Staff Spotlight: Morag Hastie

 

I grew up in a mid-sized rural village not too far from Edinburgh, Scotland. At the age of eight I declared I wanted to be an astronomer and it was this dream that brought to me the U.S. After receiving my PhD in astronomy, I moved from Scotland to Tucson in 2007 to work at the University of Arizona and the MMT Observatory — a large 6.5m telescope located in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson. Astronomy was a fantastic job for many years. I got to travel the world working and observing at world-class observatories, but in 2011 I left the field to move to Toledo with my husband who is a professor of Astronomy at the University of Toledo. I stayed home for a number of years to have and raise our daughter, Isla, and invest time in my hobby of writing fiction. Three years ago, I got the opportunity to teach math at a local charter school and discovered that I love it. Helping students find the joy in “playing" with numbers and the power it gives them to not only tackle hard math, but to also put learned creativity and tenacity into other aspects of their schooling is wonderful. Outside of teaching, I still dream of one day finishing my novel and seeing it in bookshops. My family and I love to camp and spend time together traipsing through the woods or cooking round the bonfire. 

 

 

The incorporation of nature in all its forms into the classroom leads to a more settled work space where the students thrive. Seeing how self-driven and attentive to their work, their space and their classmates Montessori students are inspires me to prepare lessons that are both engaging and challenging everyday. As a new Montessori math teacher, striving to bring in materials that helps students bridge the gap from the concrete to the abstract is a daily consideration.

 

 

The most important life lesson I talk a lot about is how to be comfortable with the “struggle” — being okay with not knowing the answer right away but being able to fight through the problem and puzzle things out. Regardless of how talented we might be — it means nothing without hard work. This is equally true for academics as it is for sports and other many aspects of life. I see my most important role as supporting the students in figuring out how to sit in that struggle space, how to think, how to be tenacious, how to work hard. It is a skill that will help them regardless of where life takes them.  

 

 

As a former prospective family, the most striking aspect of WSM that hit us on our first tour was the peacefulness, the joy and the attention to work that was evident throughout the school. We encountered first graders working unsupervised in the hallway on a big math work, and a room full of 3 - 5 year-olds doing work choice without overbearing involvement from the teachers. We also fell in love with the campus and the amount of time the students get to spend outside in nature. The development of a formal Outdoor Education program gives our child an opportunity to learn skills that she’d not get in another school in the Toledo area. At WSM, the education really is more than the academic knowledge needed to pass tests — it is time management and communication skills, it is problem solving and ownership of your own goals, and it is how to strive to be successful beyond school as well as how to light a fire without matches!