Since joining the Friends Select community three years ago, Sowmya Srinivasan has cemented her place as one of the most beloved teachers at our school. While she might not be the loudest faculty presence in the building, she makes as much of an impact as anyone else. Beyond her ability to break down complicated mathematical concepts, Sowmya is a fascinating conversationalist with a hidden musical side.

Sowmya grew up in South Brunswick, New Jersey. Her high school experience was pretty different than that of the average Friends Select student — her graduating class had 975 kids. As a teenager, Sowmya says that the current Friends Select student who she was most similar to is Sierra Wei ‘21. “You can probably guess [that I was not a partier],” says Sowmya. She attended Byrn Mawr for college, where she met her “eclectic” group of friends, most of whom she’s still in touch with. She says some of her friends were math majors, “but a lot of them were from random subjects. We bonded mostly over activities.”

Contrary to what her current career might suggest, Sowmya was not initially a math person. When she was very young, she wanted to grow up to be an artist. Later on, she was drawn to economics and thought she might work at a nonprofit someday.  She became interested in math later down the road when it “became more logical, and you had to construct arguments.” In graduate school, she first TA’d, then taught classes on her own. “That was really the part of grad school that I liked,” she says. “When you teach college classes you’re only with students for fourteen weeks, and then they go away. I liked high school because you get to watch kids progress through their education.” Friends Select is the first K-12 school that Sowmya has worked for.

Although she spends more of her workday in a math classroom, Sowmya would fit in just as well in the Dojo. She has played violin since she was seven, specializing in Indian classical music. Playing an instrument shapes the way she thinks about math as well. As someone who once felt she wasn’t good at math, she has now realized that “[math] is something that can be practiced, like learning an instrument… It’s deeper than just multiplying things together.”