The Bobby Bones Show - Spreading Love Through Math

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Educator and software engineer Thierry Mugabo Uwilingiyamana knows what the stakes are when education isn't allowed to flourish – so he's dedicated his life to spreading knowledge and giving kids the tools they need to love learning.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This season, we're focusing on how people and business is. are getting back to work. Let's call it a great transformation, a change in the way workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever, putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves as they find their life's work.

On the last season of On the Job, we spoke with Benny Boas, who founded a coding company that provided coding bootcams for anyone who wanted to become a software engineer. Well, today we're going to talk to Magabo, an educator and a graduate of that boot camp who's had a love for math and numbers for as long as he can remember. His goal is to build tools that spread education because from personal experience, he knows how dangerous it is when people don't have access to it. Well, good morning. Mr. Mugabo. How much sleep did you get last night?

You know, much, a lot more than I've gotten in the last few months. My six and a half month old son is still learning how to sleep. sleep through the night and so it's been an up and down last few months. Tieri Magabo Uolingimana goes by Mugabo. He lives in Burlington, Vermont. And since Mugabo has a six-month-old son, he now is a job to suit his lifestyle. And my software engineer for Desmos as of just over a month ago. Desmos is a software company that builds tools for students and teachers to use in their curriculums.

Their big thing is making their online graphing calculators and geometry tools fun to interact with. Because an overarching philosophy at this most, which I feel like he's a company founded by people who love math and who are trying to create the tools and the learning opportunities that help students not only learn math, but love learning math. Magabo is one of those people who loves math.

He sees it as a way to understand how things in everyday life interact, the rules to how things work. And he believes that once you understand math, you can use it to create new ways that things interact with each other. Then from that can emerge new fields of mathematics. And so it can be a game. It can be like Legos, you know, where there are some ways that they can connect and there are ways that they can't connect.

And once you understand how they connect or don't connect, you can build amazing things and take them apart and build different amazing things, you know. And so there is a magic to it. So Desmos and the software that Mugabo is helping to develop is trying to answer that problem. How do we make math enjoyable? Which is a big one to take on in our society that has, for many reasons, become very mathphobic.

Math-phobic. Math generally gets a bad rap for being too boring or too difficult or not actually useful. At Desmos, they make super-accessible tools online and also have a resource database for teachers anywhere to use. That has math activities on it that allows not only teachers to adapt activities. but students to interact with activities and then for teachers to facilitate those activities in a classroom. And so all of that is running on software, on internet technologies.

And as a software engineer, Mugaba works from home behind the scenes, taking in feedback from teachers and students, working with the team on how they can improve the coding on the tools they have and building new ones that make math more enjoyable and understandable. One of the things that has made me feel really good about joining this, organization has been the outpouring of love from math teachers and from students talking about how learning math this way has been transformational, has been more joyful, you know, and you don't hear people use those words for learning mathematics often.

So your job is to make the magic happen. Yeah. More or less. More or less. Yeah, which is pretty cool. So you love math. I do. I have, um, I grew.

in a household that loved math. My dad is an engineer. My mom was in finance and accounting, and so numbers was something that we were at least taught that we had to get, you know, that it wasn't an option to not get it. Mugaba was born in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda,

little country in Central Africa. We left Rwanda in 107 because of the genocide in 1994. Between April and July of 1994, the truly horrific Rwandan genocide took place. Tensions between the two main ethnic groups, the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi, had been raging for decades. And on April 6, 1994, a plain carrying Rwanda's president was shot down, and Tutsi extremists

were blamed. That night, the country erupted and a mass-organized killing of the minority Tutsi began. Mugabo's mother was Tutsi. How did I understand that as a seven-year-old? I don't know. We knew that it wasn't safe, you know? You know, and I guess that's all that we needed to know. It's not safe out there and we need to leave.

Mugabeau and his family got out of the country and fled to Congo. They were among two million others that fled Rwanda. And in the few months after Magabo left, over 800,000 Tutsi were killed there. He says that his parents got him out early enough so that he didn't witness the atrocities. That a lot of young people, younger than I, were exposed. to. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm thankful for that. His family spent three years in Congo. They had interrupted schooling because of conflicts and moving around. Then they went to Tanzania and spent three years there before coming to the U.S.

So you came to the U.S. when you were, what, 13? I was 13, yeah. So the first 13 years of my life are, yeah. They landed in Buffalo, where he and his five siblings started to get into, a regular schooling rhythm. Wugabo's trajectory toward math and science really started to take hold right around high school. I think I always wanted to be like my dad. I wanted to, my dad's a civil engineer.

