TCNJ

18 The College of New Jersey Magazine In Daniel Lee's classroom, math lessons unfold with an unexpected twist and a kind of fun not always found in the thickets of algebra. He serves homemade brownies, iced with a lowercase cursive letter (for example, r for Rachel, j for Josh) to launch a personalized discussion about variables. He leads a real-time baking challenge to reveal his famous chocolate chip recipe while unraveling the mysteries of ratios. And, to his squirming students' delight, he conjures silly stories about numbers falling in love to decode least common multiples. Four and Six are soulmates, they just don't know it yet. When are they going to meet for the first time at the coffee shop? For Lee, there is no time to waste on dry lectures at the chalkboard. "I'm my students' teacher for 10% of their life, which is quite a large percentage, because they're only 11," Lee says. "I take that time really seriously. And I feel like my purpose is to draw out the best in them." Math is a factor in that equation. But not the only one. "My purpose is TO DRAW OUT THE BEST IN THEM." Lee asks his students to say hello to one another each day, a simple doorway to new friendships. He invites them to his class for lunch when they're struggling and runs alongside them — as both a running buddy in the Princeton half marathon and their coach on the high school track and cross-country teams, modeling patience and perseverance. He makes them origami stars for their birthdays. "I'm there to teach math," he says, "but I make sure my students know, at the end of the day, that the math stuff is not the number one thing. It's them." Daniel Lee '12 DANIEL LEE '12 Princeton Middle School, Princeton

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