Jon Star, professor of teaching and learning, finds flexibility is key to helping students master math
Liz Mineo, Harvard Staff Writer
Finding a calling wasn’t the hard part for Jon Star. That came when he started figuring out the complexities of his chosen profession.
Growing up in Columbus, Georgia, Star worked as a camp counselor and a math tutor, and the jobs sparked something in him. He liked helping kids learn.
His path became clearer years later during a stint as a math teacher at Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico.
Star was tutoring a smart, hardworking student who came from a family where everybody excelled at math, except her. Trying to help this student work through (and sometimes around) roadblocks sparked questions for Star about how math is taught and learned.
“The student ended up being successful in the course, but I’m not sure how much that had to do with me or her hard work,” recalled Star, now the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning. “That experience made me realize that learning math is a complicated process in which the mind of the student and the actions of the teacher have to come together.”
