About

I’m a mid-career educator, curriculum writer, and systems builder based in the Hudson Valley.

I taught math and computer science at the Academy for Software Engineering in New York City for nine years. I was the founding math and CS teacher, which means I was learning to program while teaching students to program — the pedagogical equivalent of building the plane in flight. I piloted AP Computer Science Principles through the CollegeBoard’s earliest national cohort, wrote an approved syllabus built on functional programming, and rabbit-holed on the LaTeX build system when I should have been grading. This is the pattern.

Through Math for America, Bootstrap, and the NYC CS education community, I ran workshops, mentored teachers, and argued about what computer science education should actually look like in a public school where half the kids won’t turn in homework and the other half are building things you didn’t assign.

I mentored a group of young women who presented original data science research at ISTE and met with leaders at Bloomberg. I moderated monthly meetups for the early CSNYC community. I sat on panels at SIGCSE with people who knew what they were doing and learned by listening more than talking — eventually.

During the pandemic, when my course time shrank to two hours a week, I poured the rest into school operations — building pipelines connecting our gradebook, student information system, email notifications, and reporting tools. I saved the staff hundreds of hours and ran the summer credit recovery program. That’s when I learned what I could build beyond a lesson plan.

I left teaching in 2021 to raise my third child. In the years since I’ve contracted with Bootstrap on data management, run workshops for Rutgers and the CS Alliance, and built an independent learning plan in data analytics — structured around real job postings and gated to make sure I’m building skill, not performing it.

Before any of this, I studied liberal arts at St. John’s College — four years of Euclid, Aristotle, and learning to think by arguing about both. I apprenticed with a master guitar maker in Santa Fe. I taught summer math in New Orleans to rising sixth graders using a lesson about cavemen and number systems that had no business working as well as it did. The path was not direct, but it makes sense if you squint.

I still consult for Keith at the guitar shop on data systems and logistics. I still play the guitar I built for my sister before leaving the desert to become a NYC teacher.

I’m looking for a role where the intersection of teaching, data, and systems thinking is the job — in a school, an education organization, or a team building tools for learning. I learn slowly and deeply. I do my best work from a foundation I trust.

Find me on GitHub and LinkedIn, or write to ericallatta@gmail.com.