We’re so excited to share the journey of Linda, one of our brilliant team members here at Maths Circle.
Linda first discovered TT Rock Stars as a classroom teacher back in 2019, when she was looking for a way to help her students master their times tables. What started as a simple Google search turned into a game-changing classroom tool…and eventually, a whole new career path!
The year is 2019, I’m fresh in a leadership role at my beautiful school and am sitting with my Stage 2 Team, pinpointing common areas of teacher frustration. One thing kept popping up as we chatted together, times tables! We knew as a team how crucial of a building block they are to students in their mathematics journey but couldn’t seem to help them stick. I leave the meeting ticking it all over in my mind and wondering if there’s something out there beyond the songs, charts and sheets we’d already tried.
A little bit of Googling later and up pops Times Tables Rock Stars. Something we’d never heard of but were keen to give a go.
Fast forward 6 years later through remarkable student growth, incredibly quick recall speed and a whole bunch of students with confidence soaring…I could never have imagined the path that was to come!
Over those years we’ve had Oz Rocks success, a case study filmed at our school and a couple of visits from the passionate founder and CEO, Bruno. And for me, I’ve now worked as part of the Maths Circle team for over 6 months, loving every minute of it!
Most recently, we’ve celebrated having the top two fastest students in all of NSW in the NSW Rocks competition, as well as some of the top classes, all incredible achievements!
These competitions bring a real buzz to the school, with students working together as classes to achieve the incredible results we’ve seen. We celebrate growth, we celebrate achievements, and we celebrate our students getting passionate about practising times tables!
My weeks look very different to when I was in the thick of full time teaching. The mornings are full of playgroups, park visits and picnics. The middle of the day has me popping my nearly 2 year old son down for a nap and then getting comfy and set up to log on to my TTRS role. During that time I answer emails and help schools get the most out of the platform that I’m so passionate about. I’ve learnt so much already, a real highlight being running monthly webinars for both TTRS and NumBots. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to show schools around the site and highlight some things that I know will make a difference in their classrooms.
I still am working at my school 2 days a week which I also love. Adding in some hours for Maths Circle hasn’t felt like extra work, it’s been so rewarding to engage with teachers and see the product take off in places all over the world! I’ve learnt so much from my new colleagues on the other side of the world and get to be part of a team who are passionate, kind and who truly care about education and making a difference for both students and teachers. I’m excited to see what the next year brings and the growth that I know will continue. What a joy it is to love where you work!