Henrico's Top Teachers – Miranda Watson, Godwin HS

For Miranda Watson, there was only one profession that captured both her love of math and coaching soccer — teaching.

Whether it’s on the field or in the classroom Watson seeks to help her students reach their greatest potential through motivation and building relationships.

“I definitely pull on my coaching experience to take something that's complicated and make it easier for them to understand,” said Watson, a math teacher at Mills Godwin High School. “Also building relationships with students I think helps them want to work because they feel more invested if there's someone in the room that they can trust.”

Although math is not every student’s favorite subject, Watson enjoys teaching it because it allows her to show off the value of math and sometimes, if she’s lucky, even change students’ perspectives on the subject.

“I try to have individual and long-term conversations with them about their goals and find a connection to help students see a reason why it’s important for them,” Watson said.

She also finds having a sense of humor and allowing students to work together in the classroom can go a long way for keeping students engaged and confident with the material.

“I’m a very sarcastic person and I like to joke with them, which I think just makes me kind of more relatable,” Watson said. “I also try to give everyone the opportunity to have a voice and feel like it's okay to get something wrong, because we can learn from it.”

It was this humor Watson used while teaching virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect with her students. She found that both she and her students enjoyed beginning class with an off- topic ‘warmup’ question to debate, like “When you make a bowl of cereal, do you put the cereal in first or do you put the milk in first?”

“They found that very entertaining, and I think that came to be actually one of their favorite things in my class from last year,” Watson said. “It gave me the opportunity to hear their voices and to get to know them and their personality a little bit.”

Now in her 13th year teaching all levels of math at Godwin, Watson is a ‘rockstar’ for stepping in and taking almost double the workload this past year to help a co-worker out on medical leave, said a colleague who nominated Watson. On top of the extra classes she teaches, Watson is also always available for student questions and even offers tutoring, the colleague wrote.

But Watson was quick to share the credit with a colleague who helped her manage the workload and keep the focus on the students.

“All the teachers are absolutely amazing, and I have an awesome team of math teachers who stepped up to help in any way that they could,” Watson said. “We just wanted all the students to have the same opportunity to learn.”