Marilyn Burns is one of today’s most highly respected mathematics educators. Over the course of almost sixty years, Marilyn has taught children, led professional development sessions, spoken at conferences, contributed to professional journals, written a dozen books for children, and created more than twenty professional development publications for teachers and administrators.
In 1984, Marilyn founded Math Solutions, dedicated to improving math teaching in Kindergarten through Grade 8. Soon after, Marilyn wrote About Teaching Mathematics, now in its 4th edition. Her other professional books include Welcome to Math Class; Math and Literature; Teaching Arithmetic; Lessons for Algebraic Thinking; Writing in Math Class; and more.
Marilyn has been the recipient of numerous honors, including an honorary doctorate degree from Bank Street College of Education in New York in 1991, the Ross Taylor/Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award from the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics in 1996, the Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education from the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1997, and induction in 2010 into the Educational Publishing Hall of Fame by the Association of Educational Publishers. In 2019, Marilyn received the Walter Denham Memorial Award from the California Mathematics Council in recognition of her advocacy for math education at the state and national levels.
Working with Math Solutions colleagues, Marilyn has developed several important school resources. Do The Math, published in 2007, is a supplemental instructional program for building numerical reasoning. In 2012, Math Reads was published to help teachers use children’s literature for teaching mathematics. Also in 2012, Math Reasoning Inventory (MRI), a digital interview tool funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was made available to help teachers assess students in Grades 5 and up. In 2021, Listening to Learn was published, a digital interview tool that expands MRI to help teachers of Kindergarten and up learn how their students reason numerically.
