Hello! My name is Kaley Planansky, and I am a mathematics education major. Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to pursue a career in education. I have always looked up to my teachers and they have been some of the most influential people in my life. I have been fortunate enough to have found a sense of belonging in school and experienced healthy classroom dynamics throughout the years. My wish is to foster that type of environment for students of my own. I hope to make my math classroom enjoyable and confidence-inspiring. It is important to me that students believe that the lessons learned are valuable and applicable to their daily lives. I hope to change the stigma of math for students and make it a class they look forward to and appreciate, much like some great teachers did for me. Outside of school, I enjoy crocheting, playing volleyball, and spending quality time with my friends and family.
2024
Hello! My name is Morgan Hamilton and I am a fourth-year student studying Natural Sciences with a Biology Education concentration. I am a Colorado native, and I grew up in Littleton, Colorado. My path towards a teaching career started when I began tutoring students, coaching and teaching swimming and babysitting. I found through working with children that it not only felt very natural, but it was a very rewarding experience. I loved watching the kids learn skills and content to get to those lightbulb moments. Their ending success in whatever they were doing was so empowering to them and I hope to continue to empower and help kids learn and grow. I’ve loved learning about science as a kid and I hope to bring my passion for it into my own classroom to inspire students to love science and be curious about the world around them. Outside of the classroom I like to swim, cook and bake, hike, and play soccer.
2024
My name is Madeline Cummings. I am a senior studying Natural Sciences with the intention to teach middle school science once I graduate in the Spring of 2025. My passion for teaching began after working with teenage youth at an overnight summer camp. That experience along with my two positions as a chemistry and biology tutor for CSU Athletics and CSU TILT confirmed my path towards education. My teaching philosophy is all about supporting a growth mindset in my students. Everyone has the capacity to learn and explore the world around them. My hope as an educator is to make science more accessible to all students, and setting attainable goals will be a theme of my classroom. Currently I am working with CSU Extension’s 4H youth in rural Colorado, collecting oral histories from ranching families to preserve in the CSU Archives. I also serve as ASCSU’s Campus Engagement Director for the 2024-25 school year.
2023
I am a first-generation Colorado native completing a degree in Mathematics, concentrating in Mathematics Education. I am excited to begin a career serving and empowering a variety of students. I believe in creating opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to engage in a STEAM-based curriculum focused on developing skills necessary to discover solutions that address modern-day problems. When I am not teaching mathematics, I can be found running on the treadmill, reading a good book, or visiting a local coffee shop or restaurant!
2023
My name is Lauren Gouldey, and I am a third-year student studying chemistry and natural sciences with a chemistry education concentration. I am a Colorado native and grew up in Fort Collins. I have always wanted to be a teacher and love the opportunity to combine my passions for science and education. It is incredibly rewarding to see students make connections and build their confidence in science. I hope to make science, specifically chemistry, more accessible to all students so they can build scientific literacy. Outside of school I enjoy dancing, reading, and playing games with my family.
2022
Hello! My name is Hayes Horstmeyer, and I am a math education major. I am a Colorado native, so I absolutely love the outdoors, but am also a huge fan of movies, books, and hanging out with friends and family. I love serving my community and it is a goal of mine to continue serving while teaching, as well as find ways to introduce activities and moments for my future students to serve and help out, too. I am extremely passionate about mathematics, but even more about students and what they bring to the world. I want to create a safe and fun environment for anyone that enters my future classroom. I was very fortunate with my education growing up and understand how vital it is for everyone to receive the same quality of schooling.
2021
Hello everyone! My name is Tyra and I am a junior studying Mathematics Education. I have been working at CSU’s Precalculus Center since 2020 and I will also be starting at the Calculus Center this upcoming semester. Through these, and other experiences, I have only confirmed my desire to become a teacher. I am passionate about mathematics and it is so tremendously rewarding to have the opportunity to share that passion with my future students. I feel that for too long there has been a stigma around mathematics, that if a student does not excel right off the bat then mathematics is not for them. I hope to reverse this ideology and encourage students to put in the work to explore and understand mathematics! Outside of math, I really enjoy playing volleyball and listening to music! I spend a lot of time out exploring Fort Collins with my friends and am hoping to spend some more time at Horsetooth this year!