I wanted to do civil engineering. He took some software engineering classes in high school and loved it. So by the time he got into college at Stanford, he knew he was going to major in some kind of engineering. He ended up doing electrical and had a few more classes in software engineering that really hooked him.

So that was the piece that took me towards software engineering. I got exposure there. I liked it. And there were a lot more jobs, a lot more software engineering jobs and electrical engineering jobs. And after graduating, he got a job, but was coming home every night to burn the midnight oil with this AI class that Stanford made available online for anyone to take. And I was blown away by how well technology could deliver a learning experience. And I think that was kind of the first light bulb moment of realizing. that these two can come together in a very powerful ways. So he got a glimpse at how his skills could help teach people in the future.

And a lot of his motivations came from everything he had experienced in his past. This belief that if one of the things that made Rwanda very turbulent and very susceptible to what happened was that you had a massive kind of youth demographic that did not have prospects. And that makes them very susceptible to some. Yeah, it leads to a lot of political instability, you know. And I always thought that if more people had had opportunities, if we had the good system of education where people graduated with opportunities to take on, you know, to pursue their lives, you know.

So a lot of your motivation for getting into teaching was to... It's to think about how I can be part of, you know, contribute to creating a world where what happened in Rwanda doesn't happen. And I thought I was going to be through education. It's a lot of pressure to put on yourself. Yeah, well, yes. And when you're young, it's okay to kind of dream big and think, I mean, I hadn't thought of it as the pressure. but, you know, I mean, I think the language that I've, that I picked up at some point is survivor's remorse.

You know, the people, if you make it out of a tragedy, like a genocide, you walk away feeling like, okay, I survived where many didn't. What, how does that then shape my purpose? How does that then shape how I live my life? And to try and also answer the very real questions of, of, of, of, of, of, of, you know, why me we'll be right back with Mugabo's story after the break a strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done sweats over the details this is the kind of person you need express employment professionals can help finding the best people requires more than sorting through applications you need to

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in Rwanda, the country maybe wouldn't have been so vulnerable to dangerous rhetoric, and maybe the genocide wouldn't have happened. It's nice to have a powerful drive, a powerful motivating sense of purpose, you know. So he had been exposed to this online class from Stanford, and he was blown away by how well-built the software for the class was. So this drove you to actually getting into teaching. It put education on the map for me as something that I wanted to do. I wasn't sure in what, how, in what capacity,

because I was headed towards engineering. And I think that was kind of the first light bulb moment of realizing that these two can come together in a very powerful ways. It was 2009 by the time Mugabo graduated college. The recession had just hit, so it was hard to find a job in teaching or find a job at all at the time. He stuck with engineering and worked as a software consultant for the IRS. He was taking more online courses. He got his MBA.

He even started working at an education technology company. I think it was the years in software engineering that kind of made me appreciate the human element. That, yes, technology can facilitate great learning experience. and it worked for me. But when we're talking about where kids are in the classroom, having a great piece of technology is not, it's nowhere near enough. So when I had the opportunity to go into the classroom,

I did because I wanted to spend some time on the other side of not creating the tools by using the tools in the classroom. And that was a whole learning experience. That was a whole learning experience. Mugabo got a job in the Winooski School District of Vermont. He was teaching middle, and high school kids, ages 11 to 19. He taught engineering and science,

and by all accounts, his students loved him. I leaned on exploring. I leaned on following the interests and the kind of the whims of the students. Where were the questions coming from? And I always leaned on fun. I mean, all learned is learned differently. You know, and there was a whole lot there

that I needed to learn and then I needed to figure out. He was a very interactive experience teacher, always experimenting, using technology, and Legos, and he tried to run his classrooms very democratically, like an open forum. Where people express themselves freely and, you know, sometimes with disagreements, kids felt very free and very free to check me and to freely express themselves in ways that, you know, like if I'm angry and I'm raising my voice, I'm not being rude. You know, I'm just angry and I'm raising my voice. And it's like, it's okay.

Mugabo played a very important role at his school. For context, Vermont is like 98% white, very white. But a lot of the immigrants and refugees who have come to Vermont have settled up in Winooski and nearby Burlington. And, you know, my class, my school was like majority black and brown kids. That is very exceptional for Vermont. Very, right? Yeah. Now, the teaching staff and the administration was still almost entirely white.

