Why I Write About Mathematics for Everyone

Why I Write About Mathematics for Everyone

In the beginning, mathematics was black and white for me. Lines. Numbers. Right and wrong. Over time, light caught it at new angles and colors shimmered to life, revealing a spectrum of patterns, stories, logic, and art. Now, mathematics is my rainbow. I’ve spent years chasing that rainbow, looking for gold, only to find that the treasure is in the chase itself. Each time I reach toward it, it shifts, never quite where I expect it to be. What I see now is only a sliver of the full spectrum that mathematics truly is, a reminder that even the brightest arc of color is just one small piece of a much larger light.

I’ve studied it, taught it, led others through it, written about it. Every time I think I’ve found my niche, mathematics surprises me again, pulling me like an eager child in a completely new direction. My relationship with mathematics has never been static. I once thought I’d be an elementary teacher, but that didn’t stick. Tutoring fit for a while, until it didn’t. As a math leader I loved collaborating with others, but when the structure of schools fell away, I was alone again. I even tried substitute teaching, imagining I could use my math lens to illuminate every subject. In theory it was beautiful; in practice, unrealistic.

I used to feel ashamed about changing directions so often. Now I recognize the reason: math is a dynamic journey. It is alive, contextual, relational, and endlessly complex. Instead of mapping failed directions, I am tracing a spiral path to the center of a labyrinth and back again, each turn transforming me. Right now, my favorite way to be with math is the way I might explore any hobby such as birding, disc golf, or gardening. I follow curiosity. I play with an idea in as many ways as possible and then write to uncover what it teaches me.

Before COVID, before my child who is now thirteen, I ran a tutoring business called Rip City Math. I met students in their homes or mine. Some students were tangled in number sense, others hungry for challenge. Each session was personal, a small act of design and care, a labor of love I couldn’t sustain in the early years of motherhood.

Graduate work at Portland State later deepened my practice. I pushed creative boundaries, asked philosophical questions, and searched for ways to embody mathematics. Despite decades in this field, I still struggle to answer, “What do you do for work?” Reading Francis Su's Mathematics for Human Flourishing, I recognized myself in his phrase “mathematical explorer.” I follow trails, switch tracks, and keep moving through the changing terrain, but my calling takes me deeper still. I’m seeking to expand the public’s perception of mathematics and, in doing so, spark a societal shift that returns power to the hands, hearts, and minds of the people. If we truly treasure a democratic nation, we must remember that mathematical reasoning is everyone’s responsibility. It's how we elect wisely, challenge what isn’t working, and protect the public good.

At one time I believed my path was to change the education system from within. Now I see the institution is already crumbling under its own weight. The way forward is not to rescue it but to use its scaffolding to design and build better systems. The problem is that the conversation about education remains locked inside politics and bureaucracy, even though the deepest expertise often lives with parents, caregivers, and communities.

I see people around me unable or unwilling to reason quantitatively, to question data, or to calculate outcomes for themselves. Avoidance of mathematics too often becomes vulnerability and self-doubt, and those are not the seeds of a great future. I began to ask: What if new systems of learning could grow outside the old ones, like a young Douglas fir rising under the canopy of a dying fig? What if story, language, and curiosity could reawaken mathematical confidence?

That question became JoyMath, a space for rebuilding positive relationships with mathematics through multi-sensory exploration, creative discourse, and visible failure as part of growth. JoyMath is an incubator for shared ideas and a reminder that we are all math people. It invites us to play with pattern and symmetry, to explore how mathematics shapes music, science, design, fashion, and history. To simply bask in the beauty of the patterns that connect them all.

Over time I realized the people most ready for mathematical transformation were not current students but former ones, adults who quietly decided they were not math people but secretly wanted to be. Some carry wounds from early schooling; others once excelled, only to deflate in the shadow of university peers. Mathematics belongs to all of us. When adults reclaim curiosity, that confidence ripples outward to their children. Research shows that when parents say “I’m not a math person,” it licenses kids to say the same. That small sentence steals possibility from the next generation.

I love mathematics because it challenges and changes me. It is a language, an art, a way of seeing that asks for patience and depth. It is dynamic and relational, constantly shaped by context, and I get to add my own creative flourishes. To me, mathematics is alive.

I feel the same vitality on the Jiu-Jitsu mat. Every movement is a study in balance, pressure, leverage. You tap out, adapt, and try again. It is physics and humility braided together. Both practices remind me that understanding is embodied, and growth requires contact. Contact with ideas, with people, and with failure itself.

I write about mathematics for everyone because I want to open that living world to those who have been shut out. Through story, metaphor, and simple experiments, I try to show that mathematics is not a fortress but a landscape we can all walk through.

Through JoyMath I hope to create spaces where we remember that mathematics is a human endeavor. It is a way to find meaning, to connect, and to build systems that serve life. It keeps the joy alive in the chaos of the chase. It is the shimmer that reminds us the rainbow is still ahead of us, shifting as we move, calling us to keep looking.