By Teesta Bhola-Shah
If you haven’t taken one of his classes, you’ve probably seen him in the math wing of the school, or seen someone doing the homework he’s assigned. This month’s teacher spotlight features someone who probably has the largest tie collection in the entire school, and is many people’s favorite math teacher—that’s right, Mr. Lynott.
Mr. Lynott has been teaching in Chatham for a long time, 19 years, to be exact. “I actually started off here as the math supervisor,” he said. Over the years, he moved from high school supervisor to 6–12 supervisor, but he always stayed connected to the classroom. When the district began moving toward K–12 supervision, he knew it wasn’t for him. “I wanted to stay in the classroom,” he said, which is why he decided to switch to teaching math. Now, he’s taught just about every level of math and every course, giving him a long standing experience of teaching at CHS.
When asked what originally inspired him to become a teacher, Mr. Lynott didn’t hesitate to point to family. “My father was a teacher, and I genuinely appreciated the time he had during the summers with us, on weekends,” he said. He described how his father made teaching feel like a meaningful and balanced career. Sports also played a big role. “Sports has always been a really big part of my life,” Mr. Lynott explained, and teaching allowed him to stay involved through coaching. “For the first ten years of my career,” he explained, “I coached a whole bunch of sports—soccer, track, tennis.”
Interestingly, math wasn’t always his original plan. Mr. Lynott shared that he “started off as a physics education major,” but after having “a couple of really outstanding math professors” in college, and not the best experience with physics, he switched paths. “That’s why I switched,” he said, eventually earning his education degree from the University of New Haven.
Over the years, Mr. Lynott feels that teaching has changed quite a bit. “I think a lot of changes have really been not in isolation,” he said. “There’s a lot less of teacher just stands at the board and just lectures for 40 minutes.” Instead, he described how classes all in all subjects have become more interactive, which he sees as a positive shift across education as a whole.
This is especially true in math. One of the biggest changes, according to Mr. Lynott, is encouraging students to discover ideas on their own. “Less ‘I’m going to tell you what to do’… and a little more of ‘I’m going to scaffold things,’” he explained. He wants students “seeing patterns, seeing connections before being given them,” because noticing something on your own “is going to lead to more value to you and better memory.”
When it comes to students, though, Mr. Lynott says he hasn’t noticed huge changes over time. Chatham has always been full of “super high achievers” who are involved in many activities. If anything, he’s noticed that students talk to each other more, but that’s something he actively encourages anyway. “That’s what I want happening,” he said.
One of the biggest challenges of teaching today, especially in Chatham, is how success is defined. “The main goal is you want [students] to be successful,” Mr. Lynott said, adding that success looks different for everyone. “Someone might consider that getting a C in an honors class. Someone might consider it getting an A.” What matters most to him is that students “feel good about what they’re doing.”
To help students who feel intimidated by math, Mr. Lynott tries to normalize mistakes. “We all make mistakes,” he said. “We all add one and one wrong at some point.” When he messes up in class, he makes a point to acknowledge it and thank students who catch it, reinforcing that mistakes are part of learning. He also emphasized that his “classroom door is open” for extra help whenever students need it.
His advice to students struggling in math is simple but specific: ask better questions. “‘I don’t get it’ isn’t helpful,” he said. Instead, he encourages students to say things like, “I don’t understand why you did that in step three,” because that leads to real understanding rather than just memorizing steps.
When asked what he enjoys most about teaching, Mr. Lynott mentioned students coming back after graduation. “I love when students come back and thank me for preparing them for college,” he said, especially when they can point to specific skills they learned in his class. He also loves attending student activities, from plays and concerts to sporting events. “I like to see the students in the areas that they truly love,” he explained.
Looking back on his career, Mr. Lynott said one of the moments he’s most proud of was when Chatham High School was ranked the number one public high school in New Jersey based on testing data, following changes he helped implement as math supervisor. “I was a very, very small piece of that,” he said, but being part of it was still “pretty nice.”
In the end, what Mr. Lynott hopes students remember isn’t him, but what they learned about themselves. “I would hope that they would remember they can overcome challenges,” he said, “and that they continue to challenge themselves and push themselves.” For Mr. Lynott, that mindset is more important than the equations or formulas he teaches in class.
