Bio
Elisabeth Jaffe is one of the reasons Manhattan’s Baruch College Campus High School regularly tops lists of the nation’s best schools. She generates excitement about mathematics by inviting students to make calculations about everyday activities, such as eating an apple or making coffee. Grouping students by their preferred learning style, her lessons target individual student strengths—word problems for some, equations for others—allowing her to tailor classroom instruction to maximize student learning. Surprisingly for a math teacher, she also treats her students to novels, such as Einstein’s Dreams, that inspire mathematical thinking. It’s a formula that works. Says her principal, “I can’t imagine running the school without her.”
