Winter 2026 JoyMath Letter

Winter 2026 JoyMath Letter

I want to begin with a pause—

Thanks to each of you for your attention, reflection, and participation. I am deeply grateful for your witness and your support. JoyMath has been an intriguing, joyful adventure. One I continue to track with curiosity rather than trekking to a destination. I'm so glad your path led you here.

Some of you have read essays on my blog. Some of you have offered feedback that I've worked to incorporate into the next design iteration. I've spoken with many of you about your ideas, frustrations, and learning journeys. I've worked with some of you in classrooms and workshops, sometimes as peers and sometimes as facilitators, sharing books, essays, questions, and unfinished thoughts. Even before it had a name, JoyMath has been co-evolving with community input, past and present. It has never been mine alone. Whether you're close-in as a collaborator or simply nearby as a reader and witness, I look forward to traversing the ever evolving terrain together in 2026.

The evolution of JoyMath continues to surprise me. After many years as an educator, I found myself holding so many unanswered questions alongside growing frustration and a steady sadness as I watched joy leach out of learning environments. For a long time, I believed I could be part of changing the system from within. Over the years my roles have included classroom teacher, project leader, math leader, tutor, business owner, collaborator, and always, a lifelong learner.

Nineteen years after I first stepped into a classroom as a teacher, I'm still on a roller coaster, but it's a very different one. Rather than looping endlessly along the same track with "fidelity," I eventually got off, stepped back, and saw the whole education structure more clearly. That's when I realized my work does not live inside the public education system at all. In fact it has drifted away from formal education towards sparking and stoking confidence and joy in learning.

I started JoyMath after witnessing teachers burn out under relentless demands. After watching administrators, under pressure to produce unrealistic outcomes from human children, lose autonomy and become compliance enforcers. After watching educators fight their way upward in a rigid hierarchy where learning itself seems to dissipate… and where even those who "make it" are still devoured by the enormity of feeling responsible for it all.

That moment of feeling defeated by public education, had something to teach me. Instead of staring down failure ("oh no, I took the wrong path!"), I find the opening it creates. By stepping back, I could begin to see the underlying mathematical structures that uphold systems. I began to follow patterns that live in that system that perpetuate apathy and lack of learning. I became someone who notices structure and follows patterns. When I followed the patterns carefully, I saw that educators have been trying to disrupt these systems for nearly a century, largely without success, in part because the broader public remains in the dark about how these systems actually function.

At the same time, I kept noticing a persistent fog around mathematics itself. What math is and isn't, how it should and shouldn't be taught, who "gets to" learn it, and just how large the landscape of mathematics is! Underneath every math domain are patterns that stay constant: structures that hold up the world around us. Once you learn to see them, you begin to see them everywhere. In nature they are efficient, beautiful and resilient. In society they are often inefficient, ugly and brittle.

I began to recognize the repeating pattern of generational math trauma and normalizing myths about being bad at math. After years of pattern-seeking, structure-noticing, and question-asking, I now believe there is a viable way to disrupt that pattern at scale, and to bring the tool of mathematics back to the people, where it belongs so we can explore our world and better understand ourselves.

I was already looking at the world mathematically but when I applied a systems-thinking lens, my vision clarified and I had many A-ha! moments. I've discovered that large language models like ChatGPT can be remarkably good at following where I point to reveal structure, surface patterns, organize overlapping ideas, compare and contrast, and give form to the invisible and the missing. Used well, these tools can support careful arguments for ethics, agency, and sovereignty. They can help us become more fully human while loosening the grip of industry, consumerism, compliance culture, and inherited domination structures. Imagine what part of our identity will be left after we strip away all that noise!

Although I still love designing math learning experiences, my current focus is oriented toward designing a system we can grow into once we've outgrown the current one. JoyMath is becoming a container for learning when centralized systems fail.

For roughly a century, debates about mathematics education have stacked reform upon reform. Rather than re-designing using feedback from the people inside the system, schools are repeatedly absorbing from above: new curricula, new standards, new technologies, new accountability measures, new equity add-ons, new tiers, new behavior systems. As any toddler knows, when you keep stacking blocks on a wobbly tower, it eventually collapses. Already, far too many children have fallen from the tower. Children are constantly learning, but when systems can't track their learning, they become functionally invisible. Forgotten. The failure of No Child Left Behind made that painfully clear. Many who remain inside the system have become apathetic, learning only how to get by rather than how to grow, inquire, or care deeply. We are shaped by our environment.

As a human who cares profoundly about lifelong learning, I wanted to build something that could guide groups of learners even when I am not present. Something that, if successful, could scale fractally. This is where the idea of JoyMath Lifeboats emerged.

