Meet the Team: Stephany Subdíaz — Math Instructional Specialist

From time to time, we set posts aside that deal with new classes and schedules and programs and events, and instead focus on the individual instructors and staff members that make up the diverse and unique members of the Eagle Rock community.

This time around, we’re going to learn a little about Stephany Subdiaz, a math instructor who enjoys designing courses that are fun, engaging, growth inducing, and relevant to our students. She uses dice game to teach statistics and multiplying fractions. Students learn order of operations through her loan-related math challenges. And they receive fundamentals in exponents through the latest infection rates associated with COVID-19.

For Stephany, like all Eagle Rock School instructional specialists, the key is to engage students critical thinking and creativity skills. And, because math is all around us, she asks students to think of it as a language.

Prior to Eagle Rock, Stephany worked at Colorado Outward Bound for two summers as an outdoor education instructor. She also worked several semesters at the High Mountain Institute, and before that, the UC Santa Cruz Wilderness Orientation program. In fact, it was at UC Santa Cruz where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Earth Sciences.

What attracted Stephany to Eagle Rock was our mission  of Implementing effective and engaging practices that foster each of our student’s unique potential. Growing up in Lennox, Calif., a poor neighborhood next to Inglewood, Stephany said she knows the impact a school like Eagle Rock could have on the population of students that were her own high school peers. By her own admission, Stephany says she was fortunate to be scooped up by a scholar’s program that sent her to a private school, but she saw how many of her neighborhood friends were left behind. She sees her work at Eagle Rock as a way to help others.

We asked Stephany to let us in on a few details about her job and her life. Here’s what had to share: Continue reading…

Meet The Team: Matt Bynum, Eagle Rock’s Outdoor Education Adjunct Instructor

Matt_Bynum_Eagle_Rock_SchoolThe one place you’ll seldom find our latest featured Eagle Rock educator is in the classroom. Matt Bynum is our outdoor education adjunct instructor and you can’t do all that much hands-on teaching about the Great Outdoors when four walls topped by a ceiling surround you.

Matt starts each trimester either instructing or directing our Wilderness Orientation course, and then, if time permits, he teaches an Explore Week course. The second half of each trimester finds him busy managing the wilderness gear, developing curriculum for our outdoor offerings, coordinating the Veteran Pin system, serving on our Risk Management Committee, and teaching the occasional wilderness class.

We sat Matt down — not an easy task — and quizzed him on his background and interest in progressive education.  Here’s what he had to say:

Eagle Rock: Where did you receive your college degrees?

Matt Bynum: I graduated in 2006 from Western State College in Gunnison, Colo. I majored in outdoor leadership and minored in environmental studies. The classes I took there helped get me really excited for outdoor education while building a solid base from which to work. I loved the hands-on approach and small class sizes. I can’t thank those professors enough. 

ER: What did you do prior to coming to work for Eagle Rock? 

Matt: Before my Public Allies fellowship in 2009, I worked as an instructor and course director at Outward Bound in Colorado for five years. These were predominantly mountaineering courses. I also did a summer of trail work, taught environmental science, and guided outdoor trips at my college. Immediately before coming back to Eagle Rock in 2013, I was teaching at a public school in Commerce City through Goodwill. When I was not instructing, I spent time traveling and climbing in Patagonia, Ecuador and Asia. 

ER: What attracted you to Eagle Rock? 

Matt: A friend in college first told me about Eagle Rock. A few years later, I was Continue reading…