This year, four math and science teachers from Malden High Schools have been selected to be awarded with Mass Insight Education’s Partners in Excellence award.
This award is given to 54 Massachusetts teachers who push their students towards academic achievement. The teachers were selected out of 600 advanced placement teachers in Massachusetts who participate in Mass Insight’s AP Stem program. The teachers who received the award include Nicholas Lippman, Paul Marques, Bradley Gelling and Genoveva Mateeva.
Mateeva expressed that she is “very satisfied and happy for the students and their work.” She described winning the awards as “very unexpected, but it was very satisfying when [she] did.”
Marques also expressed that he is, “honored to receive the award, but the true joy is working with [his] students in the computer science program.
Lippman was first selected based on his students’ performance on their AP exams and his involvement in activities such as teaching at Saturday AP sessions. This is Lippman’s first time winning this award and he expressed that “it is incredibly exciting and rewarding to win this award.” In 2012, he won the National Math and Science Initiative’s “Math Teacher of the Year” award for Massachusetts. In 2011, he won the “Teacher of the Year” award for the Malden High School chapter of the National Honors Society.
“[Lippman is] honored to have won this award and [he is] particularly happy to be winning this award with [his] colleagues,” expressed Lippman. He continued, “[They] have worked together for several years now to improve [their] AP Math program and [he] hope[s] that this award is an indication that [their] teamwork has benefited [their] students.”
Gelling explained that when he won the award he actually wasn’t aware of it and wondered why “people were congratulating [him].” Gelling stated that he was “surprised, honored and thankful.” He has been teaching at MHS for almost nine years, and “[enjoys] the elegant logic of math [because] it’s less subjective than other courses, [which] makes it easier to grade student work.”
Lippman accredits his students for the award because “it was the students who took the exam and earned the scores.” He added that he is “fortunate to have such fantastic and motivated students who show time and again how capable the students of Malden High School are.” In addition, he acknowledged the math department for their teaching abilities “that [have] prepare[d] [their] students so well for success in AP courses.”
All the teachers that won this award have worked towards similar goals of having their students reach their full potential, whether it’s in AP courses or outside of the classroom. Gelling explained that he feels “important qualities of any teacher must include patience and kindness.”