He was actually the only black teacher in the middle school and high school, and he felt a responsibility to advocate for more diverse multicultural space, because while they had students from all over the world, they were still learning in a structurally white American environment. And I found that the impact that had on my young kids was the main. message that their ways of being were not okay, that their ways of being were not. This was not a place to express yourself as you are. You need to learn a new way of being. And for young, maliable minds, that has a way of kind of teaching them to reject who they are

and then to try and figure out who they are supposed to be. But he says it was always an uphill battle. The school preached its messages of being a multicultural space, but wasn't really ever acting on it. Mugabo spent a lot of time advocating for his students to make those changes, for a better system, for more diverse faculty. But he says time and time again, he wasn't really supported by the school. Ultimately, I left, you know, I was kind of burning out that I, adding on community organizing was just not feasible and I was becoming a dad.

and so I left. I left so, you know, to be able to also fulfill my responsibility as a husband and as a dad. Mugabo left the school last year in 2021. He had a baby on the way, and he says being an educator and an activist within the school he worked in was taking so much of himself. I realized that a lot of the change that needs to happen, can, you know, But the community needs to spearhead that. The parents need to be organized enough to realize what's happening to their kids,

you know, what they aren't getting, and then demand it. He wrote an open letter to the school, giving specific examples of how the faculty and community can actually be more diverse. In it, he said, I have done my part to make good trouble at Winooski. I've spoken the truth, even when it was hard. These are very actionable steps. Which of these will you take lead on to make sure it is implemented? I think that's ultimately more sustainable that we have more engaged, more parents who understand what's happening, who understand the system,

understand how to advocate for themselves and work in collaboration with whoever is willing to work with them to make sure that their kids get what they need. Did you feel bad leaving it all? Yeah, yeah. It remains hard. I mean, every time I see my students, I feel like I part of the reason why I made my resignation letters public was to you know was understanding that I had

a responsibility to the community to kind of explain what happened and why I felt that I couldn't stay. In the letter, he also says that he plans to get back to community organizing when he can. He told me, he probably won't feel totally better about the situation until he finds the time to do that.

But it's nice that I'm able to be there for my son, my wife. I mean, I would not have been able to do that. And so there is that and that counts for a lot. So he's still working through a lot. But now he has the autonomy and the time to do it. Teaching and trying to change the way people learned in the school was draining him. Now that he's building educational software with Desmos, he can be there for his his family and still be a part of spreading knowledge as he always intended.

Seeing what they've done here gives me a lot of hope. We're not trying to do everything. We don't have to. We understand that our place is to create this powerful kind of a little tool. That's going to be one of many tools that people educating all over the world are going to use. And if we make it easy enough and intuitive enough and fun enough and enjoyable enough, then these teachers are going to do magic with it. And they do. Mugabo saw a lack of cultural understanding in his school, and he fought tooth and nail to change it,

because he knows firsthand how dangerous that lack of understanding can be. I think a lot of people who are driven by some kind of higher purpose like that can forget to take care of themselves in the process, to think that we need to be the solution instead of being a part of it. To me, it's really inspiring what Muggan. Gabba has done, all of it. But one of the most admirable things, I think, is that he knew when to step away, and he knew he couldn't do it alone. Yeah, he had real purpose to fight for, but he also had a family, and he also had his well-being. And he realized that he couldn't adequately take care

of anyone if he didn't take care of himself first. Today, he found a job that lets him do that, and still allows him to be a part of making that magic happen. He knows he can't do everything, and understands that he is just a powerful little force, one of many that are all needed to help people learn. As the world changes and all of our lives become more complicated, I think we can all take some pointers from Mugabo because there's going to be a lot more jobs like that, jobs where we can take better care of ourselves

and still do the work that matters to us. I don't know, this compulsion that you have to be an educator, I'm sure you got to really scratch that itch by seeing things. people face to face every day. Is what you're doing right now, is it still fulfilling that specific need for you? Yes, it still feels like I'm part of a team that's contributing to something that I very deeply care about and that I think is very important. And I can do that with the autonomy of being a soft engineer and God willing with the

autonomy that's going to allow me to do more things once we find a rhythm with a family life. Yeah, so it's a good place. It's a good place to be now. For on the job, I'm Otis Gray. All right, if you have ever dealt with a traditional home security company, you know the drill. Expensive monthly fees, contracts that lock you in for years, and waiting around for a technician to set everything up. It's a lot. Well, now they're Simply Safe.

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you can have everything installed and armed and under an hour. No technician needed. And it's not just a camera. It's a full ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and outside, and 24-7 professional monitoring. If there's ever a break-in,

a fire or a flood, SimplySafe's agents are on it immediately. They were also named America's best customer service by Newsweek, which honestly tracks. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplysafe.com slash bones. That's half off at simplysafe.com slash bones. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Service opens doors. And at American military university, it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online

programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you. Learn more at amu. APUS. Dot E-D-U-S-Military. Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. That's AMU. APUS. Dot E-D-U-S-Military.

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