Тест 70. Чтение. ЕГЭ по английскому языку

1) Установите соответствие между заголовками 1 — 8 и текстами A — G. Используйте каждую цифру только один раз. В задании один заголовок лишний.

1. First in everything
2. A historic moment
3. Completely different from Earth
4. How to become an astronaut
5. Influenced by an accident
6. Astronauts’ pastimes
7. Various names
8. Astronauts’ meals

A. Astronauts spend most of their time doing science experiments that can only be done in outer space. Even though they work long hours, astronauts do get breaks. They may use their breaks to play games with their crewmates, read, watch movies, or talk to their families on Earth. One of the favourite ways for astronauts to spend their breaks is by just sitting and looking out the window. Seeing the Earth from a distance is a very rare treat that most people don’t get to see.

B. The very first astronauts who went up into space ate some interesting things. A lot of their food was ground up and put in tubes that looked like toothpaste. Today though, astronauts have food choices that are pretty much the same ones we have. Eating in space is a bit tricky because there is no gravity. Food packages have to be attached to trays. Salt and pepper actually come in a liquid form because if you shook salt and pepper in space, it would all just float away in the air.

C. Sleeping on the space station is a lot different than sleeping down on Earth. Astronauts have only tiny rooms to sleep in and often sleep in small compartments or in sleeping bags. The biggest difference between sleeping on Earth and sleeping in space is gravity. Without gravity, there isn’t really any up or down so sometimes astronauts sleep standing up. Also, astronauts often strap their sleeping bags to the walls so that they don’t float away.

D. People who want to work in space have to go through lots of training. Most astronauts study things like engineering, math, science, or computer technology. Many astronauts have also had military training. Besides, astronauts need to be in good physical shape and must be good at working with others. Men and women who meet the requirements enter a competitive application process and, if selected, then train for several years before taking off into space.

E. The term “astronaut” derives from the Greek words astron, meaning “star”, and nautes, meaning “sailor”. Although the word “astronaut” is often widely used to talk about someone who works on a spacecraft, it is sometimes used to describe someone who works for the United States’ space program. Astronauts from other countries are sometimes called differently; for example, in Russia they are cosmonauts and in China they are taikonauts.

F. After Mr. Armstrong took his famous first steps on the moon, he was joined several minutes later by his fellow astronaut, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, while the third man on their mission, Michael Collins, orbited their spacecraft around the moon and prepared the team for their victorious return to Earth. Upon taking his first steps onto the moon, Armstrong said the famous words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

G. The third of four children, Yuri Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934, in a small village a hundred miles from Moscow. As a teenager, Gagarin saw a Russian Yak fighter plane make an emergency landing near his home. Years later, when offered a chance to join a flying club, he eagerly accepted, making his first solo flight in 1955. Only a few years later, he submitted his request to be considered a cosmonaut.

A	B	C	D	E	F	G

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2) Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A — F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1 — 7. Одна из частей в списке 1—7 лишняя.

Living nature in Madeira Right in the middle of the Atlantic, the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo are a haven of natural beauty. The exotic colours of the flowers stand out from among the blue sea and the emerald green vegetation. This is an archipelago where the big territory is a protected area and ___ (A) is located.

The Madeira Natural Park was created in 1982 to preserve this vast natural heritage, a worldwide rarity. The park is classified as a Biogenetic Reserve, ___ (B), with some rare species such as the mountain orchid, unique in the world, and also some exotic large trees. To visit this park is to discover Nature! The park covers about two-thirds of the island, making Madeira a truly ecological destination.

The springtime temperature, ___ (C), cries out for open air activities. Visitors can go for a walk in the park, visit the city of Funchal or roam freely around the island. Boat rides are an excellent way of ___ (D). In such a naturally welcoming environment, balance and well-being are taken for granted. Madeira offers various tourist complexes ___ (E).

Popular feasts, ___ (F), are opportunities to appreciate traditional gastronomic flavours and see Madeira partying, especially for the Carnival parades, the Flower festival, the Atlantic festival and, above all, the end-of-year fireworks display.

1. which is felt all year round
2. which take place in Madeira all year round
3. where the largest laurel forest in the world
4. admiring the coastline from a different perspective
5. where one can find a unique range of flora and fauna
6. choosing this holiday destination for its natural beauty
7. that have prime conditions for boating and scuba diving

A	B	C	D	E	F

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3) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

The place Sarah Hagan works in can be best described as
1) crowded.
2) promising.
3) uninhabited.
4) unfrequented.

