Mathematics as Language, Identity, and Human Experience

Although my recent work focuses on AI and language pedagogy, mathematics remains the foundation of my educational identity. Mathematics was the first subject that taught me how students learn—and how they struggle.

During my years teaching mathematics in an international school, I discovered something important:

mathematical ability is never purely mathematical.

Students often failed not because they lacked conceptual understanding, but because:

• they could not express reasoning in academic English
• they were afraid of being “wrong”
• they lacked metacognitive strategies
• they felt math was disconnected from their lives

This realization shifted my entire teaching approach. I began to design bilingual scaffolds, emphasize key English terminology on the board, and create problem-solving structures that made thinking visible. Eventually, I adopted a student-centered philosophy: mathematics is not about performing procedures—it is about building confidence, identity, and agency.

Now, as I design AI-mediated courses, my mathematical background continues to shape me in subtle ways: my focus on structure, clarity, logic, and systems thinking comes from mathematics. Even my research interests—AI mediation, pedagogical design, Bloom’s alignment, UDL structures—are deeply mathematical in the way they analyze patterns and frameworks.

To me, mathematics is not a subject; it is a language for understanding how learning happens. And it will always be the lens through which I view education.