Complete Mathematics do something truly phenomenal for education. They bring mathematics teachers who live and breathe teaching under one roof. Thanks to this network, my teaching has been utterly transformed in the last 8 years. In 2017, I nervously went to my first ever maths conference, #MathsConf10 knowing no one. I have now attended 20 in-person…
“What other subject is routinely taught without any mention of its history, philosophy, thematic development, aesthetic criteria, and current status? What other subject shuns its primary sources—beautiful works of art by some of the most creative minds in history—in favor of third-rate textbook bastardizations?” — Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician’s Lament That quote sums up exactly…
Siddhartha Gautama, the man who would become the Buddha, was born a prince in ancient India. His father, the king, shielded him from all suffering, hoping he would become a great ruler. Siddhartha was raised in palaces, surrounded by pleasure, beauty, and comfort. He was protected from illness, aging, death, and anything unpleasant. But as…
In the bizarre stillness of May 2020 when the streets were silent, schools were closed, and ‘zooming’ was all the rage, I put my thinking cap on and cooked up something I thought could help. I combined my livestreaming chops from music with deep experience in online tutoring, alongside a community of teachers I’d met…
BIDMAS is a lie. And pupils deserves better.It’s not real mathematics, it is a trick masquerading as understanding.Most children are taught to follow it blindly, without ever learning what an operation truly is.Unary. Binary. This is the hidden architecture of calculation — in primary, secondary, and beyond.And it changes everything once seen. But first, an…
2025 has been the toughest year of my life. I lost both my mother and my aunt (mother’s younger sister). So returning to MathsConf38 was the ultimate healing I could have asked for. Teaching mathematics is one of the most amazing things in the world, and doing it for a living reminds me of what…
By the time I was 11, I had already lived in five different countries. By 13, I had quietly fallen behind in mathematics and failed my end-of-year exam. It wasn’t for lack of intelligence. It wasn’t even for lack of effort. I was just lost in a cycle of constant school transitions, new languages, and…
We’ve all encountered pupils who stare at test questions blankly despite having a gut feeling on what to do. When pupils encounter a novel question on an exam, the very first emotions and thoughts they have might be something like this internal monologue: What is this question?Where do I begin?How do I decode what this…
La Salle Education are the UK’s largest mathematics teacher professional development providers. Their conferences are attended by around 400 maths teachers, trainers, suppliers, academics, tutors and anyone who lives and breathes maths teaching. #MathsConf28 was an absolute buzz : from Don’t stop interweavin’, going against and along the grain of grids, BIDMAS blues, Robert Recorde’s…
Fish don’t know they’re in water. If you tried to explain it, they’d say, “Water? What’s water?” They’re so surrounded by it that it’s impossible to see. They can’t see it until they jump outside of it. Derek Sivers Sitting in a park in central London on a warm, sunny June 2018 day I knew…