After 16 years of teaching middle school, math teacher Paula Lee has moved up to teach high school at Blue Springs South.
Her previous job was teaching middle school math in the Grain Valley district, and Lee says she’s been ready for the change.
“I taught seventh grade math forever, and seventh grade math is probably the hardest year in school,” says Lee. “I wanted something different, and I wanted harder math. And so, this job opened, and I interviewed for it. And I got it, and I was really excited.”
Lee says that, beyond the math, teaching high school kids is different from teaching middle schoolers.
“The kids are nicer. They’re more polite. The kids care about like, outside of themselves. Middle schoolers are pretty self-centered,” says Lee.
Working with the kids is one of Lee’s favorite part of teaching.
“I love the kids, and I love the kids of South, like I said before. Middle schoolers are so into themselves. But like, high schoolers, they share a lot, and they ask a lot about you as well and so it’s refreshing. They see you as a person, not just as a teacher,” Lee says.
With being a math teacher, Lee loves to help kids who dislike math.
“I want to inspire other people to love math. I really like the kids who don’t like math, and I like working with them. I like making them believe they can be mathematicians,” Lee says.
Lee herself graduated from to Blue Springs High School, as did her kids.
“They [her kids] think I’m a traitor,” says Lee. “They’re like, Mom, are you serious? But it’s fine. I love this school.”
Though she loves to teach math, Lee didn’t imagine herself as a teacher when she was younger.
“For a long time, I wanted to be a lawyer. And then I had a counselor in high school who was like, ‘I don’t know why you want to be a lawyer; you are so good at math and science. You need to look at math and science career paths,’” Lee says.
So, she went to University of Kansas and got her degree in civil engineering.
After she had her first baby, Lee became a stay-at-home mom, and then eventually a teacher.
“I loved civil engineering, but I was a traffic engineer,” says Lee. A traffic engineer is someone who plans, designs, and manages the traveling of people and goods on the roads. Her day started at 6 a.m., when rush hour started and ended at 6 p.m., when rush hour ended.
That kind of workday didn’t work for her or her kids.
“I just wouldn’t have been able to juggle all of that, and I wouldn’t be a mom. … I mean this [being a teacher] allows me to still use my math and then inspire other people to be mathematicians or engineers or whatever,” Lee says.
Lee has three kids, all of them out of the house with jobs in the STEM field.
“My oldest is a physical therapist. My middle is a mechanical engineer, and my youngest is a civil engineer. … and my husband’s also a physical therapist. We’re all math and science people. And I have two cats,” says Lee.
When not teaching math, Lee enjoys watching sports, spending time with her family and listening to music.
“My favorite artist is Prince,” says Lee. “Our favorite local band is called Cherry Bomb, and they play locally, and so whenever they’re playing, we try and go listen to them.”
One of her biggest hobbies is reading, and she has found a role model in Jane Hawk from the Jane Hawks series by Dean Koontz.
“She’s looking for the bad guys, but she always does the right thing, even when it’s hard. … And she’s just takes on everybody and everything, always does the right thing. And she doesn’t always win right, but she knows that she can be true to herself at the end of the day,” Lee says.
Lee is most excited to get to see all the extracurricular activities at South.
“Honestly, we don’t do a lot of that in middle school,” says Lee, “like the extracurricular activities are very limited. And so, I am looking forward to going to football games, I’m looking forward to going to the musicals, I’m looking forward to forensics.”
When Lee came to South, she first noticed how helpful everyone is.
“My first impression of self was how nice everybody is,” Lee says. “Everybody is so helpful. All the other teachers are helpful. The kids are helpful. Everybody’s patient, like when you mess up, right? And they’re willing to help you and be patient while you figure things out.”
