I am a high school math teacher. I am an avid hiker.
I love camping. I love completing math problems.
My greatest strength is building connections with students.
Sitting atop a mountain, I never feel more connected.

One day, during my third year teaching, as I lectured on and on about some method of solving some kind of equation, telling the students exactly how to do, watching them copy me step by step, competing with each other over who could finish the fastest, I had a thought that changed the trajectory of my teaching career.

“This is boring.”

It sent me on a hike of extreme proportions, to answer the question that I got asked over and over from my students:

“Why are we learning this?”

I know, full well, that the Pythagorean theorem, SOH CAH TOA, the Quadratic formula, or what a parabola is, are nothing but words that lost all meaning as adults grow up, remnants of a past knowledge long since been lost. Only 22% of people use any math more complicated than fractions in their everyday jobs.

So, I decided, to not just teach math, but to use it, as a conduit, for far more important skills that everyone uses every single day.

As I got more and more into hiking, and exploring this mighty world, I came to see, just like math, how much is hidden out there. And all it takes is a little extra work, a bit more patience, and a burning desire to see it.

Math is everywhere in nature. Nature is all around us.
By simple arithmetic, math is all around us.

I want to create a way we teach math that makes changes. I want to create a math system that changes the education system, the classroom values, and the way students think.

I want to change humanity into something more present, more connected, and more inspired.

I don’t teach math.

I teach how to use it, to see the world in all its beauty.