Warmuth named district teacher of the year

Anyone who's ever been in math teacher Audrey Warmuth's class recognizes the sound of her laughter. Contagiously enthusiastic, her laugh punctuates math puns and Canada jokes (Warmuth's accent is decidedly Canadian). And many students will tell you that it's just that enthusiasm that makes Warmuth's classes so compelling.

These days, Warmuth has even more reason to be happy: She's been named district teacher of the year for 2014-2015.

“It felt really good and it definitely put a smile on my face,” Warmuth said. “It’s a little embarrassing too and a little awkward because I feel like there are a lot of really good teachers on campus. Honestly there are teachers who are more creative and more innovative than I am.”

Though modest, Warmuth has not only helped lead the school in completing the six-year WASC report, but has also taken on an entirely new engineering class this year as part of Project Lead the Way, a program she hopes to grow in coming years.

The teacher-of-the-year award switches  between Saratoga and Los Gatos, and is decided by a committee of previous award recipients, headed by the most recent SHS recipient, history teacher Mike Davey.  The committee votes on nominations presented by staff members and determines the award recipient.

“If [Warmuth] isn’t [qualified], nobody is,” principal Paul Robinson said. “She’s always been a great teacher in the classroom and to also see her step up as a leader, it showed another side to her colleagues.”

From engineer to high school teacher

The irony is that Warmuth did not envision herself being a teacher growing up.

When she was 16, she pranced around campus with the same enthusiastic smile equipped with braces, her brown hair tied in a ponytail and her thick glasses. Even back then, she was at the top of her class and gravitated toward math and science.

“I absolutely made up my mind, I did not want to be a teacher,” Warmuth said. “I just couldn’t wait to get out of high school. I thought, ‘I will never come back.’”

But she eventually did.

After Warmuth graduated from McGill University in Montreal she was hired as an engineer for Bombard Jay, a company similar to Boeing, some 30 years ago.

Her workplace? A “fishbowl.” No cubicles, no offices, no windows. Just one vast room lined from wall to wall with over 200 desks. Only six belonged to women — it was a time when the engineering workplace was dominated by men.

“Of the six women, three were secretaries, two were engineers and one was a woman draftsman,” said Warmuth, who was one of the two engineers. “It wasn’t always a comfortable place to be.”

Ready for a change, Warmuth moved to California after marrying her husband, also an engineer, who got a job in the Silicon Valley, where they started a family. For the first few years, Warmuth stayed home to take care of her two kids until they reached kindergarten.

With her kids going off to school, Warmuth had to make a life decision: Go back to work as an engineer or try something new. She said she struggled at first due to having “no network of support.”

She had a breakthrough when she read a book called “What Color is Your Parachute?” an interactive book to help guide people in their life decisions.

“I [discovered that] what was really, really important to me were the people I work with more than anything else,” Warmuth said. “Not where I was working, not how much money I make, not even really what I was doing, but who I’m doing it with.”

Driven by her love for helping people and “caring about the next generation,” Warmuth got her teaching credential in math at San Jose State and started working at Lynbrook High School, where she stayed for 11 years before coming to Saratoga in 2005.

Like many veteran teachers, Warmuth said she struggled with the transition to teaching at first — especially when it came to classroom management.

The “brutal” first year

“NO.”  The word resonated in her ears. A student had just talked back to her in class, and a flustered, inexperienced Warmuth had shakily ordered her to “get out of [the] classroom.” But the girl refused.

“And so now, it’s a standoff,” said Warmuth, subconsciously affecting the didactic tone she adopts while teaching. “If you have  a standoff and you’re in a position of authority, you have to win because if you don’t win, then all chaos is going to ensue.”

Taking a short breath, Warmuth dialed the office with her classroom phone, saying “I told her to leave and I told her to go to the office and she’s refusing to go. You need to get down here NOW.”

Little did Warmuth know that “now” was the trigger. In minutes, six men — the principal, vice principals, security officers — converged on her classroom door, expecting an “explosive situation.” The “poor girl” began to cry.

“The reality is as a teacher, you’re the adult in the room and you’re the one who is supposed to be in control, and it should’ve been up to me to never let it happen,” Warmuth said.

This was typical of Warmuth’s first year as a high school teacher.

“It was just brutal that first year,” Warmuth said. “There were times when I would just drive home crying and thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe I made this decision.’”

In the years since, Warmuth said she has learned how to handle difficult situations.

“I think part of what’s nice about being a more experienced teacher is you have a mastery of what it is you want to have happen in the classroom,” Warmuth said. “What happens is that kids feel like ‘oh the teacher kind of knows what she’s doing’ and they can kind of relax a little bit.”

Warmuth no longer has to worry about conflicts with students. In recent years, the challenges of teaching have had to do with refining techniques and lessons she has taught many times. One example is the dreaded Taylor series.

Though she tweaked the lesson every year for the past eight years teaching Calculus BC, she was never completely satisfied with how she was explaining the material, until she took a different approach this year.

Mastering the art of storytelling

“That was easy. I don’t see what the big deal was.”

The words were music to her ears.  Warmuth had just finished teaching the Taylor series using a new visual approach to explain derivations on graphs.  Her sixth-period Calculus BC class understood the lesson completely.

“I’m like, ‘YES!’” Warmuth said, tilting her head back and pumping her fist in the air. “That’s what I want.”

In one sense, she felt the same joy a writer would feel upon finishing a novel.

“That’s what I love about the calculus class, it’s this great story that we can tell,” Warmuth said, so excited that she has goosebumps. “You start at the beginning of the year when you don’t know anything, and the material just evolves naturally on its own, and it’s all connected to what you’ve done before and to what you see in the future.”

Her eyes grow large, her grin widens and the words come pouring out of her mouth.

“It’s a journey of exploration and discovery and growth and you can just feel yourself growing on the inside,” Warmuth said. “In the end, you can look behind you and see where you’ve gone, it’s like ‘wow [we] have really traveled an incredible journey.’”