First Post: what's this all about?

Hello! My name is Nathan B, and I am a graduate student and teacher-in-training living in the midwestern US.

Genius Not Required is a blog about math. In 2007, I started teaching algebra to college students as a graduate assistant. In that role, I teach the usual gauntlet of college algebra topics as dictated by my university's curriculum; factoring polynomials, solving various kinds of equations, graphing, yadda yadda. It's horrible. My students will never take another math class in their lives, and I have to sleep at night knowing that, despite the wealth of truly wonderful and enlightening ideas the subject has to offer, I have to drill them on the quadratic formula a hundred times.

So I started this blog to serve several purposes:

• It is evident that, at least for now, I'm stuck teaching 17th century mathematics. Which has it's place, mind you, but by ignoring everything since Descartes, the usual math curriculum is missing some very cool and important ideas. (Can you imagine if high school history classes pretended the Civil War didn't exist? Yeah, it really is that bad in math education.) A blog gives me a chance to make `lessons' on more modern/interesting topics available.
• One day I will not be a lowly graduate student; with providence I will be a full professor with the authority to design my own classes. This blog is a prototype, so that future version of myself will have some experience to draw from, along with comments and critique by the Teeming Internet Masses.
• There are two foolproof ways to make sure you understand something: (1) explain it to someone else and (2) teach a computer to do it.
• If I can make one idea accessible to one person I'll have done something worthwhile. Behind all the funny words and symbols, math is designed to make sense. Genius is not required.

Well, there you go. The idea for this has been kicking around in my head for a few months, and I was inspired to actually get started by Paul Lockhart's article, A Mathematician's Lament. It's a quick, entertaining, and very well written piece; If you are a math educator or school administrator, I highly recommend it.