The Paw Print

By Madeleine Spanbauer

Mr. Kammeyer, an Honors Geometry and Pre-calc teacher, enjoys seeing live music and reading in his free time. 

As Payton welcomes the class of 2027 into the building for the first time, it also welcomes a cohort of 17 new teachers, staff, and school administrators joining the WPCP community. I met with Mr. Kammeyer to hear his story.

Paw Print: What is your role at Payton?

Mr. Kammeyer: I am teaching honors geometry and honors precalculus.

Paw Print: What has your experience been like so far?

Mr. Kammeyer: It’s been great, and it’s fantastic. The kids are all very motivated and are really unique people. I’ve loved being around them, and my coworkers are great. It’s awesome, really, and I love it. 

Paw Print: What led you to come to teach at Payton?

Mr. Kammeyer: I’ve been teaching for about four years, and I think that Payton just really has, I think, a clear vision for the type of student that they’re trying to create and the values that they have. I feel like I really aligned with that throughout the interview process, and I feel like this is a place that values critical reasoning and critical thinking, and also using mathematical reasoning skills to approach all kinds of important problems in the world. That’s something that I want to inspire in students, and so I think that this is the place where I’ll be able to get better at that and feel good about the work I do. 

Paw Print: How long have you been in education, and what grades and subjects have you taught in the past?

Mr. Kammeyer: Well, isn’t life just one giant learning process? This is my fourth year teaching formally, but I had a variety of education-related part-time jobs throughout college. I’ve always done math, and it’s usually been juniors and seniors so this is my first time teaching freshmen in geometry. It’s usually always been Precalculus or AP Statistics.

Paw Print: What education-related jobs did you have in college?

Mr. Kammeyer: I tutored for the math department, and I worked as a learning assistant which is basically a TA for a precalculus class. I was also a TA and an assistant curriculum developer for a class called Social Justice Calculus, which was a fusion between sociology and “short-calc”, which would be a calculus class with a focus on applications. It’s really cool that Payton has Rehumanizing Math because I spent two years working on a college class that had very similar goals.

Paw Print: What led you to pursue a career in education?

Mr. Kammeyer: I think I went into college knowing that I liked math, although even in my senior year of high school I thought that education would be cool. I think I got more serious about education when I met people who were involved in politics and making the world a better place because that always resonated with me. I started to meet people in education, and the way that they looked at the world with a sense of optimism, as well as the social wisdom that they had to make the world a better place, really resonated with me. The more work that I did in math education, the more I liked it.

Paw Print: What are some of your hobbies that you have outside of school?

Mr. Kammeyer: For me, seeing live music is a big one; shouts out to the Chicago Music History seminar that I’m running. I like reading books, and running is another big one that I like to do. I’m trying to work my way up to a half marathon. 

Paw Print: How do you plan to support students in high school and prepare them for the future?

Mr. Kammeyer: I think that the math classroom specifically is a place where students practice their creative problem-solving abilities and communication skills. In the classroom, I try to prioritize those two things. Every day, a student should be thinking about, “How do I fit these pieces together in this challenging thing that I don’t really know all the answers to right away, and how do I communicate with people to get that solution eventually?” I think, even if kids don’t want to pursue a career directly related to mathematics, just having those experiences in the classroom will enrich their own lives in a lot of ways. Providing space for stuff like that in class, as well as trying to help out more with the math team, helps me to help students boost resumes in some way, too.

Paw Print: Do you feel like the math classes that you took when you were younger affected the way that you teach now?

Mr. Kammeyer: I would say so. I think that my calculus teacher was one of my favorite teachers in high school. He was one of those guys who would have seven different colored markers in his hands, and he would do all of these elaborate drawings and lose track of time. But honestly, the teacher who influenced me the most was probably my Advanced World Literature teacher. He also saw that the things we did in the classroom were very much connected to making the world a better place and seeing yourself as part of a larger community, which is something that I try to draw inspiration from. 

Paw Print: Do you have any experience with working toward building equity in the classroom?

Mr. Kammeyer: Absolutely. One of the minors in my degree is Racial Justice in Urban Schooling and one of the specific issues that a lot of my education focused on was how to decrease racial disparities that are perpetuated by the education system in America. I can’t say that I have the clearest answers to all of a sudden make these kinds of problems go away, but I think that having an eye for the outcomes in your classroom and managing those is something that I try to think of a lot. Also making sure that my teaching process itself isn’t something that is catered toward specifically an upper-middle-class way of learning is important. It shouldn’t be tailored to references in a specific socio-cultural web that excludes everybody else and requires students to have extra time when not everybody does because certain students come from different backgrounds where they don’t have free time or the ability to do things. 

Paw Print: What do you believe are some of the most important challenges that high schoolers need to face?

Mr. Kammeyer: The world’s getting stranger every day, and I think that climate change is a big one that looms over my head. I think that’s a big one that you guys are going to have to try to figure out. I’m not trying to totally shift it onto you, but it keeps getting hotter and we keep pumping you guys out into the world, so I feel a similar responsibility to help you think through big problems and how to solve them. I think that high schoolers have the ability to be more empathetic than adults, and I think that growing up sometimes involves a certain loss of empathy. I think one of the challenges is not losing that empathy and caring about each other and not becoming apathetic to the world. 

Paw Print: What’s been your favorite part about Payton so far?

Mr. Kammeyer: Definitely the ping pong tables. I like seeing the passion and that zest for life there. Curriculum night was great, too because the parents are really cool.