Jade Nine


About me

Math is full of theories of entirely different natures - take some time to get to know them, and you will see that part of their purpose lies in their uniqueness. Different subjects have different character. Here's an example of two very general concepts we do in math, and in thinking in general: Breaking things down into their fundamental parts, Creating new things to aid you as tools to solve a problem. These are concepts of different character, but we actually see them in very concrete examples - we find the former in number theory (for example, prime factorization), and the latter is frequent in Euclidean geometry. This is a brief example; in class, we go into much more detail on the intrinsic nature of many topics in math. But, the fact that math has subjects of different natures, feels, and intuitions, ultimately points to the idea that math is about exploration, and it is up to you to determine your final destination.

Students vary on curiosity, ambition, prior knowledge, preferred thinking style, personality, and more. Math problems can actually test for this - as a creator of problems, I can play around with difficulty, newness, pace, and fun phrasing to match to the class that I have. I write a good portion of the problems in the problem sheets I teach, mainly to adapt to the students, but also sometimes to show them connections to applications or other concepts here and there. I value a teacher's ability to think with distinct threads of thought, understanding how to handle explaining different approaches to the same subject, different solutions for the same problem, different energy levels of students in class, etc.; a teacher should aim for the class dynamic, and have different ways of thinking to aim at different types of students. Also, in harmony with the purpose here of SchoolNova, I will challenge the kids, push their bounds to the extent that their ambition and curiosity takes them. Paying close attention to students' particular solutions or approaches allows me to judge if problems are too easy or too hard, as well as various other factors, i.e. determine where the bounds lie. (Feel free to take a look at posted homeworks by various teachers to get a feel for the SchoolNova style!)

I attended SchoolNova myself for 7 years, and credit is due to my long-time mathematics teachers, Sasha Kirillov, my mother Vibha Mane, and Corina Mata. These people taught me math for so many years when I grew up, and now it's time I pay it back, and pay it forward. I feel like my ambition to learn, and my talents at understanding math, are my own; equally I feel that my teachers did an excellent job putting their knowledge to my curiosity and giving me far beyond what I ever could have asked for on my own.

During middle school and high school I participated in several math olympiads, including Mathcounts, AMC 10 and 12, and AIME. As a college student I have taken the Putnam three times. Currently I am an undergraduate mathematics student at Stony Brook University, and previously I was an undergraduate mathematics student at UCL (University College London).

I taught Math 8 at SchoolNova in 2018-2019 academic year, and put together problems and wrote up problem sheets together with Alexander Kirillov. Before that, I TA'd Math 8 for Helmut Strey, during which I did some lecturing and also created a few problem sheets of my own, including Elephants and Hamsters (take a look at 2019-2020 homeworks, January 5). By this point I know that one needs to keep in one's inventory exercise problems and teaching styles that reach to various levels of creativity of the students - problems of a wide range of difficulties can independently range on the amount of novel or creative thinking required of them.

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