Larisa has been teaching in NYC public schools since 1998. She has won several awards for excellence in classroom teaching. She is a four-time recipient of the Math for America Master Teacher fellowship, a 2009 recipient of Queens College’s Mary Fellicetti Memorial Award for excellence in mentoring and supervising student teachers, and a 2017 recipient of Queens College’s Excellence in Mathematics Award for promoting mathematics teaching as a profession. A fourth-generation math teacher, she simultaneously earned degrees from a specialized math high school in Ukraine and a distance learning high school at Moscow State University. After emigrating to the United States, she learned English while earning both her bachelor’s degree in math and her master’s degree in math education from Queens College, City University of New York.
Over the past 20 years Larisa has taught all levels of math from pre-algebra to calculus, coached the school’s math team, and created a math research program in which students wrote papers for the Greater New York City Math Fair, City College Engineering Expo, and the Intel Science and Talent Search.
Larisa has extensive experience providing professional development to pre-service and in-service teachers. She has mentored 16 student teachers. From 2007 to 2009 she provided professional development to early career teachers and math supervisors in New York City on Geometry, Probability, and Problem Solving. As part of her work with Math for America, Larisa has run several professional development sessions for teachers.
She lives in New York City with her husband and children.