Andrew Johnston
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I left the public school for homeschooling in the seventh grade because the local middle school wouldn't let me start algebra for another year. I accomplished little of value as a home schooler except in mathematics where I burned through the Saxon series with ever increasing furver. I wanted to travel, so I skipped the 8th grade, squeezed high school in 3 years, worked, saved, and bought a 1 way ticket to London. My intellectual horizons began to broaden. Cross cultural interactions ignited my passion for language. After 4 months in Europe I flew to South America where I studied Spanish full time. I returned home from Central America 7 months later with a passion for all things intellectual. My grandmother graciously allowed me to cloister myself in her quiet southern California home for a year and half while I studied Theology, Philosophy, Literature, History, Latin, French, and Mathematics around the clock.
I planned on becoming an engineer so I studied Calculus. After I finished an introductory text, a friend recommended Spivak's Calculus as the next step. Little did I know that Spivak's Calculus is typically used for 4th semester Calculus courses. These courses, sometimes called, "Advanced Calculus" or "Real Analysis" start over from the concept of a number and build the mighty edifice of Calculus from the ground up one deduction at a time. Whatever the metaphysical explanation, the experience of mathematics transcends time, space, and the words that give us access to it. Spivak rocked my consciousness. Thoughts of engineering faded. I wanted to learn mathematics and share my experience with others. I wanted to teach.
I enrolled at Biola University in the fall of 2000 where I studied great books at the Torrey Honors Institute and Geometry with Dr. Peter Woo. At Torrey I learned how to dig into philosophical and theological texts on a level I had not previously imagined was possible. I was unsatisfied with our Literature discussions, however, and developing an approach to literature that found personally satisfying has been one of my primary intellectual concerns over the past decade. Peter Woo is one the world's greatest problem solvers with hundreds of published solutions in internationally circulated periodicals. He solidified my passion for mathematics by introducing me to the glories of geometric proof writing and problem solving. He would sit in his office all day solving problems and his students could pop in at any moment to discuss their mathematical quandaries. I still share questions and solutions with him in his retirement. I met a wonderful young woman on my first day at the Torrey Honors Institute. We started talking Plato and haven't stopped for 15 years. It was necessary to get married along the way to facilitate the uninterrupted dialectic.
After graduation I taught at The Gorman Learning Center in the Los Angeles area for three years. I was an itinerant teacher, traveling from one end of the valley to the other several times per week to facilitate supplemental math classes for home schoolers at a handful of learning centers. I listened to hundreds of hours of classic literature on audiobook which, for me, constituted a major life event. During my second year at Gorman I met a man named Troy Wathen who was getting his Ph.D. at Biola who suggested that I consider teaching at Providence Classical School in Texas. I thought that was a crazy idea. A year later, having forgotten about this encounter, I started looking up schools and Providence was the first one I called. A few minutes into my first conversation with admissions counselor Beverley Smith I realized that I had already been offered a job at this school. I taught Humanities at Providence for 8 years and along the way introduced a combined literature and Latin course aimed at integrating the study of language and literature in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien. I also designed and implemented an advanced Geometry course similar to the one that I am slated to teach this fall at HSML.
In 2015 I decided to move into the public sector and taught at Amon Carter Riverside outside of downtown Fort Worth for one year. This was a very good experience but I concluded that grappling with the challenges of public education was not for me. Since then I have have been enjoying being at home with my 7 children, tutoring at the Reimer Learning Center in Granbury, TX, and driving for Uber. Passing the Society of Actuaries Exam P (Probability with Calculus) this past year was a blast and a personal triumph but did not issue in a career in actuarial science. I am excited about getting back into the career that I love in a new format that works for me and so many other families.
I planned on becoming an engineer so I studied Calculus. After I finished an introductory text, a friend recommended Spivak's Calculus as the next step. Little did I know that Spivak's Calculus is typically used for 4th semester Calculus courses. These courses, sometimes called, "Advanced Calculus" or "Real Analysis" start over from the concept of a number and build the mighty edifice of Calculus from the ground up one deduction at a time. Whatever the metaphysical explanation, the experience of mathematics transcends time, space, and the words that give us access to it. Spivak rocked my consciousness. Thoughts of engineering faded. I wanted to learn mathematics and share my experience with others. I wanted to teach.
I enrolled at Biola University in the fall of 2000 where I studied great books at the Torrey Honors Institute and Geometry with Dr. Peter Woo. At Torrey I learned how to dig into philosophical and theological texts on a level I had not previously imagined was possible. I was unsatisfied with our Literature discussions, however, and developing an approach to literature that found personally satisfying has been one of my primary intellectual concerns over the past decade. Peter Woo is one the world's greatest problem solvers with hundreds of published solutions in internationally circulated periodicals. He solidified my passion for mathematics by introducing me to the glories of geometric proof writing and problem solving. He would sit in his office all day solving problems and his students could pop in at any moment to discuss their mathematical quandaries. I still share questions and solutions with him in his retirement. I met a wonderful young woman on my first day at the Torrey Honors Institute. We started talking Plato and haven't stopped for 15 years. It was necessary to get married along the way to facilitate the uninterrupted dialectic.
After graduation I taught at The Gorman Learning Center in the Los Angeles area for three years. I was an itinerant teacher, traveling from one end of the valley to the other several times per week to facilitate supplemental math classes for home schoolers at a handful of learning centers. I listened to hundreds of hours of classic literature on audiobook which, for me, constituted a major life event. During my second year at Gorman I met a man named Troy Wathen who was getting his Ph.D. at Biola who suggested that I consider teaching at Providence Classical School in Texas. I thought that was a crazy idea. A year later, having forgotten about this encounter, I started looking up schools and Providence was the first one I called. A few minutes into my first conversation with admissions counselor Beverley Smith I realized that I had already been offered a job at this school. I taught Humanities at Providence for 8 years and along the way introduced a combined literature and Latin course aimed at integrating the study of language and literature in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien. I also designed and implemented an advanced Geometry course similar to the one that I am slated to teach this fall at HSML.
In 2015 I decided to move into the public sector and taught at Amon Carter Riverside outside of downtown Fort Worth for one year. This was a very good experience but I concluded that grappling with the challenges of public education was not for me. Since then I have have been enjoying being at home with my 7 children, tutoring at the Reimer Learning Center in Granbury, TX, and driving for Uber. Passing the Society of Actuaries Exam P (Probability with Calculus) this past year was a blast and a personal triumph but did not issue in a career in actuarial science. I am excited about getting back into the career that I love in a new format that works for me and so many other families.
