Feeling Stoked About Math
March 26, 2026 – My cat found a new passion in Churu
Oh my… I am super late with my weekly blog, so much so that it’s almost next week. That’s ok. There will be something else to reflect on and wonder about. What I wanted to talk about in this blog post is reminding myself what stokes my fire. I find myself, at times, overly excited when I am at presentations and I can honestly feel the JOY busting through my chest. My energy is up and I just get excited about the possibilities. I just get JACKED-UP when I am at a ProD workshop or conference. And yes, that topic is MATH.
Let me be clear. I’m not a math-nerd. I’m OK at math. In some ways, I wished I was math-bionic. With respect to pure-math at the 300- and 400- level, I would need to return back to university to find the love in different types of mathematics. I am not 100% sure if I can say that “I love high school math” or “elementary math” per se. The content itself can often seem disconnected to the real world and it’s hard to believe that math teachers from K-9 are primary working towards mathematics to learn calculus. Yup, it’s true.
Now, I’m getting into MY JAM. I love the policies, the pedagogies, and the politics of math and math education. I am so drawn to the idea of math identity and math efficacy. Moreover, I am so enamoured by math teacher efficacy and math pedagogy. I love how people interpret and translate the curriculum. I love math education teachers and experts who share their ideas and exude a love for math. I am so curious and deeply invested in policies in math education and why it matters. It’s all a puzzle to me. It’s super FUN!!
So, it’s strange to look back at my photos to find an image of me and my friend (i.e., selfie… on-brand) or even a food pic of my lunch (i.e., also on-brand). Nope. I found a picture of my cat eating Churu within 30 seconds. I used to give my cat Catit tubes, but saw an AI cat on Reels promoting Churu. I thought I would try this brand with my cat and she has never looked back. My point is, she found her JAM too. So, the picture seemed appropriate for this blog post. There is likely no pic of lunch because I was so engaged.
Oh my goodness… we just talked about MATH, math education, and math policies. We chatted about math efficacy in teachers and ourselves. We talked about the proposals we each wrote with hopes of the editors from UBC to publish a book on Indigenous Math K-12. I was brought home. It was a very familiar feeling and I was so grateful to have this 2-hour conversation over fish tacos about math and math education. I was so engaged, excited, and interested. It’s conversations like these that boost my math efficacy.
I am finding as an academic that I am exploring everything about education in terms of leadership, identity, and pedagogy, but I am not centred around mathematics. What is that about? I don’t ask this question in a judging way, but rather in a curious one? What happened to my doctoral research? What happened to continuing that research program? What happened to my math embedded project? Why aren’t I exploring that work further?
This lunch conversation and how I feel about math, math efficacy, and math identity cannot be underestimated or ignored. I remember one student asking me if it was ok if they took my research idea math stories. I said, OK. This convo has left me thinking. I need to really dig deep (well not that deep, I’m there) and be truthful about what I fear about and why it matters. Being in my JAM matters to me and I need to stoke this fire.