Kathleen Wheelock is an experienced educator with 13 years of teaching mathematics at both the college and high school levels. Kathleen’s own interest in mathematics began at Smith College where she earned her BA in mathematics, studying calculus, chaos theory and number theory at advanced levels.
After teaching for several years and studying art, another passion, Kathleen earned her master’s in mathematics education (M.Ed.) from the University of Washington in Seattle. Her interests extend beyond mathematics to working with students to fully understand the concepts and intricacies of learning: getting to know one’s self as a learner, working with organization and study-skills for adolescents and encouraging students to advocate for their learning in the classroom.
Kathleen has tutored subject matter for standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, Praxis and college entrance examinations as well as writing and Physics. In her educational research, Kathleen focuses on the engagement of students with mathematics as informed by the students’ own identities as math learners. Kathleen is a Vermonter who loves being with her kids, skiing, kayaking and all things outdoors.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
On weekdays, I wake up before the kids get all the lunches together and make sure that I have figured out the gear that they need to wear and everything for the school day. They go to an outdoor, primarily outside pre-school. I’ll wake them up and have them eat breakfast and brush their teeth. We read a story while they are having breakfast. Then, once I get them to school, I keep myself focused on learning the specific techniques and skills of financial mathematics and keeping myself on task by having a goal for each day, rather than going in too many directions, as I find the topic very interesting.
Towards the end of the day, I unpack lunchboxes, get the kids in the bath, make dinner, and try to fit in some exercise. I also go for a 20-minute walk at lunch, just to get outside and move around.
I struggle to carve out time to relax, although I would say I think relaxing is productive. I make sure that I get enough sleep and that I take a day off once in a while, do something for myself, like going for a big hike.
How do you bring ideas to life?
One of the things that I’ve learned in studying educational psychology is that we need to connect with ideas relative to ourselves. As mathematical ideas are very abstract, one of the things I work on is bringing the content to students in a way that connects with them and their identity. I think bringing ideas to life is having students make the idea their o
What’s one trend that excites you?
Honoring the fact that identity is not just particularly male and female and letting it come to life. having sexual identities and gender identities that are not just binary is important and powerful for our society to be thinking about. Understanding who we are. Men are not just all men and women are not just all women and that certain people are not going to operate in a certain way because they’re women.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
Focusing on making the physical environment feel good to get work done. I’ve learned that instead of giving myself a hard time about being productive, I should just let myself be sure that the kitchen is clean first. I learned that when I was in graduate school, just let yourself clean the house and then you can get the big project done. I think it relates to our need to “nest” in order to create and that is a healthy, human trait to need order and calm around us. We deserve that and so many people aren’t able to have it!
What advice would you give your younger self?
I would advise myself to try out some other jobs and not decide where I want to go with my career because of what I know, but let it be unknown and try it out. Embracing career exploration’s uncertainty and trying different paths instead of choosing what was understood probably would have let me find a healthier work-life balance earlier on.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.
Math is incredibly fun and amazing. And some people agree with me on that, but not most people do not feel that way about math. I am definitely in the minority of people who really love math, but for those of us who see its power and beauty it is really a fascinating and inspiring human construct.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Go for a walk in the middle of the day. That will make you feel so much better, ideally outside, even if it’s just walking around the house. Get up and move around.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Making sure that I’m hydrated. I might make some tea, which I find is a very good way of getting my body more on track. Doing some yoga or exercise, even for three minutes.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
I like to understand things to the core level. I found that if you understand things from a very theoretical level, it helps you directly in practice. So, I always like to have a very solid, research-based understanding of the material I’m working on, be it in art or teaching.
Specifically in teaching math, when you’re working with people, and you need to make a decision that is based on philosophy and a research-based theory, it corresponds with my understanding of the world. It’s applying research to practice.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
Well, I would say that, as a teacher, I regularly come up against tough times where you have to make decisions with students and their parents. And it’s all so very relational and I feel it’s an issue that we need to explore more.
