Profile: Mr. Mandujano’s love for math

By Joseph C.

From a young age, Albert Mandujano found his love for math early on and now, as a math coach, he shares the power and knowledge of this complex subject with his community. 

“I would say that math explains almost everything that happens in the world,” he said. 

While math for many is their least favorite subject in school, Mandujano found his love for math around middle school when working at his grandma’s mini market. 

While working at his grandma’s mini market, he would do lots of different tasks such as stocking items, being a cashier, and other mundane tasks. 

Working at the market made him realize how good he was at dealing with numbers and math.

 “I was really good with adding things up, subtracting things and just anything dealing with prices or items around the store,” he said. 

At first Mandujano wasn’t planning on being a math teacher.

He originally wanted to be in law enforcement as well as a computer scientist but decided to get into teaching to come back and give to his community.

As a math teacher, he said he had to deal with students who didn’t want to learn. 

To tackle this he would build a rapport with his students and build the student-teacher relationship.

When asked how has experience as a math teacher was, Mandujano said “I always loved it” and how “it was great making connections to how we can use basic math or algebra in everyday life.”

Afterwards, he became math coach and focused on helping other teachers with lesson planning and other activities dealing with math.

When helping to make lessons, he keeps the student experience in mind to make math more engaging. 

“A lot of students hate math and to be honest with you they hate it for the wrong reasons,” he said. 

At first the transition from being a math teacher to a coach was tough for him. 

“When you go to another position, you know, in the beginning it’s difficult, you’re learning, you’re asking a lot of questions, you’re looking for support,” he said. 

But after a while Mandujano got the hang of it and said that, “The more years you have behind you, the better things will be down the road.”

Mr. Mandujano also works with teachers but in order to do that, he said he builds trust first. 

When asked how to build trust with his fellow teachers, he said, “The trust is built with that transparency, understanding, listening, and just saying how it is.”