Who I am?

Timothy lives life in Victoria, BC with his awesome wife and three zany kids(adjectives reversible). He is the founder of Mathbeacon.ca and has worked with teenagers for over 20 years.  Creating connections is what education and life are all about.  Connections with self, with each other, with content and with our world.  Meaningful integration of technology increases learning connections, collaboration, and face to face interactions. I believe that the most important technology of all is still the classroom teacher.  My teaching career began in 1998. I was originally a high school physical education teacher and a mathematics instructor.  Within five years of teaching my passion to teach kids how to sink a free-throw or hit a backhand clear waned.

 

This left room to see the incredible opportunity we have as math teachers to positively change the trajectory of the lives of high school students.  We can do math classes differently. I love watching students walk into my room in September like fawns barely able to walk….and often not believing that they can walk.

I don’t teach math.  I teach people.

I teach hope.

I teach possibility.

I teach connection.

I teach wonder.

I teach collaboration.

I teach accurate thinking.

I teach perspective.

The math will take care of itself if we take care of the people. In 2008, I founded Mathbeacon. I did not start out thinking I would be part of writing 4 books. It was an attempt to meet students where they were at and  to break free from the endless textbook changes that were breaking our bank. At the urging of my students, I founded MathBeacon.ca.  MathBeacon Guidebooks support both direct instruction and discovery learning. This allows teachers to meet individual students where they are at. Looking back, writing MathBeacon has been the best Pro-D I have ever done. It also placed me on a trajectory to student-centered lessons. I am no longer the quarterback, they are.