WASC ACCREDITED

The heart, hope and humanity of mathematics and science live in the worlds we create.

The Inspire Institute partners with schools, systems, universities, communities, and funders to strengthen mathematics and STEM teaching, leadership, and learning through human-centered frameworks, professional credentials, and sustained learning partnerships.

what we do

Three ways the work moves.

01

We prepare the people who carry mathematics and science.

Practice-based credentials for the tutors, paraeducators, teachers, and leaders who stand closest to learners in mathematics and science, earned through evidence of what changed.
02

We design for impact with schools and systems.

Partnerships built on the IAAM framework and the Hope Wheel, from Stevens Institute of Technology to George Mason University.
03

We gather in community.

Inspire Fellows, IFF in Washington, DC, and Inspire MathSci Bermuda: places where educators, young people, and families learn together, and where the work grows in the company of others.

IMAGINING FUTURES

Writing the futures we intend to live.

Every liberated future was imagined in words before it was built in the world. The Institute writes toward mathematics and science that free people to know, question, and transform their worlds, alongside the educators, families, young people, and scholars already making that future real.
Biweekly on LinkedIn · 1,400+ subscribers

Inspire Math. Humanize STEM.

Recent editions include The Humanizing Work Behind High-Impact Tutoring and Most Math Improvement Efforts Fail Because Math Never Leaves the Room.
The Institute blog

Teaching Math and Science for Impact

From Love Don’t Pay the Bills: Hard Truths on the Hope Work of Math to In Plain Sight: The Hidden Worlds of Black Boys in STEM.
Launching 2027

Collective Futures

The Journal of Mathematics, Science, and Collective Futures: a scholarly home accountable to the communities it serves, publishing research, practice, public writing, and commentary side by side.

Inspire Fellows

get. active.

Inspire Fellows are educators, leaders, coaches, and scholars in fellowship around human-centered mathematics and STEM. A Fellow treats hope as a force multiplier for learning, growth, and transformation, and creates experiences that help young people imagine and build better futures.

$95 / year

or $10 / month. Institute Notes monthly, The Inspire Review quarterly, two Fellow gatherings a year, and first access to new frameworks.

The intellectual architecture of the Institute’s work.

Developed through Dr. Lou Matthews over two decades of classroom, coaching, and research work, the IAAM framework, the Hope Wheel, and the Relevant Task Rubric form the core of every Institute pathway, publication, and learning experience.

I

Immerse

Enter the living worlds mathematics and science students inhabit, connecting lived experience to school learning and grounding instruction in joy, agency, and impact.

A

Adapt and Design

Build experiences that begin with human realities and align to standards. Through the Hope Wheel™, goals become real-time practice for agency, hope, and impact.

A

Amplify

Surface community-rooted wisdom, make it public, name its structure, and position it to drive the mathematics and science experience.

M

Mobilize

Act together, as educators, leaders, and networks, to shape conditions in classrooms and communities for lasting collective impact.

Gathering and immersion

Immersed in the ecosystem, together.

Some of this work can only happen in person. Imagine Black Futures brings together the people building better futures in mathematics, science, and beyond. Inspire MathSci Bermuda takes young people, and now educators, into the living ecosystems of the island. Both are forms of immersion: in one another, and in the worlds mathematics and science help us understand.
Inaugural gathering · April 2027

Inspire MathSci Bermuda

Inspire MathSci is becoming a home where young people study mathematics and science in powerful ways, through a curriculum immersed in Bermuda’s ecosystems and grounded in the Hope Project. Children grow as they investigate the shores, caves, and living systems around them.
When. April 2027
Where. Washington, DC
Format. Working convening

Educators: come with us in 2027.

For the first time, a small cohort of educators will join the institute in Bermuda, learning alongside young people in the field. Places are limited.
Inaugural gathering · April 2027

Imagine Black Futures: IFF 2027

Some of this work can only happen in person. Imagine Black Futures brings together the people building better futures in mathematics, science, and beyond. Inspire MathSci Bermuda takes young people, and now educators, into the living ecosystems of the island. Both are forms of immersion: in one another, and in the worlds mathematics and science help us understand.
When. April 2027
Where. Washington, DC
Format. Working convening
partnerships

Institutional partners building lasting ecosystems.

29%

average growth in educator confidence, measured across active cohorts

Stevens Institute of Technology

A sustained multi-cohort partnership strengthening instructional practice across the ACES educator network through immersive IAAM design and coaching cycles.

George Mason University

A multi-session partnership with the College of Engineering and Computing advancing human-centered STEM teaching across a regional Virginia network.