{"id":1980,"date":"2019-10-18T21:23:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T21:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/?p=1980"},"modified":"2019-10-18T21:24:53","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T21:24:53","slug":"the-math-department-welcomes-mr-yong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/2019\/10\/18\/the-math-department-welcomes-mr-yong\/","title":{"rendered":"The Math Department Welcomes Mr. Yong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Brooke Pan (V)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Upper School Mathematics Department welcomes Mr. Zhaojun Yong, who will be teaching both Honors Geometry and Advanced Algebra and Geometry. Besides teaching, he will also be coaching the boys\u2019 freshman basketball team and advising a club in the middle school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr. Yong is no stranger to New Jersey. Having grown up near Rutgers, he is familiar with the Basking Ridge area. In his free time, he enjoys playing sports, mainly tennis and basketball. \u201cSports, as well as running in general, are great ways to get my mind off of school and academics,\u201d he said. Mr. Yong is especially drawn to playing basketball, having been a member of his high school basketball team. This experience played a large role in his inclination to coach basketball at Pingry. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved playing basketball,\u201d Mr. Yong said. \u201cEspecially now that some of my students are also involved with the team, it creates another dimension towards them in terms of understanding who they are.\u201d Mr. Yong praises basketball for its ability to \u201callow kids to interact in a manner different from class settings.\u201d With the season approaching, he is looking forward to coaching the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tPrior to coming to Pingry, Mr. Yong attended college at NYU, where he majored in mathematics. He recently finished graduate school at Columbia University. There, he furthered his schooling in mathematics, earning his master\u2019s degree in Mathematics Education.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During his time at college, he often served as an informal tutor for his fellow peers; he\u00a0helped them whenever they had difficulty with math-related problems. This informal service soon unveiled Mr. Yong\u2019s passion for teaching and paved the way for his future career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tMr. Yong started his educational career by working as a substitute teacher. \u201cThe desire to want to help students and help others\u201d was his main motivation for teaching. In the past, he knew that many of his peers saw math as too difficult, and they would, therefore, shy away from the subject. In hopes of changing these perceptions, Mr. Yong strives to create an atmosphere in his classes where \u201cstudents do not feel discouraged,\u201d and rather feel open and \u201caccepting towards new challenges.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Pingry, Mr. Yong aspires to \u201chelp more high schoolers to not feel so intimidated by math.\u201d He plans to achieve this by \u201chelping prepare [students] as best as I can, in terms of what I know and what I can do.\u201d Good luck, Mr. Yong!<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brooke Pan (V) The Upper School Mathematics Department welcomes Mr. Zhaojun Yong, who will be teaching both Honors Geometry and Advanced Algebra and Geometry. Besides teaching, he will also be coaching the boys\u2019 freshman basketball team and advising a club in the middle school. Mr. Yong is no stranger to New Jersey. Having grown up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":2185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-1980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff","tag-new-faculty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1980"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2189,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions\/2189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}