Caroline Murphy teaches algebra to ninth and tenth grade students at SEED Miami. Her journey to teaching started as an undergraduate at Harvard University when she took a year off to participate in the City Year program. As a City Year AmeriCorps member, Ms. Murphy was placed in a school in her hometown of Miami, where she was struck by the contrast between the education her students were getting at an under-resourced public school and the experiences that she received at a well-resourced prep school in the same city. She had known there was inequity in education, but after experiencing it firsthand, she couldn’t see herself doing anything else as a career. “Once I saw the way students and schools were struggling,” she says, “I couldn’t just go off and do other things.”
As a person who had always loved school, it upset her to see that many of her sixth-grade students had already labeled themselves failures, and she was worried that they wouldn’t develop essential math skills that they would need in the future. Ms Murphy shares, “I was shocked by the number of students who were like, ‘I can't do this.’” “How, in only sixth grade, do you think you can't do math? We live in a qualitative world. Even if you don’t go into a technical field that requires math, everyone needs math skills, whether it’s to understand interest or to balance a budget.”
After her year of teaching with City Year, Ms. Murphy returned to college to study education in preparation for her return to the classroom. She was accepted to the Harvard teaching fellows’ program, where she earned her master’s degree. From there, she was placed at a school in Richmond, California. When she decided to move back to Miami to teach, multiple people mentioned she should look into The SEED School of Miami. After talking to head of school Dr. Kara Locke, Ms. Murphy started to feel like SEED was going to be a great fit. Since she started during the 2021-2022 school year, her instincts have proved right.
Ms. Murphy likes the small classes at SEED, where she teaches Algebra I and Math Bridge, a program that helps students to strengthen their math skills. Ms. Murphy expected that it would be a challenging school year, she found that, while her students had some learning gaps to fill, they were generally well-prepared for Algebra I. As a community, her SEED Miami colleagues paid special attention to focusing on the social and emotional needs of students. “I didn't go into this school year thinking it was going to be easy. But I've seen a lot of growth in students and a lot of maturity from them.”
Ms. Murphy’s teaching philosophy is that everyone is “a math person”. She uses real world examples to interest students. She tries to shape her lessons around understanding why things work—not just memorizing formulas, but making math relevant and helping her students develop transferrable skills such as the ability to ask questions, make observations, look at data, and justify their reasoning. Regardless of the field they eventually go into, she says these skills will be important. “I think it makes you a much more flexible contributor to our 21st century technological world.”
SEED Miami reflects what Ms. Murphy has believed students deserved since she started working in public education, and she credits the school environment and her colleagues. “From the beginning, it’s been a really phenomenal place to work. I love the mission and focus across the school on getting students to college, but also helping them along the way to build their social and emotional skills and learn who they are. I love my colleagues and feel like we are aligned in supporting our students to do and be their best.”