Jordan Blackman

Ever since taking his first course in Non-Euclidean geometry, Jordan has been fascinated with the rebellious undercurrents of mathematics. When he learned that sometimes triangles had internal angles that added to more than 180 degrees or that parallel lines don’t exist, it impacted him the same way that learning that there “was no spoon” impacted Neo. He wondered what other “truths" in mathematics had valid counterpoints that ‘Big Math’ was hiding from the people.

After finishing his degree in Mathematics at UCLA in the 1900s, he found himself teaching in South Los Angeles under an administrator who encouraged him to continue to challenge mathematics, both in terms of content and instruction. Jordan has maintained this mindset throughout his career in education, whether it was teaching in schools for the gifted and talented, founding schools for over-aged and under-credited learners, or working with First Nations and Indigenous communities in Canada to develop rigorous and responsive numeracy content.