When it comes to math, Mrs. Mandell is the biggest fan. Mandell has been a teacher at Victor for as long as she has been a teacher, 23 years, hired the day before graduation from Geneseo. “I Liked the campus feel of it. I thought it was really cool that it was almost like a community where, in Fairport where I grew up, every single school was kind of separated by a lot of space, so you really didn’t know everyone until you kind of got to the high school together.” 

Throughout the years being a Victor, many things changed in her experience, “When I first started there were no cell phones… a lot more issues with distractions, now, and a lot more issues with feeling like I’m competing with a lot of technology. In a good way, because of the fact they can use it for delta math and stuff. But in a bad way because I am not as interesting as instagram.” Changes in technology throughout the years, changed the style of teaching math, but never changed Mrs. Mandell’s style of teaching. 

It is clear to students and staff that know Mrs. Mandell well that her teaching style is quite different from other teachers around the school. “I’m louder. I say it like it is. I am sensitive in a different way. I basically tell it straight and show people that I care based on just being as honest as possible with them… I am not super ‘huggy’, I am more kind of in your face, but at the same time, I hope that it’s not intimidating”.

Mrs. Mandell didn’t automatically decide to be a teacher. She didn’t realize until Junior year of high school that being a teacher is what she wanted to be. Her biggest inspiration was her math teacher, Mrs. Incardona. “Mrs Incardona. She was 100% my mentor, and I wanted to be a teacher because of her” didn’t know up until junior year “dancing in front of me, like she literally stood on the window sill and started dancing some of the proofs that we needed for trig proofs down a window sill. I thought, Oh my god, somebody is making math fun.” 

Mrs. Incardona really helped shape Mandell’s teaching style and love for teaching math especially, “For me I just wanted to make people love it and she made me people love it. So I was like if I could just make people love it, it would be great.”

Now, everyone is always wondering how math, especially higher level subjects like Geometry, Algebra, Calculus, etc, really benefit us in the long-term away from school. It is always assumed that we are forced to take the course just to get the credit to graduate highschool, and that it is not realistic.“Things are handed to people and never have to problem solve.” 

People now are more likely to problem solve. Math skills, looking at what you have,  “In the long term, math helps people not give up on things that are challenging and helps them kind of preserve when things get really difficult.” 

Mrs. Mandell’s teaching style and love for math overall changed people’s lives outside of school. “My biggest prized honor as a teacher for 23 years is that I created 6 math teachers. So I’ve had 6 people come back to me and tell me they became math teachers because they wanted to do it like I did.”