Ask Freya Broughton what's so cool about statistics and it's hard to get her to stop….“Statistics is really useful, in every area of endeavour! I love how applicable it is in all sorts of research and in everyday life – even with NCEA results…”
Freya completed a BSc(Honours) in Statistics at the same time completing a BMus in performance music – an exacting combination. Then she did a one-year postgraduate teaching diploma, and now she is teaching Maths and Statistics at Takapuna Grammar on Auckland's North Shore - a co-ed school of about 1600 students.
She says she found studying Maths hard work; this meant she and her fellow students worked together figuring things out, “peer teaching”, and as a result she made really close friends! From second semester in her first year, Freya was tutoring Maths papers and found she loved teaching. She was funded by a TeachNZ scholarship that covered the fees for almost all of her study; that means she's bonded as a teacher in New Zealand a year for each year she studied as well, but Freya is quite happy to be in the classroom.
“I love teaching! I love my school! I really love my job! You don't expect to go into a job and love it from the very start but I actually did… the school is really well run and I think that helps hugely. And as a young female Maths teacher, I think my job is pretty secure, as there aren't that many of us around!”
During the summer Freya helped to develop teaching tools using a new Statistics package for secondary schools and undergraduate university courses, and she's keen to spread the word about GenStat to other Maths teachers in her area, so there's more 'peer teaching' ahead…
in a previous summer internship I was doing analyses for sustainability research (students attitudes towards sustainability) and a paper (with more coming) has already been published on it. I truthfully found being published in a journal whilst undergrad pretty exciting. I like that I can do “academic work” (e.g. research, book manual) as well as teaching because them I'm still pushing myself and increasing my knowledge.