Sharon Collins New York, NY | 7-12, Mathematics, 2023

The official biography below was current at the time of the award.

Sharon Collins has been an educator for 25 years, spending the last 10 years teaching Advanced Placement Calculus AB, Precalculus, and Statistics to 11th and 12th grade students at New Heights Academy Charter School. She previously taught for 11 years at the Bronx Preparatory Charter School and four years at I.S.183-The Paul Robeson Magnet School. Through Teach For America, Sharon changed careers and became a teacher after working briefly as an environmental engineer. As New Heights Academy’s Mathematics Department Chairwoman, Sharon mentors new teachers and facilitates professional development for high school colleagues. She also leads a group of elected parent representatives as Co-President of NYC District 3's Community Education Council. Sharon implements "ratchetdemic" reality pedagogy by fostering strong relationships with her students, sharing her authentic self, and centering students in her classroom. She supports her Spanish-speaking students through bilingual vocabulary guides and alternative assessments like roundtables. Sharon is passionate about advancing fairness in STEM initiatives and is dedicated to humanizing education. Teacher leadership, mindfulness in mathematics, and student representation in mathematics classrooms are talks Sharon has presented locally, at the state level, and nationally. She has been a featured panelist discussing colleges going test-optional and the future of STEM education. Sharon has a B.S., summa cum laude, in chemical engineering from Manhattan College and an M.S. in environmental engineering from Columbia University, studying there on an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She is a certified secondary school mathematics and chemistry teacher, a Math for America Master Teacher, and is National Board Certified.

• High-resolution version of the teacher profile photograph

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