My name is Tuesday J. Johnson and I am a full-time lecturer at the University of Texas - El Paso (UTEP) and an Assistant Professor at Doña Ana Community College (DACC). I have been teaching for over twenty years, more than thirty if you count the friends I helped through high school and college.
My students always ask, "Why math?" The basic answer is because it was easy. The full answer is not very different. I grew up in a small town in North Idaho called Plummer. We had 25 students in our graduating class. Yep, twenty-five. As a small-town kid I played sports, was in the band, and went to school everyday. I am an athlete. I am a drummer. I dabble with being a musician as well; playing guitar, writing songs, a little bit of piano, some alto sax, and I've played with a clarinet a few times. Just dabbling, I'm a drummer. Since I wanted to play music and sports, I had to show up. Also, in rural Idaho, going to school is the best way to hang out with your friends. I'm not saying what we did in school was always right, or even legal, but we showed up and put forth some effort. As I progressed through the years I found that math made sense to me. It was easy for me so I helped my friends. They found my explanations helpful and more people asked for help. I enjoyed helping them enough to give up my rock star dreams and go into teaching, primarily so I could coach. What should I teach? Why not math?
At Lewis-Clark State College (LCSC) I majored in math with an eye toward secondary education. Fortunately I had a practicum early in that program and realized high school was not where I wanted to be. Working in the math tutoring center, a cell in the bowels of Meriwether Lewis Hall, I honed my tutoring/teaching craft while working with some life-long friends. I thought about going into the Air Force after college, proudly scoring in the 97th percentile on the pilot/navigator section, but I didn't want to write a resume by hand so I decided to apply to graduate schools. Stupid, yes, but I was young and it seems to have worked out in the end for me.
I did have several options when it came to graduate math programs but I settled on New Mexico State University (NMSU) for a variety of reasons. Top most on that list was over 300 sunny days a year. Growing up in the the snowy Pacific Northwest made those days of sunshine too appealing to turn down; the program at NMSU was pretty good too, but it wasn't the main deciding factor. At NMSU I fell in love with teaching again and have never looked back. The ladies of the Math Learning Center, as it was called at the time, helped me gain confidence and perspective on what it meant to actually teach.
I've been very fortunate to have taught at NMSU, Broome Community College in Binghamton, NY, and now at both DACC and UTEP. The students, other people, and things I have learned at each of these schools have shaped who I am as an educator today.
That's me in a nutshell mathematically. I wake up every morning excited to go to work and share what I know with people willing to learn. I can't believe they pay me to do this! (Unless you are my boss then I am certainly due for a raise 😀.)
Welcome to my math blog.
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