A specific failure was when I was first teaching, I put more of an emphasis on the content that I needed the students to master rather than on the student’s experience of learning math. So, because we had covered certain topics, once, I had students take a test and unfortunately, sometimes they were not quite ready for that.
I realized that there were a couple of times in teaching where I felt like I was pushing my students sort of beyond where they were ready to go. I began to structure my teaching differently after a couple of times.
Now, I always start with what I call a mucking around time, where the students are not really supposed to understand everything. I just expect them to try, write it down, and practice. I would ask the students to keep trying and even to go ahead of me with their thinking. Then, after a couple of weeks, I created a formative assessment and then a summative assessment. The formative assessment had the same lingo and same notation as would be on the test (the summative) so that students could really get used to all those aspects of math and then, hopefully, really understand them well.
So, I divided the learning into three parts. The introduction, the formative assessment, and lastly the summative assessment which is the classic test. That’s how I made this all work for most students, by actually helping them practice to take the test.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I have always been wary of being entrepreneurial settings and trying to do things myself as a whole. I like doing things as a group and the established structure of how we do things makes me feel comfortable. I like the theoretical approach to how we do things. So, maybe, if someone was going to try to take some advice from me about business, I would probably say you should go study business.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
I love telling my Apple watch: “In three minutes, remind me to get Ketchup”. You can say whatever you need to be reminded of. You have to say the “In three minutes” part.
If you just say, “Set a reminder” or “Remind me to get”, it will put it on a list of reminders and I know I never look at that list. So that doesn’t help. You need to set the time frame. Then, it will pop up in my list of reminders on my phone because it’s time-sensitive.
So, I think it works amazingly for me when time-sensitive reminders pop up as a notification in my phone and then when I get to the store, I can just look at my notifications and be like, “Oh yes!”, cause I would not have remembered we need ketchup.
What is the best $100 you recently spent?
I recently spent a lot of money on some textbooks to study for actuarial exams, but I’m not going to say that that was the best use of money.
I would say that the best 100$ spent was when I went to my favorite spa. I was skeptical at the start about going there and spending that money. I thought that I should just be at home and working on my stuff. But finally, I decided to experience that.
When I was there, I soaked in the tubs for a while, and I don’t know how, but I just was able to get into a different mindset of being more brave. I made up my mind that I’m going to be more open to my job search and reached out to some people who I had been meaning to reach out to networking for a new position in actuarial sciences. And fortunately, those connections have been amazing.
By being so relaxed, I was able to be brave enough to take action about reaching out to people and I even applied for a couple of jobs. It was interesting, bringing my laptop to the spa and getting some work done there.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?
My favorite book is Another Country by James Baldwin. I believe that he’s an amazing writer and the book is very deep. The characters go through some really difficult times which are beautiful at the same time. It perfectly portrays a beautiful connection between people.
I do listen to a lot of podcasts. One of my favorite ones is ‘On Failure’. It’s by David Duchovny, who’s the guy from X Files. I used to love X Files as a college kid. I believe that he’s very contemplative and often talks about failure which we don’t do a lot in our society. I feel it’s important to talk about and to learn from it.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I liked ‘Call the Midwife’. I think that was a good show. I watched that show at two in the morning when I was up with my babies in the middle of the night. It’s a happy memory.
I also like ‘House Hunters’, ‘House Hunters International’, especially if it’s in some beautiful place, like the Bahamas.
Now that I am thinking, I would say that my favorite show of all time is ‘Lost’. I believe that’s the best mystery thriller ever. They’ve added every aspect, every genre to keep you engaged. So, I absolutely love that.
Key learnings:
I am struck by the importance of theory in my life. My understanding of scientific approaches informs so much of how I am as a person, how I parent, and how I teach. I think it makes me want to study things more in-depth, being a reflection of how important it is for me to understand the theoretical aspect of everything, not just the practical one.