As we head back to school, I want to take a moment to thank all the math teachers out there who take on the demanding yet overlooked task of educating our children, teenagers, and young people. 

I'm where I am today because my calculus teacher, Prof. Srinivasan, was unwavering in her belief that my classmates and I could master any math topic, including calculus. Her conviction in me gave me the confidence to believe I could 'do' math. While Prof. Srinivasan made teaching look easy, I'm acutely aware that teaching math is no easy feat. Speaking with math educators regularly, I can appreciate how challenging teaching math is today compared to a decade ago. Not only do they have to teach the subject, but they must be able to teach it in-person and online, to a group of students that may not be up to speed on the prerequisite material, and in an era where disruptive technologies vie for their student's attention. No wonder math educators are so anxious about returning to the classroom this fall!

And while I wish I could abracadabra your worries away, what I can do is offer you the opportunity to use Maple Learn, a tool built to support the utopian vision of a world where all students love math. A world where math is for everyone, not just the gifted, and the purpose of math class is to explore and marvel at the wonders of the universe, not just get to the correct answer.

Slightly more concretely, Maple Learn is a flexible interactive environment for exploring concepts, solving problems, and creating rich online math content. I've seen educators use Maple Learn to help their students: 

• Grasp a definition or particularly tricky proof (for example, Formal Definition of the  Partial Derivative)
• Explore a concept and question their initial assumptions and beliefs (such as Is it an Odd or Even Function)
• Master a particular solving technique through drill and practice worksheets (Calculating Volumes)
• Work collaboratively on a math project (Designing a Roller Coaster)

I’ve talked to lots of instructors, in math, and in courses like economics and physics that use math, who have lots of ideas of how to engage their students and deepen their understanding through interactive online activities. What they don’t have are the tools, programming experience, deployment platform, or time to implement their vision. Fortunately, Maple Learn makes it incredibly easy to develop and share your own content, and all you need are your ideas and a web browser. But you don’t need to start from scratch. You can choose from an extensive, constantly growing repository of ready-made, easily customizable content covering a wide range of topics. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, but since we are well aware that instructors are extremely busy people, we also have content development services that can help you transform your static content into interactive lessons.

If you haven't looked at Maple Learn, or it's been a while since you last saw it, you can visit Reinventing Math Education with Maple Learn for more information, including an upcoming webinar you might be interested in attending and a special offer on Maple Learn for Maple campuses. And if you ever want to discuss ways Maple Learn might help you, or have ideas on how to make it better, please reach out. I'm always up for good conversation. 

And for all the dedicated teachers who are taking a deep breath and heading back into the classroom this fall, thank you.