A calm, supportive math educator who engages and empowers all learners,
specializing in math anxiety, giftedness, and neurodiversity.
Curious?
You clicked on the logo on my website, perhaps your curious enough to read the story behind it:
I’m Curious:
Before I tell you the story:
What do you see when you look at my logo?
Here’s the story:
Back in 2024 I started the school year by asking all my students from kinder through 8th grade the same question. It was inspired by the “Hat Tile” created by David Smith. It is a polygon made of congruent kites within a grid of hexagons. More significantly mathematically, it is an “Aperiodic Monotile” meaning it can cover a 2 dimensional plane in a pattern that never repeats. I shared this short video about it.
We talked about what we saw mathematicians do:
They kept working on the same problem even when they felt stuck.
They collaborated.
They “played”.
They used technology as a tool.
They asked experts for help.
They shared their work and improved it based on input from others.
We agreed to use these as norms for our math classes for the year.
Then I asked everyone my question:
Given a grid of hexagons divided into congruent kites: How many unique polygons can be made from 8 adjacent kites?
We took the time to define the words polygon, hexagon, unique, congruent, kite, and adjacent. Then students worked with partners to fill their grids with as many polygons as they could. Kids loved being asked to be creative in math class. One of the shapes that several of the partnerships made everyone said looked like a piece of candy.
One of the pairs of 8th graders was naming each shape they made. They had given several of the polygons names of other students in the class so I asked what about me? Under the next polygon they drew they wrote “Mr. Hintz”
I felt seen, included as one of the group, and proud.
It quickly became part of my email signature. When I started Math With Mr. Hintz it was an obvious choice to be my logo. I redrew it digitally so it would have clean lines but I still look at the hand drawn, student created original.
To answer my questions above: I see a happy little dinosaur in my logo (I’ve also started to see myself in it. Do dinosaurs teach math?), and I keep discovering new polygons: I haven’t found the answer to the other question yet.
Let me know in the comments what you see in my logo.