BOXERWOOD RISING:

Meet Jacob Zimmerman, LDMS Math Teacher

Throughout our 25th year, we’ll be sharing stories of young people whose Boxerwood experiences shaped their passions and vocations. Have a young friend to recommend? Contact Catherine Epstein: catherine@boxerwood.org

Jacob Zimmerman loves math. He loves it so much that he majored in the subject at Bridgewater College, and he now teaches math to 6th and 8th graders at Lylburn Downing Middle School in Lexington. Growing up, though, math was a struggle. “It didn’t make sense,” he explained. “It wasn’t accessible to me. And then moving up, I could add, multiply, subtract, and divide, but I didn’t know why these things were happening. It felt abstract.”

That all changed when this Buena Vista native encountered a “fantastic teacher” at Parry McCluer High School. “She just made it click,” he recalled. “She was willing to work with me one-on-one, on topics that I needed – not necessarily topics that were taught in the class, but if I struggled in a different topic in math, she would help and find a way to describe it.” As a math educator now, Zimmerman said, “I want to do that as well, for other students.”

This powerful moment – when an abstract subject suddenly becomes relevant – is something Jacob also experienced as a child during Boxerwood programs. In middle school, he travelled with Boxerwood to Glen Maury Park to test the health of the Maury. “I remember it being catered to our region,” he explained. “So we were testing water for pesticides and animal waste because of the farms near our rivers.” The water testing also felt personally relevant: “My grandparents owned a farm, and still do, and that’s where we got our water for our animals. So the health of the river was important for us too.” 

He also recalls place-based learning at Boxerwood when he was even younger (age 8!): “Specifically I remember talking about habitats, and we had to build a habitat in the forest for an organism so they could survive.” Jacob explained that he loved the tangible nature of habitat-building: “I like hands-on learning…you were out in the woods, and you got to find sticks and build with them…I think that’s what made it memorable.”

As a teacher, Jacob’s Boxerwood story has now come entirely full-circle – he now experiences Boxerwood through his students and their own Boxerwood experiences. Jacob says his classes always look forward to their Boxerwood programs, both because the activities are “more hands-on,” and because of Boxerwood’s sequential, multi-grade curriculum that exposes students to environmental learning with increasing levels of complexity. Boxerwood students “have background knowledge as they grow older,” Jacob explains, “because they start in elementary school and they remember the things that they did earlier. Then they get to middle school and they can apply those things.” Jacob’s own students are “doing service projects now, so they can actually see what they did in elementary school and how it grows over time.” 

Given his work as an educator, Jacob is now attuned to the unique style of teaching he has experienced at Boxerwood: “I definitely appreciate the care that people at Boxerwood had, and the enthusiasm.” He now applies these values to his own classroom: “That’s how I feel about math," he said. "I take the care and enthusiasm to make it enjoyable, and to make their learning the best it can be.” Like Boxerwood, he also works to make activities both relevant and tangible. His 6th grade class is learning about integers – positive and negative whole numbers – and he illustrates this by discussing a person swimming down from sea level. When they discuss coordinate planes, “they have to plan a city using a coordinate plane, because that’s a grid and that’s what city planners do.” In 8th grade, he especially enjoys teaching consumer math, including topics relevant to life like tax, tips, real estate, and commission. 

Reflecting on his experiences with Boxerwood – both as a student and teacher – Jacob returned again to these values of care and relevance. “What makes Boxerwood special is that it’s made up of people that are in our community,” he said. “It’s not some fancy company or corporation…It’s community members whose kids went through the same public school that they’re now helping.” He added that beyond educational programs, “it’s good to see Boxerwood doing community projects. They’re helping with the downtown tree project in Buena Vista. We see them in the community.”

When asked what else he’d like to add about Boxerwood, Jacob spoke again from his full-circle perspective: “I feel that students are blessed. They should experience everything that Boxerwood has in store for them.”