When Vanessa saw today’s guest deliver a deeply personal talk at a recent math conference, she was left with more questions than answers; all she knew for certain was she had to get him on the podcast. Sean Nank is a math educator who believes that the power of our students' stories is the most valuable tool we can harness in our math classrooms, and he illustrates this by sharing his own journey of growing up in an abusive environment, learning to understand and embrace his OCD, and the fateful day that math, for real, saved his own life.

On that note, a heads up that today’s episode involves a brief discussion early on about abuse and suicide.

About Sean (Website, Twitter)
Sean Nank, PhD, is an award-winning math educator and author. He has worked in various positions with the United States Department of Education, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science Foundation, and the California Department of Education. Sean currently serves on the Executive Board at the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) and is the Associate Editor of their Journal of Mathematics Education Leadership (JMEL), and works at Amplify as a math content designer.

Show notes:

• Sean’s 2022 ShadowCon talk: “Mathematics saved my life”

Connect with us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)