Lindsey Church
Lindsey begins each class with a “brain teaser” that gives students the opportunity to discover patterns through logic problems. As they learn new material, she seeks to help her students engage in the twofold process of exploration described by Francis Su in Mathematics for Human Flourishing. He argues that to do math properly means to engage in a kind of play that consists of two kinds of exploration—pattern exploration via inductive reasoning and proof via deductive reasoning. First, her students aim to discover new mathematical ideas, and second, they strive to understand and justify why these ideas are true. Lindsey doesn’t approach mathematics as a bunch of rules and problems that sit in a textbook. She brings her subject to life by showing her students the rich history of mathematics full of debates and discoveries advanced by real people.
Lindsey currently lives in Hillsdale, Michigan, but was proudly born and raised in Buffalo, New York. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics with minors in classical education and Latin at Hillsdale College, she moved to the Detroit area to teach upper school math and logic at a classical Christian school. She also served as the school’s guidance counselor and worked with the school’s house system. In the summer of 2019, she and her husband, Jon, moved back to Hillsdale, which gave her the opportunity to teach math to elementary and middle school students at a homeschool co-op and to begin a master’s degree in classical education with the University of Dallas. She has especially enjoyed teaching students in such a wide variety of grade levels —as young as first grade and as old as eleventh grade—and to help those students see the beauty of math.
Lindsey spends much of her spare time helping her husband coach the mock trial teams at Hillsdale College. Though neither of them are lawyers, they can often be heard discussing case theories, objections and rules of evidence. She and her husband love to ski, hike, read and visit their families in New York and Iowa.
The students at Wilson Hill are among the most diligent and self-motivated that I have taught. I appreciate how they consistently embody a love of learning, embrace challenges and cultivate community with one another.