Do you consider math beautiful? Is it an instrument you could use, to create positive change?

Krystal Jones answers these questions with an adamant "yes".

Krystal, who is a National Board Certified math teacher with the San Jose school district, has served as Engineering Education Leader at The Tech Museum in San Jose. She has also shown fellow educators ways to introduce engineering in their math classrooms.

Her past presentations have included sessions at the California STEAM Symposium and the NCTM conference.

"All of a sudden, something switched in my brain, and I started seeing...the whole world in math," Krystal says of her own creative journey.

That world perspective allows Krystal to illustrate her subject by applying percentages, probability and proportions as she guides her students through socially-conscious engineering projects.

Her classes at Hoover Middle School address social problems, including drought, homelessness, and systemic inequity, through hands-on projects using math.

Krystal talked about her discovery of math as a component of the world, how she first came to incorporate social consciousness into her curriculum and some of the resulting projects she and her students have created.