This year, Friends Select welcomes back alum Nicole DiGironimo as an Upper School Geometry and Algebra 2 teacher.
While this is Nicole’s first year teaching high school full-time, Nicole has been tutoring and teaching college for 25 years. In her previous jobs, she tutored high school students in all subjects and taught engineering, physics, business math, business English, science education, cost control, and job readiness at the college level. She has taught at Drexel University, completed post-graduate work at the University of Delaware, and also taught at JNA Institute of Culinary Arts, a post-secondary school in South Philly owned by her dad, Joseph DiGironimo, who also attended Friends Select.
As a past student at Friends Select, Nicole was excited to return as a teacher. “Since I attended Lansdowne Friends and Friends Select, I was aware of what Quaker schools and Quaker education look like. I wanted to be in a community that teaches and values the whole student and that also values me and the unique skills and knowledge I can bring to my classroom,” Nicole explains.
Nicole aspires to help her students understand that anyone can be a “math person”. She says that in general, math takes time and patience, and that everyone can be good at it. She’s excited to talk to students who don’t like math and help them enjoy the subject. So far, she has enjoyed how supportive all the faculty and staff are.
Her classroom is run with parts of class like the daily exercises, where students can show their understanding of concepts, and comprehensive review sheets for each chapter. She also hopes to develop some projects where she can take students into the city.
“Continuous learning and playfulness are two of my core values — so it’s really important to me to balance learning what we need to learn with some fun!” says Nicole.
Outside of the classroom, Nicole enjoys going on hikes and walks with her husband and nearly always has music playing. She can also be found caring for her three pets: a tuxedo cat named Barry, an orange tabby cat named Max, and a tortoise named Gus.
As evident in her classroom, Nicole loves games. She has an assortment of board games and card games kept at school for her 10th-grade advisory, always has a fun math game written on the board for her students, and loves to play Dungeons & Dragons outside of school. She also enjoys reading and crafting.
You can find Nicole in STEAM in room 1205.
