I don't know about you but every time I see this meme, shared on Social Media, my blood boils. I think it says a lot about our current culture and state of education but that is for another day. Instead I want to talk about how much we use Algebra and don't even think about it. I would love to hear if you have examples to add to my list. When you calculate the time you need to leave your house or need to wake up so that you make it to your destination on time...  ALGEBRA! When you perceive the distance to something you are trying to grab or the location something will drop if it is thrown or falls. This is a calculation that even a 16-month old baby is capable of doing instinctually. It is also  ALGEBRA! When you channel your inner Kobe to make a garbage can shot from across the room. Your brain is calculating the distance to the can, air resistance, the weight of the trash, the trajectory, and the force required. But your calculations don't stop there. Your brain is also e...

Hi! I’m Megan McLean, a Math and Engineering teacher at Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington. I’ve been teaching for 13 years. In that time, I have taught in the US and also in South Korea, which was an amazing experience. In my former life, I was a Mechanical Engineer having gotten a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Idaho (GO VANDALS!). I became a teacher because I wanted to inspire students to see themselves as mathematicians and to help develop in others the love I have for math. A couple years ago, I realized that whenever I would talk about the mathematicians who created the math we were doing in class, there were a lot of similarities in the people that I was displaying on the board. In my class, no two students were alike. But every mathematician I was displaying looked the same. Not long after that, I attended a talk from an engineer from Turkey. She spoke about how, as a female engineer from the Middle East, that she was often not taken serious...