Mr. Gomes is a beloved math teacher at Agnes Irwin and this is his 5th year teaching here and 15th year teaching overall. Outside of school, he likes doing arts and crafts with his kids, watching movies, and reading fiction.
His favorite books are:
- Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson,
- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger,
- Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño,
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
Mr. Gomes has this to say about his reading choices: “All these books felt totally different from anything I’d read before them and I couldn’t put them down. When I’m stressed/tired I can pick one of them up, turn to a random page, and just start reading.”
Mr, Gomes thinks that he is actually pretty lazy but feels like his work (teaching and DEIB) is important so that makes him work hard. Mr. Gomes is passionate about social justice and mathematical literacy and how they intersect. He believes that probability and statistics (including machine learning, data science, etc.) run our society at this point, and it is important to understand how and why.
When asked what his favorite part of teaching was, his answer was “watching students grow.” He says that it gives him hope for the rest of us, saying: “I think it is easy for people like me—grumpy pessimists—to feel like none of the bad stuff will ever change. When you work with a student when they first get to high school and then see how much they change in just four years, it is undeniable that we all have this potential to better ourselves, to continue learning, to become more engaged and empathetic. It inspires me to keep learning and working on myself. I also really just enjoy doing and talking about math, and all the tangential stuff that comes along with it when you take a broad view of what a mathematical conversation can/should be.”
Ironically, Mr. Gomes said that he hated every class he took in high school except for computer science. But when he got to college at Fairfield, Gomes really enjoyed every class he took, his two all-time favorites being American Literature 1950-1980, and Cognitive Science. He said that “these classes transformed how [he] looks at the world and what [he] wanted to do with his life.”
Fun Facts about Mr. Gomes:
Mr. Gomes’s hero is Eusébio, a Portuguese soccer player who played for the national team in the 60s.
His biggest fear is spiders.
We are so grateful to have Mr. Gomes as the director of Agnes Irwin’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging and are very lucky to have him in our community, striving to make it a safe place for people to share their opinions and stories. We thank him for everything he does, from teaching math to educating us on social issues, always with respect and understanding.
