Meet Maria
Maria Elena Santos has been teaching 4th grade in Florida for over 22 years. She started her career in Miami, where she was born and raised, before moving to the Tampa Bay area to raise her family with her husband Carlos.
Known around her school as "the math whisperer," Maria has a gift for reaching students who've given up on math. Her approach combines old-school persistence with new-school empathy, built on years of trial and error (mostly error, she'll tell you).
Maria started this blog to share the hard-won wisdom she wishes someone had shared with her back in 2004 when she was a nervous first-year teacher wondering if she'd made a terrible career choice. Spoiler: she didn't.
When she's not grading papers or planning lessons, Maria can be found at her daughter Daniela's college volleyball games, helping her son Marcus with his college applications, or convincing Carlos that yes, she really does need to spend Sunday afternoon prepping for the week.
She holds a B.S. in Education from the University of South Florida and an M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction. But she'll tell you that her real education happened in the classroom, one challenging student at a time.