After the retirement of Joanne Gillette, Revere High School (RHS)’s math department had big shoes to fill. After going through many applications, RHS principal Doug Faris had one that stood out the most.
Tyler Pacifico took over for Gillette after she retired after the 2024-2025 school year. He has already taught ten years of AP Calculus at Norton High School and is an experienced addition to the math department. He grew up in Northeast Ohio and went to school at Norton. He graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in education.
After his high school experience, Pacifico had to begin thinking about his future and what he would like to do in the future. Due to his enjoyable high school career, he considered a teaching career to help more people.
“I enjoyed my high school experience. So, I thought teaching would be a good way where I see one hundred-some people a day, [and the] odds . . . that I help at least one of them is pretty good. So because of that, I thought, ‘Let’s give teaching a shot.’ And I tried to decide what I wanted to teach. I felt like math always came natural to me, and I found myself helping my friends out with math pretty often,” Pacifico said.
Pacifico said that he feels his students should develop a few skills after taking his class to use for the rest of their lives when they face real-life hardships.
“The skill that I’m hoping that they walk out of the classroom with is the ability to persevere in the face of difficult content or hardships that they’re faced with,” Pacifico said.
The classroom environment is how the classroom feels when people are learning, and that environment is connected to the students’ academic success. Pacifico talked about the classroom environment he wants for his students.
“I try to . . . create a class that is easy to be engaged with. So I try to move around a lot and check in with kids when I can to make sure they’re understanding; if they look unsure or confused, I do a lot of reciprocal teaching where I’ll teach and then, [in a] very open-ended manner, ask a question, banking on my students to respond. . . . I need to make sure the kids feel comfortable volunteering answers and chiming in when I call upon them,” Pacifico said.
Math teacher Dan Mosher has been working with Pacifico in his first year. The two have already developed a chemistry together and have learned from each other.
“The collaboration piece [is big]. Him being able to help me grow as a teacher, he’s already kind of challenged me to look at things differently than I have in the past,” Mosher said.
Different teachers come with different teaching styles. Instead of checking homework, Pacifico uses motivation and responsibility. He makes sure students are not just doing the homework, but are also taking the time to understand the material.
“I do not walk around and check homework for a grade. So you can imagine when you’re faced with a very large assignment of problems that finding the motivation to complete your homework knowing your teacher’s not going to walk around and necessarily check it for a grade the next day is difficult for some of my students. So for my honors upper-level kids, I kind of let the content be the motivator. Meaning, if they don’t do their homework and then they show up on quiz or test day, if they get blindsided by the content, then I bank on the fact that they’ll realize, ’Oh crap, I have to do my homework to make sure that I am prepared’,” Pacifico said.
The Revere hiring process for new teachers has several stages. Faris talked about the stages that they have to go through for him to know they have the right person for the job.
“The first interview is like a screener interview, so it’s usually twenty minutes long. . . . The second round, for the people that made it through the first round, they get invited back, and they have to teach a lesson. So, I had students in the room for volunteer hours, almost like you’re teaching a real class. . . . The final round is with [Faris] and [Revere Superintendent Dan White],” Faris said.
Faris has one crucial question he asks his candidates when interviewing them and spoke on why he thinks this question can make or break an interview for him when he is looking for a new staff member.
“Why Revere? And if they can’t answer what they know about Revere, then I don’t want them because it means that they haven’t taken time to do their homework and really kind of read up or do some research as to why they would want to be here,” Faris said.
Pacifico’s response proved to Faris that he was the right person for the job.
“He said he was choosing Revere because of the reputation of the math department. . . . The chance to come to Revere would mean so much for his career,” Faris said.
Out of all the applications that Faris looked at, Pacifico’s stood out the most and that is the reason that Pacifico will continue to work toward his goals and teach students at RHS.
