Mr. Ross Benson is a widely-loved math teacher at CRLS. He is known for his dedication to students and his deftness for teaching calculus. But what led him to pursue a career as a math teacher, and what brought him to CRLS?
Mr. Benson first discovered his love for math in early elementary school, when a teacher helped him get ahead in the subject. “We went through the workbooks from second grade all the way up through fifth grade over the course of the year,” he recounted to the Register Forum, “I was really interested in all of it.” In middle school, he continued to explore his interest, taking part in the school math team. The team was coached by a classmate’s father, who taught math at Columbia University. “He gave us the opportunity to advance—to really push ourselves when it came to math,” Mr. Benson told the Register Forum. “I stayed on the team through all of middle school—which meant that I did math pretty much every single day for three years straight.”
Mr. Benson continued to pursue math in high school, and ultimately ended up at MIT. “I studied material science, rather than pure math,” he explained to the Register Forum, “because I prefer applied work to theoretical work.” However, he soon found that he did not enjoy working in labs. “So I changed courses, and got my master’s degree in education.”
The new career path was not a total surprise, though, since Mr. Benson had always loved teaching. In fact, as a high schooler, he had helped teach his math team. “I taught one period a day for the whole year,” he told the Register Forum, “and I really liked it. I had also worked as a tutor.” He continued to teach in college: “At MIT, I was a teaching assistant for sophomore, junior, and senior year. I taught chemistry and material science. I found it really interesting.”
Since college, Mr. Benson had remained in Cambridge: “I did my student teaching at CRLS,” he told the Register Forum. While working as a student teacher, a convenient opportunity arose, Mr. Benson explained, “My mentor teacher—it was his last year. He’d been teaching 35 years, and when he retired, I basically took over his position. I was very lucky on timing.” CRLS has proved to be a fulfilling environment for Mr. Benson, due to its abundance of resources. “It’s a public school that has the money of a private school,” he remarked to the Register Forum. “We have money for all these different opportunities—classes, materials, electives, RSTA—and I think that’s amazing.”
Outside of academics, Mr. Benson has quite the background in dance. “I did square dancing and ballroom dancing when I was in high school,” he told the Register Forum. “It was originally just for gym credits, but I ended up really enjoying it—I went on to square dance for all four years of college!”
This article also appears in our February 2026 print edition.
