Jeanne Vissa joined Math for America as an advisor in September, 2008. After teaching junior high school in New York City, Jeanne joined White Plains Pubic Schools and in her 24 years there she was a middle school teacher, high school teacher, staff developer/coach, K-12 Math coordinator and principal. From 1999-2008, she became a full time Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching at the Graduate School of Education, she worked for seven years as Co-Director and Director of the Penn Partnership Schools, a network of inner city schools committed to raising student achievement. She remains an adjunct professor at Penn, teaching a class of Methods of Teaching Mathematics in Middle and High School and a second class on Leadership in Mathematics Education for school administrators, as well as advising doctoral students.
Jeanne received her doctorate in Mathematics Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in the 1980’s. What sustains her as a teacher herself, and as a “thinking partner” to others, is the creativity she finds in teaching. She thinks that out of many possibilities of sequence, situations, and modalities a teacher focuses on being a facilitator of learning to a group of learners in any one year, and therefore designs a lesson to make concepts engaging, relevant, accessible (and even beautiful!) to our students. She thinks that the community nature of Math for America afford fellows and advisors the opportunity of learning from one another and that together we can elevate the appreciation of mathematics for more Americans.
