Matty Lau is a Senior Educational Consultant at Teaching Matters. She has a Bachelor’s in Physics from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction, Science Education, from the University of Maryland, College Park.
She brings over two decades of experience in the field of STEM education, from teaching middle and high school STEM subjects at the K-graduate school level to training and developing both new and experienced teachers to creating research-based STEM curriculum to studying and helping manage school improvement network efforts. She has published research articles and presented at national conferences on understanding and improving teaching and schooling practices.
Her particular passion is improving Science and Math education through helping teachers do their best for their students. In the more recent years, she has been able to help high school and middle school math teachers through team as well as individual instructional coaching. She has been able to use her background in Science Education to help math teachers think differently about how to engage their students in mathematics learning, such as making real world connections to algebra.
She also believes that supporting all teachers to elevate and build students’ ideas and understanding in Science and Mathematics is a critical piece to ensuring that all students are able to grow and thrive in their futures. Matty approaches this by looking, with the teacher, at what students do or say in class, on assignments, or in assessments in order to make sense of what scientific or mathematical thinking students are engaged in. This grounds the discussions with teachers on teaching practice in data from classrooms.