Helping Children Make Sense Of Math

Ed Rathmell has spent the past 40 years working at the University of Northern Iowa to help prospective teachers learn to teach mathematics. Throughout those years he also collaborated with primary grade teachers to learn how to help children make sense of basic addition and subtraction facts, practical everyday word problems, mental computation, and to develop deep understandings that lead to number sense.

Ed has also been active in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. His efforts collaborating with the Iowa Department of Education also earned him a life-time achievement award from the Iowa Council for Teachers of Mathematics.

Larry Osthus is an independent mathematics consultant who has worked with several schools and educational nonprofit organizations. From 2003 through the present he worked for Thinking With Numbers in various capacities. From 2011-2013 Larry provided professional development for Iowa Adult Education teachers and Iowa Department of Corrections teachers through his program called The Iowa Numeracy Academy.

Prior to working as an independent consultant he served as a mathematics consultant for Heartland Area Education Agency in Johnston, IA. Larry earned his M.A. degree in Mathematics from the University of South Dakota.

Madison is our social media specialist. She is currently a junior at the University of Northern Iowa where she studies Digital Marketing and Advertising as well as Finance and Entrepreneurship. Madison will be graduating in the Spring of 2023. She is also interning at T.E.A.M. Builders in Cedar Falls where she works on their email marketing and social media.

From 2018 to the present, Taylor has performed software design and development at Thinking With Numbers. He currently attends Northwestern University, where he is a Computer Science PhD student. He is currently exploring artificial intelligence and creating well-behaved intelligent machines.

Prior to joining Thinking With Numbers, Taylor was an independent web-developer building sites for local non-profit organizations and business. He received degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Philosophy from the University of Northern Iowa in 2018.