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Michael Chrzan is a distinctive educator for multiple reasons:
- He is a African-American male math teacher.
- He'll be honored soon as teacher of the year among Teach for America alumni in Detroit.
- His tough-to-say last name has Polish roots. (It's pronounced cherr-ZANN.)
This influence on young lives has taught for three years and works at Henry Ford Academy, a nine-year-old charter high school in Detroit's New Center area. It's run by the Henry Ford Learning Institute and the College for Creative Studies, with classrooms in the college's Taubman Center for Design Education on West Milwaukee Avenue.
Michael Chrzan: "Math gets a bad rap."
(Facebook photo)
Chrzan, a native Detroiter who graduated from Renaissance High ('11), is "excited to live and teach in the city that birthed me," he says at LinkedIn. "I am passionate about education and am working towards finding solutions to the problems facing students in urban environments."
As for his chosen subject, the University of Michigan graduate ('16) calls mathematics "the great equalizer." Chrzan adds: "I strive to show people that, although math gets a bad rap, it's actually a very friendly way of thought."
Chrzan speaks with Koby Levin of Chalkbeat Detroit as part of the education news site's "How I Teach" series.
Chalkbeat spoke with him about his dealings with parents, the toughest parts of his job, his social media habits, and how he finds “greatness” in every student.
Excerpts:
♦ Keeping it real: "We get to have a really rigorous conversation [in geometry class] about what makes something true, which is really important in our society right now. Every year I pull in examples of deductive reasoning from outside of mathematics too. One of the things I’m going to try this year is bringing in a Supreme Court decision and talking about the deductive reasoning that shows up there."
♦ Flip the script: "The hardest part is motivating students. There are some students who have a really long history of messaging that they’ve gotten from schools, of the kind of person and students they are. I try to reverse that. You plant a seed when you’re the one teacher who’s telling them something different."
♦ 'Assuming the best:' "If I’m having a management issue with a kid, it may not have anything to do with me -- that's probably a kid who needs help. . . . [I assume] they want to learn, and maybe something got in the way. I try to find their greatness, whether it’s math or otherwise."
