About Alexis D. Taylor

My name is Alexis Taylor. I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama. My major is Mathematics Secondary Education. I also did some of my undergraduate studies at Auburn University in Auburn (War Eagle)!!! When I chose math as my major I was not aware of how deep the subject could get but I am happy with my choice. Coming fresh out of high school, I believed that math was just some numbers, variables, graphs and easy calculations but I found out that I was so wrong once I moved past Calculus III. It has been difficult but whatever it takes to educate the future I am for it. I graduated from Huffman High School in 2003. I also attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. My major was Math and Science but I only stayed for a semester because it was a very challenging school and I had no time to socialize. I missed being in the band and did I mention I had no time to socialize!!! At the time I thought of it as college; now looking back, I wish I would have stayed.

I owe my decision to pursue a math education degree to my high school Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry teacher Ms. Little. She has since passed away but her legacy lives on in me and in every one of her students that she taught. As I stated before, I am from Birmingham, Alabama and I attended Huffman High School which is a predominantly black Birmingham public school. I was fortunate enough to have two excellent math teachers while I was there. The lack of a sufficient math experience in high school led me to want to make a change. Inner city schools do not get the best and, therefore, deter students from wanting to learn especially math. I want to get our inner city students back in the classrooms eager to learn math and retain the information. When I was at Auburn I had an experience that changed my attitude. In one of my classes, we were talking about public vs. private schools, suburbs vs. inner city, etc. One of my classmates very blatantly blurted out that he would never teach in an inner city school and that he would only teach in Hoover, Alabama. This upset me because I felt like where I came from was not good enough. Our minority students need good teachers too. From that point on, I vowed to not chase the money but chase the dream of one day turning things around for my people. I am honestly one of those people who is not in the profession for monetary reasons but I could do it for little to no money and feel good about the difference I am making in someone's life. May be hard to believe because who would not want money especially during these times.

These times have not been all frowns for me however. I am a new mommy to a beautiful baby girl Chloe Marie. She is two months and it has been hard this past week trying to juggle her and school but I have to find that strength to make things work in my favor. She is my little bundle of joy and I cannot wait to teach her, you guessed it, MATH!!! Other than enjoying motherhood, I also have a love for music. While in middle school I decided to join the band. My instrument of choice...the flute. I continued this new found love on to high school and had I gone to a HBCU, I am sure I would have been marching in the Magic City Classics or screaming those famous chants. I chose Auburn University because I wanted to be exposed to more than just people who looked like me. It was time to diversify. Now I am at USA and I hope there will be great memories to be made here. I am looking forward to learning a different way to approach teaching mathematics. I can do some comparing and contrasting between the two universities and see which is better in my opinion.