the perfect way

By Han Lu

Starting college at San Jose City College as a student, instead of giving up no matter how difficult situations got due to her language barrier; Ms. Thai was committed to studying at SJCC to improve her English and then transfer to UC Davis. Currently, this is her 6th year teach math at YB

 English skills were very weak. She took an ELD class to learn and improve her English before taking major classes for an Associate Degree. Therefore, her college education takes longer than other people in general.

Throughout college, Ms. Thai realized that she wanted to be a math teacher because she felt like she was able to teach students to understand math to their true potential.

Ms. Thai: “I think I’d be able to explain and simplify the concept to the student and help them not just understand but convince them that they can actually do math.” 

During college, Ms. Thai also had her own personal problems.

Ms. Thai: “The difficulty in college, I had to manage my time, my personal time, but also the school time plus the work. So balancing is the difficulty that I’m dealing with when I was in college”

After taking an associate degree at SJCC, Ms. Thai then transferred to UC Davis to continue her education journey. During her college journey, she met many friends and those people can motivate her to be better.

Ms. Thai: “I met more friends that come from everywhere like different cities, different states, or even different countries, and they all have a big desire to be successful. And you know when you sorrow yourself like good people  and you get a lot of motivation from them as well.” 

Ms. Thai got Bachelor of Arts from UC Davis with major in Math and minor in Education

After graduating, Ms. Thai worked at YBHS until present time.

She taught maths such as Math 1-3, Geometry, Algebra 1 and Precalculus. However, algebra 2 and math 3 is her favorite math to teach students.

Ms. Thai: “I love to teach anything like algebra 2 or math 3 and more because by that level I can get deeper into  the concept and the deeper.”

As a teacher, it’s not easy to teach students considering that some students do not understand right away, and that’s okay. Ms. Thai also has struggled to teach some students if they don’t understand and motivate the student to put in the effort from the class. 

In fact, Ms. Thai also opens her tutoring class after school to help students understand the lessons since her passion is to help students understand math in the best way while they are struggling. 

Ms. Thai not only has an Associate Degree from SJCC and Bachelor of Art from UC Davis , she also got teacher credentials in Math and Vietnamese from SJSU and also a master in Math Education from Western Governors University (WGU).

Ms. Thai: “Just be positive. Just don’t give up too easily.”