Math Teacher, Middle School

COLIN WAYNE HALL

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

NYC Department of Education

Substitute teacher, Math - Kindergarten to High School September 2008-June 2009

I wrote my thesis and completed my M.S. degree while working as a substitute math teacher in a variety of settings from kindergarten to 12th grade. I taught Algebra and Geometry for three months at a high school in Long Island City. I worked for several weeks at various “last chance” alternative high schools teaching students who did not succeed in traditional schools. I experienced the cultural diversity of New York City working in a variety of neighborhoods including Glendale, Cypress Hills, Middle Village, Sunnyside, Crown Heights, Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Corona, Maspeth, Ridgewood and Bushwick. Classroom management is often a challenge and can be much more difficult as a substitute. In some of the more challenging schools I received call backs and praises from principals and administrators for being able to maintain order and to teach a lesson.

Math teacher (Grades 7 & 8), I. S. 291, The Roland Hayes School, Brooklyn, New York September 2003-June 2008

I began my teaching career at I.S. 291 as a New York City Teaching Fellow. I received excellent mentoring and experience teaching 7th and 8th grade math in this chronically low performing school. The school was plagued with low test scores, serious discipline issues and high staff turnover. After five years, with three different principals and an average teacher turnover rate of about 20% per year, the school was finally removed from the New York Sate troubled schools list. The greatest lesson that I learned at I.S. 291 was how to work effectively with the “difficult to teach” students and their families and at the same time to nurture the extraordinary students who can sometimes get lost in a troubled school as this school was. Another challenge at I.S. 291 was to teach grade level lessons and also provide remediation for students who in many cases were four grade levels behind in math and reading. With the many attempts to turn this school around the various principals invested heavily in professional development lessons and academic/behavioral intervention strategies to help the staff move the students ahead. A gift from the children to me that I will always cherish is that many of them told me, Mr. Hall, “I like the way you teach math because the way you explain things makes it easy for me to understand.”

I created and maintained a teacher/class website dedicated to math skills and I successfully integrated technology into my lessons using various software and websites such as thatquiz.com and NCES Kids Zone (http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/.)

Morgan Stanley, New York, New York 1996-November 2002

Associate Vice President, Financial Advisor for Individual and Institutional Investors.

*Recognized as among the top 10% of advisors in Annuities, Options and Mortgages for over 3 years.

*Provided investment advice that included stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, annuities, life insurance, estate and tax planning.

Dime Securities of New York, New York, New York 1995-1996

Financial Advisor for this Brokerage subsidiary of The Dime Savings Bank of New York (now called Washington Mutual)

*Financial Service Manager for 2 bank branches with assets over $250,000,000.

*Supervised 15 customer service representatives in marketing financial services and products.

*Increased securities revenues for each of my branches from an average of $2,000 monthly to an average of $30,000 monthly in just six months.

*I rewrote and simplified the marketing material for the annuity products and then I trained the staff to market one of the 4 annuity products effectively. Once they learned one they were able to figure out the nuances of the others. Our sales increased and we were able to dramatically exceed our sales quotas for the branches.

Janney Montgomery Scott, Bayridge, New York 1986-1994

Financial Advisor for this Regional Brokerage Firm.

*Managed accounts for Individual and Institutional accounts.

* Series 7 securities licensed and New York State Health Life and Annuity Licensed.

EDUCATION

St. John’s University, New York, New York, M. S. Adolescent Education

The New School University, New York, New York, B.A. Liberal Arts

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

CERTIFICATES AND LICENSES

N.Y. STATE TEACHING CERTIFICATE – Professional, Mathematics 7-12

EXAMINATIONS – Math (CST), Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAST), Secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills (ATS-W), Elementary Education.

WORKSHOPS – School Violence Intervention and Prevention, Child Abuse Identification.

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