Meet Tim Scifres

We were lucky to catch up with Tim Scifres recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tim, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I believe confidence and self-esteem are built through a couple of main factors. One factor is having experience in many different situations both personally and professionally. As a high school teacher for the past 27 years, along with coaching basketball for nearly a decade, I was put into many situations that required flexibility, patience, responding tactfully, and think of my feet. Dealing with many situations involving students, administrators, parents, and others has given me confidence in being able to handle interactions with others. Another factor, I believe in growing my confidence and self-esteem has been. Another factor that gives me confidence is being organized and prepared. Preparation helps be lessen stressors, which gives me confidence in my ability to take care of tasks that are a part of my life.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I have been working in schools for over 30 years, 27 of which I have been a high school math teacher. I love showing kids that numbers are not the big, bad, scary thing so many kids believe them to be. I also love telling kids that they ARE math people. I do not believe there is a genetic aspect of our being to give us a math brain or not. I believe kids can learn so much more than they might believe they can.

This belief helped me to open a Mathnasium Learning Center in Lexington in 2016. We have spent the last nine years preaching the message in Lexington, KY that kids CAN do the math. They ARE math people. That math can be a fun thing to learn.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think qualities that are most impactful in my journey is not getting too high or too low, being consistent everyday. I believe I have a calming personality that can allow students to feel safe from making mistakes and allows them to focus on getting better even more so than always getting every problem right, as we learn more from mistakes. I have also learned that I can only do what I can do. I cannot make people learn math. All I can do is to provide opportunities differing strategies to provide the smoothest road possible for them to learn math. This gives me the ability to spend my energy on how I can provide avenues and opportunities for growth in my students.

My best advice for new teachers is what I was just talking about. A teacher’s focus needs to be on how they can best do their job teaching and providing a learning environment for their students. Focus on what you can do, spend energy on yourself and how you can be the best version of you. Along they way you can teach your kids and model for your students how to be the best version of themselves.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I am not perfect in responding to feeling overwhelmed, but every day I try to be one step better than the day before. I find that many times when I am feeling overwhelmed it has come from me having so many things on my plate that I get behind in knocking things out on my to-do list. I am able to focus more and feel more free as I am being productive in getting things done that must be done. This also gives me time to work on bigger and more long-term projects.

There are also times I get overwhelmed just from life and the heaviness life can be. Just over four years ago, my son, Charles, was stillborn at 20 weeks. He was our surprise baby, and first son. It was devastating, and still is during many days. Through this loss and grief, my wife and I have learned that sometimes the heaviness of life will be there and we need to sit in it for a while. We also have learned that there will be times where the overwhelming heaviness will lighten and not seem overwhelming. I started a blog called Every Step with Grief soon after Charles was taken from us. I find writing about my thoughts, feelings, and loss journey are healing and calming to me. We all need to find our thing that helps with those times we are weighed down and overwhelmed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mathnasium.com/math-centers/westlexington
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mathnasiumofwestlexington
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/mathnasiumofwestlexington