Photo submitted by Melanie Cabral.
This year Malden High School welcomed a new math teacher, Melanie Cabral. She was a student teacher at MHS three years ago and worked in the Revere school system for several years. She decided to return to Malden because the teachers were “more than happy to share resources,” and were “very helpful in terms of collaborating with each other.”
Math teacher leader, Kayla Scheitlin, said, ”[she thinks] Cabral is very dedicated and hard-working and very prepared.” Fellow math teacher Jennifer Harrison agreed with Scheitlin, adding that Cabral is “very organized” and “very mature.”
When discussing her strengths, Cabral said she considers her ability to “[get] to know [her] students” and, ”[form] relationships with them” as a strength. She said, “she wants to get to know her students” while also making sure, “[she] still seems professional.”
Scheitlin also recalled having noticed, “how passionate [Cabral] was about being at Malden High.” Cabral stated that she was “glad to be [at Malden High School] during a time when teachers are relying on each other so much.”
In her free time, Cabral watches movies and plays video games. “[She likes] Marvel movies, Star Wars, and things like that,” as well as games such as “Animal Crossing and Mario Kart.” She also really appreciates “getting to explore different areas and neighborhoods, [going] to museums, [trying] different types of foods, [and] everything like that.” She knew she wanted to “be in a more urban, diverse school district,” a quality that Malden proudly boasts.
Cabral decided to teach math due to her enjoyment of the subject, and because she recalled that “a lot of [her] friends struggled with math [in school] and [she] was always the first person [they would] come to for help.” She realized teaching math was something she was interested in pursuing professionally. She also “[had] always [been] drawn to more STEM fields.” Some of the teachers she had in high school also inspired her to become a teacher.
This year, Cabral is teaching Advanced Quantitative Reasoning (AQR) CP and Math 2 CP, as well as math strategies and problem solving (MSPS). So far she has been handling the transition to distance learning very well and is overall feeling very “glad to be at a place like Malden High School.”
