One-on-One with Randy Wormald; 2005 Disney High School Teacher of the Year

RANDY WORMALD

Randy teaches Mathematics at Belmont High School in

Belmont, New Hampshire.

• 2005 Disney High School Teacher of the Year
• 2005 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year
• 2010 Top 5 Finalist for the Great American Teacher Award

Pictured below is Randy Wormald riding an electric motorcycle built in his classroom by his students!

What are some ways that you get kids excited about math? If a teacher is not careful, math can turn into working problems the whole period. From what I know of you, it seems you have a gift of relating it to the real world.

Randy: For me it’s about building relationships within the classroom so that you can mix it up and get a little crazy with making your instruction relevant to the real world. Not every single lesson in math has to be relevant, though. For example, you wouldn’t say, “This is how completing the square is used in the real world.” Those lessons are more for showing kids the thought process or a logical approach to things.

     We do a lot of projects and sometimes I tell them I don’t have all the answers. We built an electric motorcycle that is street legal and can be driven on the roads. During the project when I said, “I don’t have any idea,” they were like, “Come on, just tell us.” We undertake real world projects dealing with math that we sometimes have to figure out together. I let them know that you don’t have to know all the answers to tackle a problem or project.

How specifically to math did you tie the motorcycle project?

Randy:  We pulled in a number of different things. Anything from design aspects to measuring and calculating were used. We had to calculate the needed surface area to put certain types of batteries and space to switch them out. That in it self took in many geometry aspects. We started with just a dirt bike frame and extended it out an additional 30 inches. Students had to calculate the used voltage on the batteries after a certain amount of driving time. They talked about gear ratios to determine what sprockets we should use in the front and the back of the motorcycle. This led to discussions like, “Do we want the motorcycle to go really fast and maybe not so far or did we want to extend it so that we can drive it further without so much low-end power when taking off from a stop?” The electric motorcycle project pulled in quite a few different aspects of math, from basic measurement to geometry to gear ratios and things of that nature.