My name is Zainub Khan and I am a middle school math teacher at LEARN 6 Charter School. I teach grades 5-8 using a program called Teach to One math. I grew up in the Chicagoland area and went to Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. 

Originally, I did not consider working for a charter school, like LEARN. But, I was fresh out of college and I applied everywhere. Eventually, I found a position through a Facebook page and was grateful for my first job. Four years later, though, I am still here because of the amazing work environment. Everyone I meet here is committed to the scholars and are passionate about making a difference. I have an incredible administrative team who is always looking for ways to support the teachers. When I became a teacher, my goal was to work in a place where I was able to push my students to go above and beyond their expectations. LEARN 6 is that school.

I teach the Teach to One program (TTO). The way TTO works is that it meets scholars where they are academically and brings them to grade level. The program utilizes the power of data and technology so that it is differentiated to every level of learning. Our scholars are then taught through a variety of learning strategies: individual, small group, small direct instruction, and a whole class approach. Scholars are taught to be self-sufficient by being held to high expectations to take charge of their learning. Teachers interact with all the students daily in class as well as make themselves available should the scholar need extra help.

Creating engaging lessons did not come easily to me at first. With TTO, we are given a day’s notice to what our lesson will be, except on days we give our scholars task projects. One task project that my students completed was Mario Kart Math. My students were constantly asking me to play Mario Kart because they know that I love playing, so I decided to make it into an engaging set of lessons.

The first day of Mario Kart Math I taught the skills needed for the rest of the week. Then throughout the week, my scholars had different problems to figure out based on the course. Each lap of the course was a math problem; as they completed the problem, the students placed their characters on the leaderboard. Just because they finished first did not mean they were safe! Students could use items to knock out the competition and promote themselves to a higher place throughout the race. Students did this daily to practice the skills that were taught to them relating to two-step equations. This has been my favorite project to date as so many were strategically thinking how to utilize their abilities to solve two-step equations.

I am blessed with an amazing team in which we work together to bounce ideas off of. We use our own backgrounds, research, as well as our relationships with students to be able to create memorable and engaging experiences for them. We love doing these with our math task projects and interventions.