Linda Gesualdi stood at the front of her math classroom one spring afternoon, greeting her pre-calculus students with a smile as bright as her floral-printed dress.
“Ms. G!” a passerby yelled in a deep voice, as he walked by her door.
“Oh, Ms. G. you look so lovely,” a pony-tailed girl said, as she strode to her seat.
“All college acceptances come out this week?” Gesualdi asked the class, which was buzzing with college talk – financial aid, scholarships and acceptance letters from University of Virginia and University of Wisconsin.
The bell rang and the class piped down. Gesualdi presented two SAT math problems on the board. After giving the class a few minutes to solve the problem, Gesuladi invited volunteers to solve the problem on the white board for extra credit. “I like to get them out of their seats,” she said later. “I like some sort of activity.”
The 26-year Costa teacher and math department co-chair knows she’s not a rocket scientist. That, she said, makes her a stronger teacher. “I can take a concept that’s difficult and break it down because I’m not a genius. If I were a genius, I might not be able to relate,” she said. “I get where they go wrong, I get why math is confusing to people.”
Explaining concepts comes naturally to Gesualdi, but she’s not one to go light on tests and quizzes – she’ll usually give a test or a quiz every week. She often views the results as a reflection of her teaching. “I like to see where they’re making mistakes, because that’s self-analysis for me. If everybody’s making the same mistake, then I did something wrong and I didn’t convey the idea,” she said, adding that she also notes whether the errors are arithmetical or conceptual.
The grading – 170 tests, often multiple pages each – can get tiring. “It just takes over your life – papers take over your life. Saturday and Sunday, you’re grading; at night, you’re grading. You just grade, grade, grade,” she said.
For spring break this week, Gesuladi headed to her hometown in Connecticut – she planned to knock out grading some tests during her plane ride.
She’d rather not delegate her grading tasks, as she likes to evaluate her students’ mistakes and give partial credit. “I think I have to let go of that a little bit,” she said. “That detracts from your lesson plans – to me, it’d be more important to have a dynamic lesson than to sit for three hours and grade.”
In observing her lessons, however, Gesualdi is vibrant and interactive. Multiple students noted she was their favorite teacher at Costa.
Later that period, Gesualdi presented the day’s lesson plan. “Who can tell me the difference between a series and a sequence?” she asked the class.
“A series is set of numbers, a sequence set of numbers with pattern,” one student answered.
“Mmm, close,” Gesualdi answered.
“Series have squiggly things,” one boy joked, prompting laughter from the class.
Gesualdi likes the closure that math provides – problems are black and white, answers are right or wrong. But she also enjoys seeing the different ways her students calculate their answers. “It’s really interesting to see how people’s minds work – you see it with mathematics when you give them a chance to be creative,” she said.
Over the years, Gesualdi’s maintained two or three teaching-related jobs at a time. She spent seven summers in the 90s in Hawaii teaching SAT classes to students who traveled from Japan, Samoa and Tahiti.
She’s currently an independent, one-on-one math tutor. She tutors a few hours per week – the hours fluctuate depending on her students’ test schedules – and teaches an eight-week SAT prep class at Costa. “I love my job. I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. At same time, I have bills to pay,” she said. “If my salary went up, I wouldn’t have to be tutoring, or doing so much SAT (prep.) If you don’t have to be running in 15 different places, I would have more of me to dedicate. I wouldn’t be tired when I’m here, I would be maybe more energetic.”
But her students keep her going – so much, it’s hard for her to envision retiring. “Even if you’re in a bad mood, you can walk into class and a kid will crack a joke and it’ll brighten your day.”
