5 minute read
Pausing to Wonder
PAUSING wonder to
Albert Einstein once mused, “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” If his insight is correct, the Math and Science Departments at St. Cecilia Academy are very much alive. Mr. Charles Martinez, Science Department Chair, and Sister Nicholas Marie, Math Department Chair, spend their days marveling at the wonders revealed in math and science and teach their students to do the same.
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MR. CHARLES MARTINEZ Mr. Martinez said that since childhood he has always loved school. His first teaching opportunity came in elementary school when he taught English to a fellow classmate from Bosnia. Later, as a student at the University of Arizona, he was awarded a teaching fellowship sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that aimed at helping public high school teachers improve their working knowledge of basic science. For 15 hours a week, he taught biology and earth science to teachers in an underserved public high school in South Tucson, AZ while also working nearly fulltime in a research laboratory as he finished his degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. When he came to Vanderbilt as a graduate student, he continued to find ways to teach even as he became more involved in scientific research. Ultimately, however, Mr. Martinez had to make a choice. Although he loved the scholarship of research, he was drawn more to the interpersonal nature of teaching.
Now in his 7th year at St. Cecilia, last spring, Mr. Martinez was voted by his fellow colleagues as SCA's Outstanding Teacher of the Year, an award his students heartily confirm. They will tell you he is both demanding and encouraging. He keeps his lessons engaging by helping students discover real-world applications and extensions to the curriculum content, whether it is listening to reports from the World Health Organization or analyzing a story in National Geographic. “I love teaching science because it is easy for me to make it real for the students,” says Mr. Martinez. “As a science teacher, I believe that an environment of inquiry between the students and teacher builds a strong community of scientifically literate thinkers. Inquiry is vital for helping students learn to think like scientists. Performing hands-on experiments, rather than merely memorizing scientific facts that can be easily referenced, is essential if students are to accept responsibility for their own understanding.”
Mr. Martinez also models for students how a careful scientist can be a man of faith. Mr. Martinez refers to himself as a “reverted Catholic” who returned to his faith through his involvement with University Catholic Campus Ministry at Vanderbilt. That is where he met his wife, Dr. Erin Martinez, also a scientist. They are now parents to three children, all of whom attend Overbrook School. Mr. Martinez is known throughout the school for his love of the liturgy, coordinating his ties and lapel pins with the Church’s liturgical feasts and seasons.
“I believe that an environment of inquiry between students and teacher builds a strong community of scientifically literate thinkers.” —Mr. Charles Martinez
When parents ask him about the education their daughter will receive at St. Cecilia, he answers, “First I like to remind them is that their daughter will be known and loved as a child of God. Second, I don’t sugarcoat anything about the challenges that come with a college preparatory experience. Yes, we have a demanding curriculum, but we also have expert faculty who care to know their daughters and see to it that they succeed in their formation.”
SISTER NICHOLAS MARIE, OP A native of Warsaw, Poland, Sister Nicholas Marie has loved math ever since she was a little girl. After attending a high school in Warsaw that focused on computer science, mathematics, and physics, she was keen to continue her studies at university. When her family moved to Washington, D.C. after her freshman year of college, she went on to earn a B.S. in Mathematics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, then was accepted to the University of Illinois for her M.A. and Ph.D. While at the University of Illinois, she rediscovered her Catholic faith through one of the most vibrant Newman Centers in the country. “I fell in love with math and God in graduate school,” she laughs.
For her, the study of mathematics, if done well, contributes not just to technological preparation, but more importantly, to the full formation of the human person. Sister Nicholas Marie thinks that math is crucial to a liberal arts education because it lays a three-fold foundation. First, it allows students to realize that there is objective truth, independent of any religious or cultural persuasion. “Numbers are not Catholic,” she says. Secondly, she says that math’s objective nature gives a person confidence that they can know and discover the truth, which is what they were made to do. The discovery of that truth brings with it joy, which is always in ample supply in Sr. Nicholas Marie’s classroom, where she loves to show students the relationships between numbers and number patterns. “The amazing thing is that math helps us to see the truth of a thing, even if we cannot imagine it.” Finally, she delights in how math develops in students a sensitivity to the beauty of order— the order of numbers, but then by extension a greater order within the universe. “Math is open to infinity,” Sister Nicholas Marie reflects. “In pre-calculus and calculus, we naturally get into discussions about God as we describe infinity mathematically.”
Charles Martinez, Science department chair, and Sister Nicholas Marie, Math department chair
When asked why not everyone gets as excited about math as she does, Sister Nicholas Marie is matter-of-fact: “Mathematical thinking is both inductive and deductive, both intuitive and analytical. Math is boring when you only teach the deductive, when you do not bring in the natural engine of beauty and intuitiveness behind the numbers. The philosopher Jacques Maritain says math is the science most perfectly suited for the human mind. It starts in what is tangible but does not end there.”
For most of her teaching career, Sister Nicholas Marie has been at St. Cecilia, teaching almost every math class, although AP Calculus is her specialty. After being in a discipline where she was often the only woman in upper-level math courses, she loves the all-girl environment of SCA because of the freedom the girls demonstrate “to be who they are.” She loves how they get excited about learning and demonstrate a true sensitivity and openness to one another and to their teachers. “We have a great math department,” says Sister Nicholas Marie, “where the teachers have the girls’ true good at heart. We are forming them to be free individuals seeking truth.” ◊
