8.29.23
“John Saxon’s Story – A Math Genius Who Knew How To Teach Math to Others”
By Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
My two books – “A Math Warrior’s Almanac” and “John Saxon’s Story: A Genius of Common Sense in Math Education” – are now available on Kindle.
These two books are about John Saxon and are based upon his K-12 math textbooks which contain a magnitude of traditional methods and common-sense ways to teach math.
A push to get my two books published on Kindle came this year from a new friend and colleague, Jenny Hatch who lives in Colorado. She was a homeschooling mom who ordered in 2013 the biography that I wrote because she was using Saxon Math books to teach her five children.
Jenny has her own podcast show, and she asked me to work with her to read chapters aloud from my books about John Saxon.
Jenny also guided me through the whole Kindle publishing process. Now my two books, A Math Warrior’s Almanac and John Saxon’s Story: A Genius of Common Sense in Math Education, are available on Kindle to demonstrate to more readers why his math program is still supported by millions of users.
Readers can also learn why he is still hated today by many of America’s math education elites even 27 years after his death.
A review of his early work life becomes important (which his opponents evidently ignored):
Bomber pilot for the U.S. Army Air Corps, WWII; West Point graduate with a degree in engineering; pilot instructor for new recruits in the U.S. Air Force; Korean War bomber pilot and the Distinguished Flying Cross; test pilot for the “new” jet airplanes; holder of Aeronautical Engineering degree; U.S. Air Force Academy instructor; holder of master’s degree in electrical engineering; Vietnam pilot; and lieutenant colonel retired, 1970. He was a warrior.
My second book, which is John’s history in the math teaching field from 1971-1996 (the year he died), is the focus of the biography entitled John Saxon’s Story, a Genius of Common Sense in Math Education.
My other book, A Math Warrior’s Almanac, builds on three chapters from the biography that tell how to teach Saxon Math most effectively, according to John Saxon.
The fact that John Saxon never earned a teaching certificate was enough to discredit him entirely with the elites.
The fact that he produced math clarity for students with his unique, yet simple, incremental learning methods, that he lived in Oklahoma (not New York), and that he refused to back down from their destructive efforts caused the elites to hate him vehemently. He simply laughed at their criticism.
Readers can go to my website -- http://saxonmathwarrior.com -- and learn more about John Saxon.
To order the book, John Saxon’s Story: A Genius of Common Sense in Math Education, buyers can email nikihayes@att.net.
A PDF copy of A Math Warrior’s Almanac can be obtained by sending a check or money order for $10 to Three Pup Press, P.O. Box 5034, Waco, TX 76708.
NOTE FROM NAKONIA HAYES: “All earnings from my two books go to West Point’s Department of Mathematical Sciences in memory of John Saxon.”