2021
My name is Brenna Sydow and I am a fourth year student at CSU in Biology. I am a Colorado native, born and raised, but new to Fort Collins. I grew up in Hudson, Colorado, a small rural community out east and grew up around agriculture and the farming lifestyle. My past greatly impacts who I am today and my mission for my future, which is to be a science educator. I watched the schools where I grew up struggle because of funding issues and thus their curriculum struggled as well. I was privileged enough to attend a private school that was almost forty minutes away from my home, but that was the only place my parents felt the curriculum was strong to prepare me for the real world. While I am so grateful for that opportunity, my heart still goes out to all of the schools that I grew up around, and thus my goal for myself is to bring science to even the most disadvantaged places. I have been working with the Little Shop of Physics at CSU these past three years to do just this. But my hope for when I graduate is to potentially teach at one of these schools where I grew up and do my best to make science accessible, engaging, and fun and to show kids that really, anybody can be a scientist.
2021
My goal as a future teacher is to create a safe and inviting learning environment that fosters a passion for science. Students should view science and technology as fun and exciting despite any challenges they may face in the classroom while learning difficult concepts. I hope that my classroom can impact students in a positive way and inspire a love for learning and discovering new things!
Venus Cariaso 2019
I want to teach to help students realize their full potential and grow from there. I want to teach the idea that being good at math is not some gene you are born with, however it is a skill achieved through hard work and dedication. I want students to be okay with challenges and have the courage to persevere through them.
2018
Chemistry and science has been a part of Emily’s life since she was young, as her dad was a high school Chemistry teacher. Thus, since she was little, she wanted to continue to be immersed in the field of science, especially Chemistry. She also has found a passion in sharing her love for science with others, teaching the nuances. Not only does she want to make Chemistry fun for students, more than anything, she wants to make an impact in as many student’s lives as possible.
2018
Reason for wanting to teach STEM: I grew up doing a lot of hiking and my love of plants and wildlife turned into obsession. The fascination led me to several plant research opportunities in college. With a desire to teach in some capacity, I decided becoming a professor was the best course of action so that I could continue researching. However, once I began working as a teaching assistant I discovered two things: 1. I loved teaching and it seemed much more important to work with people than with plants in a lab. 2. Many students have misconceptions about science and were inadequately prepared for college level science courses. For these reasons I decided to focus on secondary science education and hope that my future students can get excited about exploring the sciences, taking part in the discussion, and thinking critically about the world around them.
2018
My name is Erin Dawson and I am an undergraduate student studying math education. I was born and raised in Apple Valley, Minnesota. I was inspired to become a math teacher by my high school math teacher. He had a huge impact on all of his students and had a great positive attitude that motivated all students to get excited about learning math. I want to become a math teacher to inspire all students, especially girls, to love math and other STEM content areas.
2017
I want to become a math teacher so that I can help students realize that math is so applicable to many areas of life and can be fun and very interesting (yes, really!) I love that math is so defined yet mysterious, that there are certainties, but also a limitless wealth of knowledge that we haven’t even considered. My desire to is to genuinely connect with students and ultimately help them discover their own passions and ambitions, and to help them find resources to succeed.
2017
Reason for Teaching: I love kids and being able to give them knowledge about something they didn’t know before is a truly rewarding feeling. Science is a subject that is always evolving and we are learning new things about it everyday, it’s a fascinating subject to learn about the world and the things around us. Teaching students about science is amazing, and having their eyes fill with wonder, knowledge, questions, or even confusion about science makes me honored that I can help them learn more about it.
2018
Reason for wanting to teach: Chemistry is the unification of math and matter—it shapes everything in our world at the most fundamental level. I hope that by teaching chemistry, my students will want to explore and question the world around them so they learn how to examine their world critically and want to understand why things work the way they do. Teaching is how we give our students the gifts of knowledge and understanding, when met with inquisitiveness, problems begin to be solved, and the world is changed—even if that change is just within the students themselves. I want to teach because it allows me to help my students and show my students that they can change the world themselves, they don’t need to wait for someone else to tell them how.
2018
Hello, my name is ThanhTu Nguyen, currently an undergraduate student majoring in Math Education. I was born in Vietnam but had happily called Westminster, Colorado home after moving here with my family in the 4th grade. My love for math started way back in kindergarten when I learned to play chess. From chess, I found a fascination for logic, strategy, and calculation, and so math has always been my favorite subject in school since then. As ab immigrant and a first-generation college student, I highly value education and so I enter the field of teaching with the hope to make higher education for accessible for students with similar backgrounds.
