About the Author: Rusty Bresser

Rusty Bresser, M.A.
Rusty first became interested in teaching as a result of studying children and families in French Polynesia. When he’s not in San Diego, you might find him on an island in the Pacific.
  • Is It Fair? A Dice Game for 3rd and 4th Grades and Beyond!
    Published On: September 18, 2023By 6.2 min readViews: 5384Comments Off on Is It Fair? A Dice Game for 3rd and 4th Grades and Beyond!

    An Intriguing Game for Kids and Adults Earlier this year I was having dinner with my nephew Brandon, and his partner Patty. While we were eating, the topic of mathematics came up (Patty is a...

  • Teaching Teen Numbers in Kindergarten
    Published On: February 10, 2023By 7.2 min readViews: 6850Comments Off on Teaching Teen Numbers in Kindergarten

    For students to gain foundations for place value, the Common Core Content Standards call for kindergartners to compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, using objects or...

  • What do Eggs and Probability Have in Common?
    Published On: August 22, 2022By 6.9 min readViews: 2532Comments Off on What do Eggs and Probability Have in Common?

    I love it when I break an egg and a double yolk appears. It’s like nature’s magic at work. That’s what happened the other day when I was making breakfast. After that little surprise, I...

  • Using Data Science to Bring Joy and Curiosity to Mathematics
    Published On: July 29, 2022By 7.4 min readViews: 1814Comments Off on Using Data Science to Bring Joy and Curiosity to Mathematics

    Making sense of data in our complex world is becoming an essential part of life and being able to analyze and understand what data is telling us is crucial to being an informed citizen. Data...

  • Take a Guess! The Power of Estimation
    Published On: April 13, 2022By 8.3 min readViews: 3299Comments Off on Take a Guess! The Power of Estimation

    Imagine this scenario: You’re sitting in a restaurant finishing dinner with friends, and the waitperson hands you the check. It’s your job to figure the tip on the $238.00 total. You reach for your tip...

  • Making Sense of Remainders
    Published On: March 16, 2022By 7.5 min readViews: 4745Comments Off on Making Sense of Remainders

    When learning about division in fourth grade, I remember our teacher marching us through an explanation of remainders. It went something like, “If the divisor doesn’t go into the dividend evenly, you’ll have something leftover...

  • Teaching Measurement Division Using Children’s Literature
    Published On: February 23, 2022By 6.8 min readViews: 1618Comments Off on Teaching Measurement Division Using Children’s Literature

    In our last post, we talked about how culturally responsive math educators pose contexts that serve as either windows or mirrors for students. “A mirror,” Emily Style says, “is a story that reflects your own...

  • What Does It Mean to be a Culturally Responsive Math Educator?
    Published On: February 2, 2022By 6.7 min readViews: 1527Comments Off on What Does It Mean to be a Culturally Responsive Math Educator?

    There’s an episode in the first season of Ted Lasso in which Rebecca’s ex-husband (Rebecca is the soccer team’s owner) challenges Ted to a game of darts in a local bar. The ex-husband, blind by...

  • Finding the Mathematical Gold in the Olympics
    Published On: August 24, 2021By 6.1 min readViews: 1928Comments Off on Finding the Mathematical Gold in the Olympics

    The Olympics in Tokyo this summer involved a veritable goldmine of mathematics. Athletes competed to find out how fast they could cycle, swim, run, row, sail. How close they could get to a target. How...

  • Math Workshop:What it Is and Why it Works!
    Published On: August 16, 2021By 5.1 min readViews: 1820Comments Off on Math Workshop:What it Is and Why it Works!

    Would you spend your summer vacation doing math? For some, this sounds like a crazy question. But not to the kids from Alpine, California who spent a week this summer at Math Mania. Why was...