Keynote

Rethinking Long-Held Beliefs in School Mathematics 

No child enters school hating mathematics or thinking they'll leave identifying as "I'm not a math person." We need to continue the vital work of exposing long-held beliefs like "Math is always right or wrong," "You need to know x before learning y," and "Math is only for some people"—and shift toward math instruction that empowers students to find joy and purpose in doing and talking about mathematics.

Fawn Nguyen

Fawn Nguyen is the Director of STEM Initiatives at Amplify. She spent 30 years teaching middle school math and three years as a math coach for a K–8 school district. In 2014, she was named Ventura County Teacher of the Year, and in 2009, she received the Math Teacher Hero Award from Raytheon. In 2005, she was honored with the Sarah D. Barder Fellowship from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

Fawn has led workshops and spoken at math conferences across the U.S. and internationally, including in New Zealand. Since 2011, she has served on the Mathematics Project Leadership Team at UC Santa Barbara.

Fawn writes a teaching blog on Substack and created visualpatterns.org. In 2012, she co-founded the Math Teachers’ Circle in Thousand Oaks, California. From 2015 to 2018, she served on the Professional Development Services Committee for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).