Teacher of the Month: Mark Brown

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Drury High School math teacher Mark Brown has been selected as the September Teacher of the Month. 

 

The Teacher of the Month series, in collaboration with Berkshire Community College, will run for the next eight months and will feature distinguished teachers nominated by community members. You can nominate a teacher here. 

 

To Brown, math is everywhere, and he wants to provide his students with the foundational tools to understand it in ways that will open doors to them in the future. 

 

Some people do not realize that and think the subject is not for them, he said. 

 

"I want the students to, when they see math, not put their heads down. I want them to have a place where they can feel safe, to learn, to make mistakes," Brown said.

 

"I want them to have those doorways in the future that math might open up. They might not walk through those doorways now, but I want to introduce them to the doorways and show them they exist."

 

He said math is far more than solving equations — it teaches students to think critically and organize their thoughts to find solutions to problems more easily. 

 

"There are a lot of things that benefit from organization or thinking about the problem. And one of the things math does is it gives you the tools to organize your thoughts and break things down," Brown said 

 

"If you don't remember how to do the slope of a line 20 years from now, I will not be upset."

 

However, Brown wants his students to have the tools to examine a situation and determine how to create a resolution with the resources at hand. 

 

"I hate cardboard puzzles because, with cardboard puzzles, you always have to look for a specific piece … I know what piece I need, where is it? With math, you can find those pieces. You can make those pieces yourself, and I like that," Brown said. 

 

He compared math to building a house or castle. Each year, a person builds upon their foundation, and every level of learning builds upon the one before it, he said.

 

However, if they encounter difficulties at any level and don't take the time to address them, it can lead to a weak foundation that hinders their progress in the future.

 

Rather than taking the time to shore up that foundation, the students get pushed along, Brown said. 

 

"It makes everything that comes after harder until you run into a point where you're like, 'Hey, I am standing at the top of a tower, and [it] feels like it's made out of Jenga blocks, and people keep picking bits out,' and you can't go higher without worrying about just having it all come crumbling down," he said. 

 

Brown works at students' levels to help them to build their confidence. 

 

"My daughter lost confidence with math due to multiple factors, the biggest being COVID. Brown has slowly been building up her confidence through support that goes above and beyond what most teachers do," Brown's nominator said. 

 

"He sends detailed emails every few days, sends home extra work so that she can practice, and is always available for extra help after school. This week he emailed me saying that my daughter was explaining how to solve problems to her classmates, which shows that she is building confidence in a subject that she once found difficult and challenging." 

 

Brown's students described his class as a fun, safe, and engaging environment. 

 

"Brown started with us two years ago, and he came in and instantly became part of the Drury family. He started to do after-school programming and started a math club. He's built a strong relationship with our students through really engaging outside of the school community, and he's just been a perfect addition to our faculty," Drury Principal Stephanie Kopala said. 

 

"He puts the students' needs before his own," Eva Moser, a junior, said.

 

A number of his students highlighted how he is dedicated to working with every student individually to ensure they understand the material. 

 

"Brown is just like a good teacher in general. He does what he can and helps us, and not a lot of people can say that because I know that people have differing experiences," junior Ariel Murphy said. 

 

Brown bonds with his students on a personal level, Moser said. 

 

"He's very down to earth, and he goes out of his way to help us and to make sure we understand the topic," Chandler Matney, another junior, said. 

 

Although Brown loves math, he understands that not everyone feels the same way, so works to bring tangible material into the subject so students can see the importance of math and how it will be needed in the future. 

 

"One of the things that I really think makes Brown special is that he is willing to try new things," Kopala said. 

 

This past summer Brown attended the Project Based Learning conference in addition to some trainings in Boston to bring new ideas on how to teach math to students in a way to make it relevant and engaging," she said. 

 

"Because he's willing to try new things, I think that's what makes him a unique math teacher, to teach math in a way that's meaningful to students," Kopala said. 

 

Brown has been teaching for three years. He realized he wanted to work in the field after tutoring someone in math. 

 

"We were both getting frustrated because [I was explaining] what you do, and they were not understanding it," he said.

 

But then there was a moment where it clicked. "That was really cool. I would say that, as much as anything else, probably prompted me or helped me start teaching in the first place." Brown said.