Iowa City Community School District math teacher earns statewide STEM award

This story first appeared in STEM in Iowa 2024, an annual special section distributed in The Gazette that provides an in-depth look at how this educational pathway is having an impact in the classroom as well as in future workforce pipelines.

Katie Rygh has only been teaching mathematics at South East Junior High School for three years. In fact, that’s the total length of her teaching career thus far.

But she’s already making an incredible impact that students, fellow teachers, parents and others are noticing. It’s why Rygh was recently recognized as the Kemin7 Industries and Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council’s Southeast Iowa STEM Region Teacher of the Year.

Now in its 10th year, the award is presented annually to one full-time, licensed preK-12 teacher in each of the six STEM regions in Iowa. Each honoree is recognized for their dedication to fostering an enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and math that extends beyond the walls of the classroom and effectively equips students for high-demand careers in the future. Each awardee receives $1,500, in addition to $1,500 for their classroom.

Rygh said she was honored to be nominated and didn’t even consider that she’d win such an award early in her career. But she is humbled and grateful.

“Originally it was such a cool honor to even be nominated,” she said, noting that she was nominated by one of her coworkers who was also her cooperating teacher while she was student teaching. “So this is a really positive affirmation that I'm doing the right things. I'm making the right connections. I'm helping students in the way I'm supposed to. There's so much struggle in this job, and it can be very hard. So something like this award makes it very evident that yes, I'm doing the right things. I'm headed in the right direction. Getting the award is a huge accomplishment and a big deal at this point in my career.”

Rygh teaches math at grade level seven.

“I usually say this is one of the last few years that math should make sense because it's all concrete. It’s math based on discovery and not on the abstract like what you learn in high school,” she said.

Rygh covers topics like positive and negative numbers, circles and circumference, proportional relationships, scaling up and down, and then ends the year with statistics and data.

She says it’s a delight to work with students at this point in their educational journey.

“They're just so resilient,” Rygh said. “It's hard sometimes when they come in after a different class and already feel like a failure that day. I encourage them that that isn’t what defines them. They have six classes each day, so we talk about how to hit a reset.”

She appreciates the structure of a middle school day.

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“Because it’s chunked into periods, you get a fresh restart often. I feel that for myself as a teacher and I know students feel that for themselves.”

She said her students can be incredibly funny, too.

“It's never the same every day, and I think that's a big part of why I like it so much. At this age in middle school, you are getting to see their growth, and they just change so fast as they are trying to figure things out. It's cool to still be a part of that and get to cheer them on and see them develop over the couple of years that we get to have them here at South East.”

When you ask Rygh what she enjoys most about teaching, she admits her answer is cliché.

“Everyone always says that ‘aha moment’ but that's so true. I really love working with students and seeing their ownership of things and getting to see them reach those breakthrough moments and feel the accomplishment when they do have a full understanding and can explain it to someone else.”

Rygh said she especially loves seeing moments where she’s explained a concept one or two different ways, but then a peer steps in and explains it to a fellow student.

“They are helping each other and developing their own understanding to a point that they can explain to others which is also a really cool thing,” she said.

Her classroom management really fosters that discovery, Rygh said.

“If you were to walk in our classroom, I think you would see that it is a more of a discovery inquiry-based approach … and I think you would see a lot of structure and routine and holding to high expectations,” Rygh said.

Rygh likes to incorporate individual seat work as well as group project work and having students up and moving around the room to engage with one another.

“I believe in that collaboration and encouraging students to work with other people. I've pushed pretty hard this year for their willingness to work with other people. We've had a lot of conversations about not necessarily liking someone but having to be able to work with them,” she said.

And of course, Rygh remains enthusiastic about the subject matter and hopes her students get just as excited about the math concepts they are learning.

“I love teaching this content specifically because it is so hands-on. And because a lot of this math was discovered, I think it feels good to students that they can also discover some of these things. It lets me put a little bit more curiosity and discovery at the forefront of the way we teach this. I think that's pretty cool,” she said.

She’s glad to be part of making an impact on STEM education more broadly, as well.

“STEM education is so important because it encapsulates so many different parts of education in general,” she said. “And we are seeing that those skills are not only listed as part of the common core, but also including creative thinking, flexibility, and problem solving which are so valuable as we become a professional adult no matter where you end up applying yourself. Ideally, I'd love all my students to want to be engineers and scientists and mathematicians. But I know that's not realistic for all 150 students that I teach right now. So I still see such a high value in seeking if they can think creatively, solve a problem or explain things to someone else in a way they understand because that will be so valuable in any workplace setting.”

The award is a nice way to connect that all.

“I think that's pretty cool that we want to acknowledge that STEM is important to our state and is a priority in our education system as something we value.”