{"id":30163,"date":"2011-02-25T10:29:58","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T15:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=30163"},"modified":"2023-11-12T16:17:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T21:17:19","slug":"the-odds-are-with-%e2%80%98all-american%e2%80%99-stats-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/02\/the-odds-are-with-%e2%80%98all-american%e2%80%99-stats-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odds Are With \u2018All-American\u2019 Stats Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Fred<\/a>
UConn alum Fred Carofano instructs students on statistics in his classroom at East Hartford High School. Photo by Amanda Burns, East Hartford High School<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Fred Carofano\u2019s advanced placement students file into his East Hartford statistics class, he hands out a playing card that determines where they will sit and gives them a quick statistics problem to work on. If they get it right, they get a stamp that yields points at the end of the semester and augments their grade. But the real purpose of the exercise is to get them quickly into the mindset for the lesson that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would highly recommend that you all write this down, because you know that if I really like this question there\u2019s a high probability it will show up again,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He speaks in a playful patter, but he\u2019s in teacher mode. He hands out packets of dice that will be used to analyze whether players can win money in a game of chance. \u201cIf you open these dice as I put them on the table, your group will have a zero for the day,\u201d he warns.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Brianna, can you open these dice for me,\u201d he coaxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do it,\u201d some classmates yell.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a test,\u201d Carofano says.<\/p>\n

Rapping for Math<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that Carofano (Neag IB\/M \u201906-\u201907) attracts math-avoiding AP students to his statistics classes at East Hartford High School. No surprise that in his first year of teaching statistics, about half of his class did well enough on the year-end test to qualify. And no surprise that the National Math and Science Initiative<\/a> (NMSI) named him 2009-2010 All American Teacher of the Year in the state\u2019s math category.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe definitely makes a personal connection with students so they\u2019re not afraid of the content,\u201d says Allison Anderson, assistant principal at East Hartford High School and former head of the school\u2019s math department. \u201cThey end up taking challenging courses with Fred because he kind of puts them at ease, but he doesn\u2019t reduce the rigor in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carofano does find meeting ground in the math thicket. To motivate his students one year, he offered to grow out his thick, curly hair and let them shave it off in the spring if they did well on the AP test. When some female students felt left out of the action, he agreed to let them straighten his hair before the big shave-off, and he was a good enough sport to keep it that way for a few periods.<\/p>\n

But his most renowned move to date was to write a stats rap with his musician roommate at the time, and a remix the next year. That won him an interview on WTIC radio in Hartford. The rap is posted on MySpace<\/a> and on the NMSI site, as is his classroom stats blog<\/a>. He plans to top it somehow this school year.<\/p>\n

So throw your hands up and do the AP Stat
\nThe one and only class where we bringin mean back
\nWe rockin p hats
\nAnd kickin math raps
\nTell me bout a class that\u2019s better than that
\nSo from the front to the back and
\nThe x and y axis
\nThrow your r\u2019s high like you\u2019re scatterplot graphin<\/em><\/p>\n

Megan Staples, assistant professor of mathematics education at Neag who taught and advised Carofano, calls his work at East Hartford exceptional. \u201cI recall being at Bulkeley, talking with a seasoned veteran there, who also serves as a cooperating teacher for us, and she mentioned how she was teaching statistics. This was fairly new territory for her. She said she\u2019d been learning a lot (and stealing a lot of materials!) from a teacher at East Hartford. Turns out that was Fred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carofano piloted the AP statistics classes at East Hartford High as part of Project Opening Doors, which aims to get more minority and low-income students into AP courses. As the project\u2019s lead AP teacher, he hosts Saturday review sessions for students in nine participating districts. He worked with statistics textbook author David Bock of Cornell University to try lesson ideas in the classroom. And he teaches an Early College Experience elementary math modeling course through UConn.<\/p>\n

Career Trajectory<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carofano is low key about his accomplishments, and quick to credit past teachers: Jackie Tetreault (Neag BA \u201973) at Lyman High School in Wallingford; Staples and Mary Truxaw, math educators in the Neag School of Education; and associate professor Keith Conrad in the UConn math department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Keith Conrad] was the best math teacher I ever had,\u201d Carofano says. \u201cHe made some crazy math accessible. He\u2019s on a whole \u2019nother level than me. He went on this little rant about how prime numbers were used to encrypt credit cards. One time he went into a bunch of math to explain the Rubik\u2019s Cube to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tetreault, his high school teacher, remembers his excellence in calculus and his humor. \u201cHe is the type of student that every teacher dreams of,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Carofano got the teaching bug in high school, and in college decided to choose math over English as his focus because for him math has more \u201cunexplored territory.\u201d A probability question will pop into his head when he\u2019s playing a board game or waiting at a traffic light. He tries to shape problems for his students that will appeal to their tastes. As for his own, among his many tattoos he wears one that depicts an addition symbol from the Renaissance.<\/p>\n

Carofano gets the routine requests that come to all mathematicians \u2013 that they figure the restaurant bill, or help a friend with a college math class. A guidance official dropped by after class to ask his advice on whether to present professional data via a pie chart or bar chart. But sometimes he\u2019s asked to use his skill in shadier ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone wants to know if you can count cards,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just one up and one down, like it was on the movie [’21’], but you have to do it wicked fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his short time in the field, Carofano already has a success story or two. One he mentions is former student Andrew Jackwin, now a statistics major at American University in Washington, D.C. who gives full credit to Carofano: \u201cWhat I have learned since then is only a product of Mr. Carofano\u2019s teaching. I can say with confidence that I wouldn\u2019t be here right now if it wasn\u2019t for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackwin comes back to the school to visit Carofano\u2019s classes. \u201cHe teaches me statistics now,\u201d says his former teacher.<\/p>\n

Carofano recently moved back to his hometown of Wallingford. His mom and dad are the service manager and parts manager, respectively, at a Toyota dealership. Neither of them was able to go to college. \u201cSo they were pretty happy when I decided to go. \u2026 They took care of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hopes to teach at the college level in the future, and perhaps change subjects, but says what he\u2019d really love to do is come back to UConn and get an advanced degree \u2013 \u201csomething in math.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn alum is increasing the probability that East Hartford students will take AP Statistics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-30163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 04:41:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30163"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206878,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30163\/revisions\/206878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30163"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=30163"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}