Ann Ban discovered her love of teaching 40 years ago when after earning her Bachelors Degree in mathematics and behavioral research, she declined a job offer at Brookhaven National Laboratory, choosing instead to accept an offer to complete the school year for a kindergarten teacher who had unexpectedly ill at her sister’s elementary school. When she later moved from New York to California, she began teaching at Martin School in the South San Francisco Unified School District where she observed that the boys in her kindergarten classes were less prepared for reading than the girls. Responding to this need, she began an innovative after-school readiness program.
Ann applied to a national project that sought to utilize computer programming in the teaching of mathematics, and was the only female among the ten teachers in the country to participate in a project called “Math World.” She added a computer science teaching credential to her repertoire and began teaching computer programming at Westborough Junior High where she extended computer lab hours to increase student access.
Ann became the Team Leader of Stanford’s project utilizing computers for math and science instruction, and was the subject of a film made by Princeton University documenting the groundbreaking work that she was doing with her students in math and science. She later became a Professor of Mathematics at Skyline College and continues as a Professor Emeritus today. Ann’s decision to step into a kindergarten classroom so many years ago led to a lifetime of innovation and making a difference in the lives of youth and adults throughout the county.
