Always Be Curious: One Teacher’s Adventures in Sparking Mathematical Wonder

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The mathematics universe is filled with opportunities to spark curiosity through conversation, storytelling, and wonder. Join a veteran high school teacher for a collection of mathematical mysteries — many inspired by headlines and real-world moments — gathered across three decades in the classroom. You’ll leave inspired, entertained, and ready to see mathematics with fresh curiosity.

Leveraging Student Insights to Guide Effective Math Instruction 

The NCTM mission statement states, “The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics advocates for high-quality mathematics teaching and learning for each and every student.” To promote high quality mathematics teaching and learning for each and every student, educators must consistently implement creative, research-aligned pedagogical practices that transform, reimagine, and revitalize the learning experience for all students. In this session, we’ll highlight pedagogical practices that actively engage students in learning opportunities that facilitate collaboration with peers; provide students with multiple options for processing information and making sense of mathematical concepts, and foster relevancy, coherence, and application to students’ lived experiences and the real world.

About Latrenda
Latrenda Knighten, President (2024 - 2026) of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is a retired Mathematics Supervisor from Baton Rouge, LA. She has been an educator for more than 30 years during which she has been a classroom teacher, science specialist, mathematics coach, instructional coach, and a mathematics content trainer. An active member of many professional organizations, Latrenda is a past member of the NCTM, NCSM (Leadership in Math Education) and the Benjamin Banneker Association (BBA) Board of Directors. She is also the co-author of two books: Classroom-Ready Rich Math Tasks, Grades K - 1 and Five to Thrive: Answers to Your Biggest Questions About Teaching Elementary Math, K-5. 

Stop Making Math Useful

At some point, well-meaning math teachers open class with some version of "You'll need this someday." For what? For whom? We've spent so long trying to make math relevant, and somewhere in that effort, we lost the plot. Math doesn't need to be useful to be worth doing. It needs to be alive — surprising, puzzling, frustrating, a little humbling, and deeply human.

We'll look at what happens when we lead with beauty instead of utility, with wonder instead of worksheets, and with problems worth solving because they're interesting. Come ready to question the story you've been telling kids about why math matters. You might leave with a better one.

About Fawn
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 received the Math Teacher Hero Award from Raytheon in 2009. 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.

She 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).