Hongmei Wang has joined Campolindo’s math staff where she teaches Algebra 1 and 2. Prior to teaching at Campolindo, she taught math and Mandarin at JM Middle School and Miramonte High School.
Wang has a Masters in Physics at Peking University in China and wanted to be a math teacher because she’s “always been passionate about math and physics.”
Wang likes Campo because the “teachers support each other and the students really care about learning. It’s a good learning environment for the students,” she said. Additionally, Wang’s daughter attended Campo, and she felt the teachers and staff were really helpful and “wants to give back too,” she stated.
Junior Audrey Flitter said that “she teaches lessons and then after lessons we usually get to work on our homework in class. We have packets and we also do whiteboard work.”
Freshman Lils McCarthy said “she gives you a lot of work, but it’s really good because it prepares you for tests. She puts a problem up on the board and then we solve it on our whiteboards.”
Wang often lets her students collaborate and “she asked [them] at the beginning of the year who do you want to sit next to and then [they] sat next to people that [they] picked,” McCarthy said.
Freshman Logan Jaeger said that Wang “answers a question multiple times” to make her “teaching [clear]” so “it’s easy to understand.”
McCarthy adds that “she’s also intense and she expects a lot of her students”, but “she’s very nice.” An example of this is during “the first couple days [when] she gave us candy,” Flitter said.
To prepare her lessons, Wang often observes other teachers’ classrooms and Canvas pages and uses the textbook from Big Ideas Math. She also has college textbooks that she uses to refresh herself.
Wang said her goal is to “help [her] students love math more” and to encourage them to pursue math or a related field in college, especially females, since women tend to not pursue those subjects.