When the larger ship goes under, we shouldn't be left flailing. The lifeboats should already be there, ready to grab onto. JoyMath is actively drawing the blueprints for lifeboats that allow learning to continue at a pace and scale that works for real humans. These lifeboats are portable, so learners can move with them. They contain grabbable tools that empower individuals rather than extract from them. They are scaled for humans, not institutions, and designed for dignity, not rescue. JoyMath is meant to work at the scale of a handful of humans. Small friend groups or families can step into these structures, with roles, norms, and protocols already in place, and begin working autonomously, without needing an individual leader to follow.

The JoyMath Lifeboats are not aspirational theory. They are functional components built in relationship to each other. Philosophy gives rise to norms, norms guide protocols, protocols shape artifacts, and artifacts support practice.

The Philosophy

My upcoming essay, Rewilding Mathematics, offers the philosophical and ecological frame for JoyMath 2026. It reorients mathematics as a living, relational human practice: one that has long been tame and must now be released back into the wild.

Like a lighthouse holding steady for those lost in fog, this work exists to be found when conditions are hard and visibility is low. JoyMath signals presence.

Like seed bombs scattered into neglected ground, JoyMath work restores mathematical biodiversity.

Like lifeboats standing ready beside a sinking ship, JoyMath marks the beginning of a new story. One meant to be told and retold over time. A lighthouse, a seed, a lifeboat.

The Norms

A selection of norm-setting essays defines the conditions under which mathematics can remain wild. These essays are not content, but signals, establishing how learning, power, rigor, participation, and accountability function inside this ecosystem. Together, they form a coherent morally-structured system, translating philosophy into shared expectations and lived behavior that shape every protocol, role, pod, portfolio, and artifact that follows.

The Protocols

Human roles are clearly defined and intentionally structured to create equity in interaction, rather than leaving behavior to individual bias or informal power dynamics. Protocols define how people interact within and across roles, and how justification, revision, and knowledge transfer occur. Equity becomes operational, produced by interaction rather than demanded by intention.

The Artifacts

At the center are Portable Identity Objects (PIO). These are what learners carry with them: their values, how they learn best and what they need, evidence of their thinking, and their authorship, and the right to participate as a meaning-maker, not simply a respondent.

When learners collaborate, they begin by sharing their PIO, centering their diversity, strengths, experiences, and cultural awareness before ever addressing the problem at hand. Community is established before the task.

JoyMath Pods are small, resilient learning cells. In fair weather, they exist lightly and asynchronously, allowing people to engage casually and as capacity allows. When storms arrive: pandemic, disruption or conflict, pods can lean in and deepen communication and learning. Sovereign learning remains possible under pressure.

The Systems Literacy Primer is a practical field guide for adults. It teaches noticing of how systems actually work. What's holding them together. Where pressure builds. Where change is possible. Using everyday examples, simple reflection prompts, and questions repeated over time through many contexts, the primer helps readers make sense of the systems they're already part of. Seeing structure gives you more information, and more information gives you agency.

The JoyMath Portfolio is a learner-owned record of what was noticed (using the Primer), how understanding changed, and what was justified, revised, or transferred. It is not a credential, but a living artifact that travels with the learner across contexts and across a lifetime, preserving authorship and dignity.

At its heart, JoyMath 2026 is an experiment in building a mathabitat. An ecosystem where mathematics can thrive in the wild again, and where humans can interact with its full potential. It helps learners locate themselves within complex systems, notice the terrain shaping their experiences, and interpret the signals that help them decide where to move next. JoyMath orienteering doesn't tell someone where to go, but helps them orient toward what's worth noticing on a noisy map.

Empowerment lives in the ability to orient, notice, and interact with care. When you use the dual lens of systems literacy and mathematics, you begin to see the structures that hold up our systems. You may also see when those structures are faltering and where a new center of balance might be placed. Much like the body reorganizes itself mid-fall to regain balance, systems require intentional, well-timed shifts to create lasting change.

JoyMath is built on human interaction and relationship. I welcome your reflections, questions, pushback, and stories. Your feedback doesn't just change the tone of this work, it actively shapes its structure and outcomes. Tell me what you're most excited about. Tell me what you think is missing.

My intention is to keep JoyMath accessible and grounded, using simple tools and offering various opportunities for the public to support and expand this work.

Thank you again for reading and for being here. This winter, I am building a lifeboat. This spring, I will be creating the artifacts it carries. Bit by bit, it will be ready to support autonomous learning for generations to come. This is slow, deliberate, shared work. Thank you for being part of it.

-Tia Knuth
JoyMath LLC