On a strange day in room 301, when the desks were arranged in a diagonal fashion by former government
teacher Tony Kirk, 17-year-old future math teacher Cameron Quinn decided to teach the class.

And then he woke up.

“I had this really bizarre dream. It was like an introduction-to-the-class sort of lesson thing. And I was teaching the class for some reason,” Mr. Quinn said. “I was like, ‘That was weird,’ and then I went to school that day, and kind of forgot about it.

Eight or nine years later, Mr. Quinn realized that this odd dream was his epiphany moment. Teaching was
his genuine passion instead of the expectations others had laid out for him.

“I didn’t think anything of it. And sure enough, it came back. That was me trying to tell myself that I wasn’t happy with some of the choices that were made because they were choices that weren’t for me,” Mr. Quinn said. “They would say, ‘You’re smart, you should

do this, that, or another thing.’ I would think that’s great, but has anybody talked to me about what I want to do?”
Today Mr. Quinn teaches a handful of math classes, including calculus, statistics, trigonometry, and college algebra. In a typical high school math class, there is one right answer; there is a specific process to solve a problem. Sometimes this process is rigid. Repetitive. Rigorous.

But venturing out of a high school math class into more advanced mathematics leads to mathematical proofs, which are also Mr. Quinn’s favorite form of artistic expression.
“I think those [proofs] are one of the things that get stifled from high school math because they want to teach you

how to do this type of problem and then this type of problem,” Mr Quinn said, “but they never talk about how much creative thought that goes into proving some of the things that are provable.”
However, regarding math outside of school, proofs are not Mr. Quinn’s only mathematical interest. Outside of teaching, Mr. Quinn likes to pursue math as a hobby.

“So what I like to do is teach myself different branches of mathematics that I’m familiar with, for obvious reasons, but maybe I don’t know it that well,” Mr. Quinn said.
For Mr. Quinn, communicating those concepts is a hobby as well.

“I run a YouTube channel, partially for in class reasons,” Mr. Quinn said. “But for the other part of that, there’s like a whole playlist on there, which is just stuff that I like, and it’s not high school math.”
Inside and outside of his career, Mr. Quinn is passionate about studying mathematics.

His dedication to studying
math also contributes to his overall well-being. Mr. Quinn proves
that true fulfillment comes from the pursuit of one’s passions.
“If you don’t do something you like, why are you doing it? If you’re not having fun, why the heck are you doing it?”