Born and raised in Hawai’i, my cultural knowledge was limited to what I learned in a classroom, creating a gap in my connection to my heritage. The ethnomathematics program was my attempt to bridge this, and I initially thought it was simply combining Hawaiian culture and math. However, I learned it’s much more: honoring ancestral ways of life, understanding math’s human evolution, and empowering today’s learners by deeply understanding their core values and motivations.

More than just numbers and formulas, math originates from its users and evolves alongside them. Recognizing this human-driven nature, the ethnomathematics program has helped me realize the importance of fostering a love for math by connecting it to students’ passions. By understanding their individual interests and cultural backgrounds, and offering opportunities to explore these through a mathematical lens, we can make math relevant, engaging, and meaningful, mirroring its very human origins. Through the program, I gained valuable tools for integrating real-world applications into my teaching, and has helped me to create lessons about topics like phone usage data, or the relationship between triangle congruences and architecture.