Sophie Fleysher, ‘20

November 2019

This year, we’ve welcomed many new faculty members across the departments including Dr. Heidi Reich, who is currently teaching Calculus II and ninth grade mathematics. I met with her to talk about how she got to BHSEC and her interests.

Dr. Reich was raised in Queens and attended Stuyvesant High School, which she was nervous to reveal at first. At Dartmouth College, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Russian language and literature with a minor in Spanish. Then, she attended Stanford University and got a master’s degree in the same subject. After spending some time in Russia, she got a second master’s degree from Columbia University in Slavic languages and literature. She didn’t want to work in Russian literature forever, though, partially because she found the lack of women’s works in the canon “weird.” In 1999, she got a job teaching math at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where she ended up staying for twenty years. In that time, she got a Ph.D. in mathematics education from Columbia Teacher’s College. Fun fact: she is the only teacher at BHSEC with a Ph.D. in the education of a subject, not just in the subject itself.

The transition from the study of Russian literature to mathematics education seems extreme, but Dr. Reich says that the language is very algorithmic, and so it requires some of the same basic skills as mathematics, making the switch simpler. She turned to public school education because she was looking for job security, but didn’t like the thought of reading and grading hundreds of papers, as a literature teacher would. She remembered being “pretty good at math,” so she started studying it and realized just how much she loved it. The only reason why she got her Ph.D. was because she “wanted to know more things.” She chose mathematics education and not pure math because teaching is her life’s work. She had been at it for such a long time already that it was just the natural progression. There’s also a significant bonus: she is one of the few people who get to use their research in what they do every day, implementing inquiry- and discussion-based learning into her teaching.

She could have done this anywhere, but she chose high school because that’s where she happened to get a job, and has fond memories of her own high school career. It then turned out that high schoolers are her people. She believes that she has the skillset for high school because there is a greater focus on content than in the earlier grades, stating “you are intellectually advanced to learn fairly complicated things but you’re still kids.” 

Though she loved teaching at LaGuardia, she decided that twenty years is a long time to be in one place and it was time to move on. No matter where she is, she wants to help students find why learning is fun. Her pitch for mathematics? Every single person in the world is capable of learning math, she believes, saying, “if you don’t like math, you just haven’t found the branch of mathematics that is interesting to you.” She adds that mathematical thinking is always useful, regardless of whether any specific technique is useful in the real world.

When asked what she does when she’s not in the classroom or preparing to teach, she enjoys completing crossword puzzles and skiing, though this response took a lot of thought since she is always thinking about education.

If you are currently in her class or find your way there in the future, make sure that you play along with her humor. She admits to having a terrible sense of it but thinks she’s really funny so it’s best to let her keep believing it. She also wants all students to know that if you want to know anything else about her, just ask! But, Dr. Reich warns, only do so if you have at least twenty minutes to spare because once she starts talking about something, she’ll keep going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.