Star Cleveland math teacher used to be bad at math

Adam Moss
Adam Moss
photo Adam Moss

Adam Moss has a chance this year to be chosen as Tennessee Teacher of the Year.

Students show double-digit improvement on state test scores after they take one of the fifth-grade math classes that Moss teaches at Arnold Memorial Elementary School in Cleveland, Tenn. They stay 90 minutes after school once a week for the math club that Moss leads. Roughly 200 students and parents come to the Math Olympiad that Moss launched that's held each May at Lee University.

So what's Moss' secret?

"I know what it's like not to get it," he said. "Math wasn't my strength. It didn't come easily for me."

Moss got a C in fourth-grade math when he was a student in Judy Keen's class at Arnold Memorial, which is housed in a 1929, two-story brick school building in Cleveland's historic district.

Their paths crossed again seven years ago, when Moss was hired as a teacher at his alma mater. He wound up taking Keen's job when she retired.

"She, of course, didn't remember the C," he said. "She just remembered that I was a reader as a kid."

Moss also took over the after-school math club that Keen had led at the urging of then-principal Kellye Bender.

"She said, 'Adam, I need you to do this,'" Moss remembers. "'I know you can.'"

So Moss started studying math again, including through summer professional development training paid for by the school system.

"I have learned more about math through the summer trainings than I did through my undergraduate classes," he said. "I do love math now -- only because I actually understand what I'm doing."

Instead of rote learning, Moss tries to get his students to understand the reasons behind the rules and steps involved in mathematical computations.

"I am not the expert. We collectively are the experts," he said. "We talk about math the whole [class] time. We talk about what the numbers mean and how they work."

Cleveland City Schools Director Martin Ringstaff has nothing but praise for Moss.

"He even tutored my own son," Ringstaff said. "He just has a way of explaining math in a way ... that kids understand.

"It's easier for kids to bail on math than any other subject," Ringstaff added. "Kids who have one bad experience in math, they put up that wall, 'I'm just not going to be good at math.'"

Moss recently was chosen as the best fifth- through eighth-grade teacher in Tennessee's 14-school district Southeast region, which includes HamiltonCounty.

He was nominated by other teachers at Arnold Memorial Elementary School, Principal Michael Chai said.

"When you're looking at fifth-grade math [scores], we have double-digit growth," Chai said. "They're going well beyond expectations of what the state predicts for us."

Other winners in the Southeast region were Lori Raper, a fourth-grade teacher at Prospect Elementary in Bradley County Schools, who won in the pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade category; and Grundy High School teacher Kelly Gibbs, who won in the ninth- through 12th-grade category.

The Tennessee Department of Education will announce the three grand division winners and the Teacher of the Year in October.

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu attomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu ortwitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.

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