Keene High's Natalie Ahnert is a lifelong teacher, learner

Sep. 3—Natalie Ahnert has always loved school.

The mathematics teacher at Keene High School, who turned 45 on Monday, grew up in Harrisville and spent her childhood in the same way she now spends most of her days: learning and teaching.

"I had my student Jay, that would be my father," Ahnert said, laughing at the memory Monday afternoon in her classroom at Keene High. "And he would get things wrong so I could correct him. He used to sit in his reclining chair, and I would bring home old workbooks and stuff, so he would have his 'activities' to do."

Harrisville didn't have a public kindergarten at the time, so Ahnert's mother — Dorothy Frazier, herself a longtime local educator — would stay home with her before Ahnert started 1st grade at Wells Memorial School.

But Ahnert, now a Westmoreland resident, always wanted to go to school. Her parents would send her for half-days to a private kindergarten in town for socialization, and her mother would make her lunches and put the ingredients on the countertop at home. From there, Ahnert would pretend she was walking through a hot-lunch line, then sit down and do her schoolwork.

"I was always around the school stuff. I wanted to be an elementary and special education teacher," she said, reminiscing on her years going to the school with her mother who, by Ahnert's 2nd grade year, was the teaching principal at Wells Memorial. "I could fix a copier at a very young age."

But then Ahnert went to Keene Middle School, and a former teacher, Donna Fairbanks, helped her find her passion: mathematics.

Ahnert graduated from Keene State College with a degree in education and mathematics in 1999, and was already working as a long-term substitute at Keene High that spring before joining staff full-time for the 1999-2000 academic year.

During that first year, one of Anhert's colleagues, math curriculum specialist Jim Hansen, visited schools in Massachusetts as part of Keene High's state-mandated re-accreditation process. During one of these visits, he learned about a new curriculum that would come to play a central role in Ahnert's teaching career: Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP). The following school year, Hansen and Ahnert began teaching the language-based math program at Keene High.

"You learn the same materials as pre-algebra through pre-calculus," said Ahnert, "but it's how you learn it that's different."

The program comprises a total of five courses over a four-year curriculum. Students can opt into the program when registering for courses each year. They can also choose to take two IMP courses in one academic year, so by their senior year they can pursue additional math courses, such as calculus, or advanced placement coursework, Ahnert said.

Instead of chapters, students complete modules for each unit, along with a unit goal. Students in the program collaborate in small groups to discover concepts, such as solving linear equations and using trigonometric functions, so instead of being told a mathematical concept and left to question it, students do an activity to discover it.

For example, students in IMP 4 classes are tasked with finding out the perfect time that a man could jump from a rotating Ferris wheel into a bucket of water so that he would, according to Ahnert, "go splash and not splat." They learn basic concepts of physics so they understand how the man wouldn't fall directly down, and then work together to create diagrams and models of Ferris wheels in the class to help them solve the problem, according to Ahnert.

"I feel like they retain it because they came up with it," said Ahnert. "I didn't push it upon them, and we apply the concepts."

In Ahnert's classroom, a custom-built bookshelf by her husband, Erich, who works in construction, holds numerous binders on the IMP curriculum and mathematical concepts. The tables are grouped together in fours, each marked with a playing card. Ahnert welcomes her students at the beginning of each week by asking them to pick a card that determines where they sit for that week. The table shuffling allows students to acclimate to different types of learning styles and personalities, according to Ahnert.

And the IMP program model allows Ahnert to establish a long-term connection with her students. She often greets her students in the hallways with nicknames, which tend to stick with the kids for years to come.

A group of students who graduated in 2020, for instance, were known as the Cry Club — a particularly emotional group of students. This club was one so independently organized that it not only had its own "cry-teria" to join (you had to cry regularly at school and had to have classes that were challenging for you) but its own mascot, a student who didn't cry as often as its official members but still wanted to feel included.

"That's one thing I love about IMP, you've got kids for three, four, five semesters through this program," she said. "You get to know the kids, you get to know the families."

As students go through the IMP program, Ahnert often gets students who've been in her classes before. This way, she can become familiar with their academic strengths and weaknesses, and identify the students who might need some extra support getting them out of their shell, she said.

"It's cool that you don't always have the get-to-know-you phase all over again," Ahnert said.

And the educator isn't immune to nicknames herself, with a former student dubbing her the "IMP-eror of IMP-land" one year.

Outside of "IMP-land," Ahnert helped lead student and class councils at Keene High School prior to having her children Evan, now 15, and Ethan, 13. She has coordinated IMP curriculum training across New England and professional development workshops for mathematics. And even though she received an Outstanding Educator Award at Keene High in 2012 and recently received the Bronze award for Best Local Educator from the Monadnock Shopper News, she shies away from the spotlight.

"I don't like being recognized," she said. "It feels nice to be appreciated, but I really love IMP. I do this for the kids."

Ahnert now dedicates her time to creating a classroom environment that suits all types of learners. Tracey Truncale, who has been classroom neighbors with Ahnert for 20 years, said Ahnert is deeply passionate about the field.

"On the professional side, she's constantly educating herself," Truncale said. "She's going to workshops, listening to podcasts, reading books. She's always learning. On the personal side, when she had kids I think it really changed the way she thought about things in a nurturing sense. You can see she changed the way she taught, kind of asking herself, 'if these were my kids what would I want their teacher to be like?' "

And this passion extends to her students as well, N.H. School Administrative Unit 29 Superintendent Robert Malay said.

"I can't say enough about Natalie," Malay said. "She has been absolutely phenomenal. I've got two [of my own kids] who had her, a third starting this year. Natalie does a really good job at personalizing the learning for the students, I've seen it firsthand. It's comforting."