Meet the newest addition to the Archer faculty and staff: Allison Kays.

Kays moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at the University of Southern California. She is at USC completing her PhD in accounting but decided to take a break and pursue teaching.

“I really wanted to teach,” she said, “and kept thinking back to how much I loved school and being in an environment where everyone was learning.”

When she realized this, she took a step back and looking for a teaching job — that’s when she found Archer.

Kays was hired at the beginning of second semester as a teaching fellow. She teaches math and helps with math teacher Christopher Luzniak’s Integrated Math III class. She will also be running the “Sigma Field Cafe” on Tuesdays and Thursdays — an X-Block activity for upper schoolers to receive help with math. In addition, she substitutes when teachers are absent in a multitude of subjects: science, Spanish, French, ceramics, engineering and English.

“The girls here are phenomenal — they are respectful and excited and always enthusiastic,” she said. “They are engaging — they listen and are so intelligent and always want to learn.”

As a teacher, Kays has set personal goals for herself.

“As a math teacher, I would love students to approach math in a way where it is a bigger learning experience,” she said. “For girls to see that math is valuable to them whether they become a mathematician or not.”

In an email Kays added that what drew her to Archer was the learning environment.

“Not only is Archer a place where the students are constantly growing and learning,” she wrote, “but it’s also a place where the school itself is constantly growing and learning, which is a really neat thing and something I wanted to be a part of.”