Cover Letter

My name is Dylan Ryzner and I live in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. I

currently work as a snowboard instructor at my local mountain in the winter, and I do

maintenance work on a golf course during the summer. I discovered my passion for teaching

during my time as an instructor and made the decision to make a career change to teach high

school math. I received my BS in mathematics from Misericordia University in 2014, and I am

currently enrolled at Drexel University (online) to complete my certification for secondary

education in mathematics. I am now in my second quarter of classes at Drexel and it is enjoyable

to be learning about how to be a better educator. My background experience in teaching

academically is limited to tutoring a few students in math. I have tutored students who were

struggling at the high school level and up through college level calculus. Even though teaching

snowboarding is much less formal than teaching a class in a school, I am still gaining experience

as an educator. As I have learned in my course work so far, there are many parallels between

teaching on the mountain and teaching in the classroom. For example, I need to be very patient

with people who are learning to snowboard for the first time. When the patience pays off and a

student of mine understands and performs a technique we have been working on, the feeling of

accomplishment is unmatched. I admire to feel this accomplishment as a math teacher. I want my

students to understand and appreciate the beauty of math, rather than just going through the

motions to mindlessly solve an equation. In the future, I want to be teaching math classes at a

high school in my local area, hopefully work my way up to teaching AP classes, and possibly

obtaining an MS in education along the way.