Kaycie Belangeri teaches sixth grade math at Mountain View School. She has been teaching for nine years.

Belangeri is originally from Riverside, California. She taught in California before her family relocated to Arizona for her husband’s job. “I certainly won’t ever go back. I love Arizona,” she says.

Belangeri was a good student when she was in school. She recalls, “I excelled in both math and English Language Arts, and I enjoyed the part of math where you can find different solutions to a problem.” Now, she enjoys teaching those different solutions to her students. Her experience in school also inspired Belangeri to become a teacher.

“I had a particular teacher, a math teacher, who was very smart and silly and I really enjoyed his class,” Belangeri says. “You see the teachers who care…who try to connect with you, and you respect them,” she explains.

That’s a lesson Belangeri held on to in addition to her love of math. Colleague Melanie nominated Belangeri. Melanie writes, “She is such a great teacher that deserves recognition for all of her hard work. She cares so deeply about her students and is always thinking of new ways to better help her students learn math. She makes her classroom feel safe, fun, and a place all students want to be.”

When she is not in class, you might find Belangeri outdoors or at one of her two children’s team sports. “My family and I love to camp,” she says, and they also love to travel. Each summer they go on a road trip, Belangeri says. This year they went to South Dakota and visited Mt. Rushmore.

Belangeri admits she can get distracted. She says she has gone out wearing different shoes and once got preoccupied “thinking of something else and taught a complete lesson that was for the next day.” She says one of the funniest things that happened while teaching was during COVID. She decided to go outside while teaching a remote lesson, but she kept being interrupted by the bleating of the neighbor’s goat!

Ultimately, Belangeri hopes that her students take away the message that education should be valued and that they should never stop learning. She encourages them to “make mistakes, fail faster” to keep the learning chugging along.

“I’m passionate about teaching,” she says. “There’s nothing I would rather be doing. I really enjoy it.”