Martha Jacobsen – MATH DEPARTMENT, 1985-2021
Martha is a devoted teacher, colleague, mother, daughter, and spouse with an unrelenting desire to create inclusive environments based on mutual understanding and exploration. Martha also has a penchant for taking care of any and all business quietly, effectively, and creatively.
Martha is a model educator because she is the epitome of a lifelong learner. Her son Erik recalls: “One thing that I will al- ways remember about my mom in regards to teaching was how freaking early she would wake up in the morning before school. For my entire life, she woke up between 3 am and 5 am and would quietly and diligently prepare for her classes. This was a time that very few people saw, and her sheer effort, attention, and consistency was something I always found to be awe inspiring. Day after day, week after week, year after year, she would show up at the kitchen table to prepare her lessons and to make sure she was prepared to give her best to her students.”
To provide context, a for- mer chair commented, “Martha began at Milton, in 1985, surrounded by a department of men, where she was always trying to rise to the challenges of being on par with that group, and that Martha reported being motivated “by fear at first and as a matter of survival as she knew that [she] had to be on top of [her] game.”
She worked incessantly to learn, grow, and build an extremely deep knowledge of math across the curriculum, with a goal of teaching the more advanced classes. Martha writes about the moment when she “just stopped being afraid….what a relief to discover I knew enough.”
Even still, Martha continues to push the boundaries of her knowledge through both initiating discussions with col- leagues and researching myriad topics to inform her teaching and provide a compelling classroom environment. This includes designing a new course in mathematical statistics to help align our curriculum with the demands of the 21st century. As one former colleague says, “Martha is one of the best teachers and community builders I have ever encountered, but she does it all in a way that does not draw attention to herself.”
You see, Martha seeks to know her mathematical topics so well that she could help her students uncover some of their infinite beauty. Martha had a particular love of geometry and its connections to both nature and art, and her classrooms were always decorated with beautiful intersections of all three, created by her students as projects in her classes. The tesselations, the 27-cubic-foot Menger Sponge (whose theoretical volume is zero, of course!), and the Beehive mobile created for the Math Expo in 2019 are just a few examples. Martha was known by her colleagues to be both thoughtful and supportive.
In her early years, she and Kurt co-led a group of teachers in learning the practice of active listening and trust building to discuss whatever concerns were at the top of their minds, which sounds like an early rendition of Circle Practice. And in more recent years, Martha was “all in” in her work with the Teaching and Learning Team as she sought to cultivate an even healthier learning culture among the faculty.
For me, I will always cherish the trust and support that she gave me when I first came to Milton as chair, and mostly as a driver of discussions centered around the teaching and learn- ing of statistics. Every conversation with Martha involves a hearty dose of learning and laughing. You see, Martha has a wonderful sense of humor, and a tolerance for mine. I am lucky to have worked with her for the past 20 years.
Martha has been a devoted family member, an avid garden- er, and always on the lookout for some new rabbit hole to dive into. And so we hope that in retirement Martha has more time for all. She will be missed in so many ways. Thank you! — GREGG REILLY