“And then I met Ms. Kaplan and Mr. King, and I chose to come to Hackley.” Mr. Ruocco has only been teaching for fifteen years, and, as he put it, “in case you couldn’t guess, I’m more than 35 years old.”

Originally, Mr. Ruocco was an engineer, and built things for a company. However, when the dot com bubble burst, he had to pivot. In the interim, he began taking up jobs like coaching soccer, working with a theatre group, and working with a non-profit that provides subsidized child care. It was then that he realized how much he loved working with kids. When explaining his main reason for becoming a teacher, he simply said, “I love kids, you know?”. 

He began to do leave replacements in middle and upper schools around the county. He worked in public and private schools and got job offers from a few. Eventually, Mr. Ruocco settled on Hackley in large part due to the aforementioned Mr. King and Ms. Kaplan because, “leadership matters”. 

He hadn’t studied to be a math teacher, but had a masters in engineering so teaching geometry was a natural fit. Nevertheless, it’s not his favorite class to teach. That would be accelerated pre-calc.

This is his favorite course because he taught AP calc earlier in his Hackley career, and he said that knowing the course ahead of it makes it very easy to help the pre-calc students get ready for calculus.

Mr. Ruocco hopes to leave his students with memories of more than just the grade they received. “What I don’t want them to remember is the grade they got.

Hopefully, they’re having experiences in my classroom that they’re finding valuable and enriching and memorable, that have nothing to do with the grade they’re getting,”.