About Me

Hello! My name is Jonathan Coblentz. I am a Wisconsin native, born and raised in Milwaukee. As a kid, I naturally gravitated towards puzzles, video games with complex problem solving, board games (chess being my favorite), basically anything that challenged my brain and reasoning skills I was excited for. This led naturally to me enjoying and excelling at math. 

I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse where I received my bachelor's degree in mathematics in 2009. After a gap year traveling around, I received a full scholarship to attend Arizona State University to study mathematics further. It was during this time that my interest in math education was born. Thanks to some great professors, math started to come to life for me and I was motivated to bring it to life to others, especially to those who struggle at math. 

Upon graduating in 2012 with my master's degree, my formal teaching began. The two things I enjoyed most as a math teacher were witnessing a student experience an "Ah ha" moment, and second, watching confidence build in students who previously were self-proclaimed "bad at math". A key takeaway for me during this time was noticing that there are a lot of intelligent capable people who are convinced they can't do math who simply need a little encouragement, a little bit of a different approach, and suddenly things can start to come together and they can begin to thrive. Helping these types of students is what interests me most.

Outside of math and teaching, I enjoy hiking, climbing, good food, and hanging out with my dog Red.