🔗

4) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

What does Sarah Hagan’s principal think about her starting work at Drumright?
1) He is skeptical.
2) He is surprised.
3) He is worried.
4) He is critical.

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5) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

What did Sarah Hagan do to improve her classroom space?
1) She put textbooks away.
2) She hung colorful posters.
3) She fixed the floors.
4) She bought bulletin boards.

🔗

6) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

Sarah Hagan doesn’t use the textbooks because
1) they are too complicated.
2) she is a student-teacher.
3) they limit her academic freedom.
4) she uses other teachers’ notes.

🔗

7) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

The verb “burn out” in paragraph 11 (“Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out”) is closest in meaning to
1) get exhausted.
2) leave a job.
3) become ill.
4) change her mind.

🔗

8) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

What do Sarah Hagan’s students say about her math lessons?
1) They play too much.
2) They feel disappointed.
3) They find the class engaging.
4) They do not learn enough.

🔗

9) Прочитайте текст и запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.

Показать текст. ⇓

Sarah Hagan has a passion for math, and the pi-shaped pendant to prove it The 25-year-old teaches at Drumright High School in Oklahoma. The faded oil town is easy to miss. Fewer than 3,000 people live there, and the highway humps right around it. There are no stoplights, no movie theater and no bowling alley anymore. Just a clutch of small houses and hearty businesses such as a funeral home.

That makes it hard enough to attract good teachers, says Judd Matthes, Hagan’s principal. But it gets worse. “We don’t pay a lot in Oklahoma for beginning teachers,” he says, laughing. Matthes wonders why a National Merit Scholar who had gotten a full ride to the top-notch university would want to start her teaching life in a place like that.

Hagan, now in her third year at Drumright High, hadn’t planned on working in such a poor, rural district and was shocked when she arrived. “The first time I saw my classroom,” she says, “it was the most depressing thing I’d ever seen. There was no dry-erase board or bulletin boards.”

And the floorboards squealed. They still do, but the rest of her room is now an unrecognizable riot of color. Decorations hang wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. A poster of Albert Einstein. Paper pompoms. This is the first key to understanding Sarah Hagan: She’s a visual person.

Hagan is also remarkably self-assured. When she arrived, the school had ordered new math textbooks, but Hagan had already decided – as a student-teacher – that she wasn’t going to use textbooks. “I don’t want to be stifled by that. I mean, I teach a lot of things in a totally different order than a textbook would,” she says. She simply left the new books in their boxes. Instead, in a standard lesson, she uses everything in the classroom but a textbook: a flower pot, a garbage can, a roll of tape, loose spaghetti. It's all part of Hagan’s do-it-yourself approach to teaching and learning.

As for the textbooks they make, her students begin with blank composition notebooks. Each day, Hagan hands out a lesson she has written herself or open-sourced from other teachers. It’s usually printed on colored paper and requires some kind of hands-on work: drawing, coloring, cutting. Students then glue the results into their notebooks. Eventually, the books look like dog-eared, bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie. Hagan argues that if students are allowed to be creative, they’re more likely to remember what they've learned.

That afternoon, in Algebra II, Hagan comes up with a creative way to get her students to memorize the quadratic formula. She sings it.

“She really tricks us into learning,” says sophomore Jake Williams. “There’s so much fun involved in the classroom that we actually understand it and grasp it.”

“You do puzzles and all kinds of stuff,” says senior Krissy Hitch. “So it doesn’t even really seem like you’re learning. But then, when you take the test, you realize: “Wait, when did I even learn all this stuff?”

Making it fun matters. Algebra is high-stakes. A student who can’t pass the state test can’t graduate.

Her colleagues worry that the young math teacher could burn out. Hagan admits – sometimes – the work wears her down: “Yeah, there’re days when I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.”

And so she stays, at least for now. Even in her scant free time, Sarah Hagan doesn’t really leave the classroom. She writes a blog about teaching called “Math Equals Love.”

The name Sarah Hagan chose for her teaching blog characterizes her as
1) an enthusiast.
2) a dreamer.
3) a fascinating person.
4) a true professional.

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