Jacob McLean, Provo High Math Teacher

Imagine stepping into a math class where the first lesson isn’t about numbers, but about memory—where students aren’t handed equations, but instead asked to recall what they already know.

This is how Provo High Math Teacher Jacob McLean begins the year: helping students recognize familiar patterns, extend their reasoning, and develop the confidence to explore math independently.

“Math builds on itself,” McLean says. “As a team, we decide how to start—usually with a lot of review to build prior knowledge– and I like to start with something they learned in elementary school, then layer in algebra. If I can bridge that gap, if I can take something comfortable and stretch it into something unfamiliar, the transition feels more natural.”

It’s a pedagogical pattern: ease into the unknown, let discomfort settle, then push forward. McLean teaches the way he learns—by being challenged. “If I’m not learning something new, I zone out. So I challenge my students. I challenge myself. If I’m bored, I know they’re bored.”

“I will go out of my way to make mistakes in class to see if they will pick up on it,” he says. “And if they don’t, then I give direction. I want them to see—okay, this is a wrong example, this is a right example. I like learning by doing, and I model that in my classroom.”

For McLean, the best days of teaching are the ones where theory meets craft. “The lessons I look forward to are the ones where it’s more of a project-based lesson,” he says. “I never get to those before I do more of the theoretical math versus the applied math. But it’s always those where we take something we’ve learned and do some kind of activity or craft.” McLean’s projects make abstract math tangible.

In Secondary Math 2, students design stained glass windows requiring students to look at scale and reason out proportions. Starting with an 8×11 sheet of black paper, they cut intricate designs and overlay tissue paper to simulate glass.

That’s when the math begins: students calculate and scale up their designs to fit a theoretical window size, applying mathematical transformations in a way that feels less like homework and more like problem-solving in the real world.

In Secondary Math 3, hands-on learning takes a slightly different form: McLean hands out paper plates, rulers, and protractors—tools that, at first, seem more suited to a craft class than a pre-calculus lesson– but as students draw, divide, and color, they build a physical representation of the unit circle, reinforcing key trigonometric concepts through visual and tactile learning.

Speaking to McLean, you get a sense that he sees structure as a scaffold rather than a script. The order of concepts matters as much as how students traverse the concepts themselves– how they make connections, revisit old ideas, and feel the shape of what they’re learning. It’s also what challenges McLean the most: finding consensus with his fellow teachers on their approach to help students accumulate learning.

“The beauty of math, in my opinion, is that everything is interconnected. But that’s also the problem with teaching math. Because people see it in different ways. From day one of teaching, the hardest part has always been getting over myself. Being willing to compromise with other teachers on how to teach. So it’s hard, sometimes, to let go of my own vision,” he says. “But we all care about the students.”

Speaking to Jacob, it’s clear that he approaches his field like artists approach their given mediums. It reveals a depth of knowledge that you want in a good teacher. But he is a great teacher not just because of his wealth of knowledge, but because of his heart: he is a hands-in-the-earth, do-it-by-your-side sort of guy. This fact is made all the more clear when you ask him what his favorite part of teaching is:

“ My favorite part of teaching is honestly after school when kids come in, I can work one on one, make connections. We can goof around and we can still get work done, but it’s a lot more lighthearted.”

“I treat my students the same way I treat my own kids: I keep my standards high, but I also make sure I’m 100 percent available to them. I tell them I’m proud of them. I call them out when they need it.”

He uses his tools to meet students where they are and lead them forward, one question at a time.

Jacob Mclean does the impossible—he makes math open to newcomers, familiar for the uninitiated, and a space for exploration and discovery, no matter who you are. He guides his hundreds of students along a trajectory of growth that mirrors the very functions they study: sometimes linear, sometimes parabolic, often exponential.

We thank Jacob for building the kind of mathematical intuition that, much like a well-set equation, continues to grow long after they’ve left his classroom.

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