on funding allocation for communities, and another paired two-variable quantitative data with the gender wage gap.

“It got my students excited about math in a different way,” said Miguel, who says her time at the GSE’s Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) fostered her desire to bring joy into the classroom. “My hope is that when students come into my class they are excited about learning something new.”

Now, as an instructional math coach, her goal is to help elementary school teachers by modeling math strategies, as well as planning and co-teaching with them.

“By the time I would get my high school students, they were already turned off by mathematics,” she said. “So I thought it would be helpful to introduce students to positive experiences with math at a younger age, and build their confidence in the subject.”

Miguel is one of four educators being honored at the GSE’s Alumni Excellence in Education Awards this year, for her impact on students and the field of education.

She says her ultimate goal as an educator is to help students gain access to higher education by finding joy in math, rather than having it be an obstacle to career and economic success.

“I truly believe that we are all intuitively mathematicians,” she said. “It just depends on the way math is presented to us.”