In the NeighborHOOD: Meet Christy Graybeal

For my undergraduate degree, I went to a small liberal arts college very similar to Hood. I had a wonderful experience there and was thrilled to have the opportunity to work at a similar school.

Ideally everyone would see the beauty in mathematics, but I know that not everyone loves mathematics as I do. I’m always glad when students tell me that their experiences in my courses have helped them come to see mathematics as something that can be understood and not only memorized.

As a professor of education, I teach future and current teachers. Because experience is one of the best lessons, I feel that it is very important to model teaching practices that I would hope to see in my students’ own classrooms. By modeling these practices and giving students experiences that are perhaps different from what they have experienced in the past, I hope to show them the benefits of different teaching methods.

I see the role of a teacher as a facilitator. The teacher should guide students to new understandings by setting up experiences for learning and then stepping aside and allowing students to learn by doing, by talking to each other, and by exploring resources. I hope that by learning in these ways, these future and current teachers will come to see the benefits of these ways of teaching and will implement them in their own classrooms.

I love the line that the faculty makes for the graduates after Commencement. It is a wonderful tradition.

My primary research interest is in mathematics education and specifically fostering curiosity about mathematics. If students are curious, they will be motivated to learn more.

“Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics” by William Dunham
“Savage Inequalities” by Jonathan Kozol
“In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan