Does anyone love maths more than Chris Smith, asked Tes Scotland in 2019.
Mr Smith has just been appointed MBE in the New Year Honours list - “for services to mathematics education and to the community in East Ayrshire” - but his passion for his subject extends far beyond the gates of his school, Grange Academy in Kilmarnock.
In 2007 Mr Smith started a maths newsletter for around a dozen colleagues. To say it took off would be a huge understatement.
Now an institution for around 5,000 subscribers in over 100 countries, the weekly newsletter offers a mixture of wit, puzzles, ingenious teaching ideas - and, crucially, the milk rota that has been a fixture from the very start.
New Year Honour for maths teacher
Issue 661, on 8 December, also marked another milestone: Mr Smith told his subscribers that his Tes maths resources had passed 2 million downloads.
In 2022 Mr Smith told Tes Scotland that the newsletter was a “labour of love” and a constant in his career through the “times where you’re buzzing about your job and brimming with creativity and other times where you’re just plodding along on the way to the next holiday”.
Today’s accolade is not the first received by Mr Smith, who has spent his entire career as a classroom teacher in the state sector: he was named Scotland’s 2018 Teacher of the Year, as well as a member of “Britain’s brainiest family” in 2019 along with his wife, Elaine, who is also a teacher.
Mr Smith is also known for his grand celebrations of Pi Day on 14 March each year. One year he encouraged 432 students outside in “howling winds” to hold up carefully orchestrated placards numerating pi to hundreds of decimal points, while a drone captured all the action on video. Another memorable Pi Day involved students deciding to perform The PiMCA a mathematical parody of the Village People’s hit song YMCA.
Mr Smith also plays big roles in national initiatives such as Maths Week Scotland and has written a number of times for Tes, sharing his highly imaginative and sometimes off-the-wall approach to his subject, including the time he explained why 1990s rapper Vanilla Ice was an inspirational maths guru.
In a 2022 interview he told Tes Scotland that the best change he ever made to his teaching practice was the introduction of Grange Academy’s annual maths camp in 2015. “Positivity about the subject has exploded since we kicked off these eagerly anticipated revision residentials for senior students,” he said of this annual adventure that, as well as maths, features inflatables, sports, games and ceilidhs.
The same interview also included Mr Smith’s view of the most important qualities in a teacher.
“My answer is always the same,” he said. “If you like working with young people and you’re passionate about your subject, then you have two of the essential ingredients.
“There’s plenty you can learn on the job - techniques and skills you can master and plenty you’ll glean from experienced colleagues - but these are the foundations underpinning the whole lot.”
Today Mr Smith told Tes Scotland: “As an East Ayrshire boy born and bred, I’m delighted to see our authority being a shining light for mathematics...it’s no longer weird to see a positive article about maths appear in our local press coverage.”
He added: “I’ve also been reminded powerfully in 2023 of the long-term impact that teachers can have on their students, and it’s been an incredible privilege to reunite and be there for students who I stopped teaching over a decade ago.”
Mr Smith - who this year published That’s Mathematics, a book introducing “everyday maths” to children aged 5 to 8 - said his pupils would be “over the moon” about his honour and stressed that his wife is “ridiculously supportive of my mathematical adventures”.
“I’ll be quick to let folk know that MBE stands for ‘mainly because Elaine’, and this geeky maths teacher is grateful to God - I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength,” he said.
Other people to be honoured for their work in Scottish education include Gayle Gorman, former chief inspector and chief executive of Education Scotland, and Lorraine Sanda, strategic director of people at Clackmannanshire Council.
