Stories are knowledge. When we tell a story, we're teaching—whatever that may be.
For me and for my research, I never connected with math when I was in school. It didn't connect with my body, my culture, my spirit or the land until I realized, when I was doing my master's degree, that there is a way of doing, being and knowing in mathematics that's very standardized. There's nothing wrong with that. It creates a disconnect between humans and cultures and how people have done math for many years.
Think about the significance of trigonometry and how much communities that have navigated the ocean did it in their heads to navigate through the zenith, the horizon and whatnot. It's significant. That is connected to the body and senses. When those ways of understanding, knowing, being and doing mathematics are removed through a way of understanding it that is about memorization, is very standardized and is done in a classroom on a piece of paper, there isn't that connection.
Once I realized there are ways of understanding math that have relationality, I began to connect with it more. That's how I work with children. How do you see the math around you? How do you understand how different angles create different seasons? How do you measure using your body and not necessarily using a standardized ruler? We are our own standardized measurement.
When I was doing my master's degree, I did some work in Papua New Guinea with different number systems. There are different base systems between different communities, from base 32 to base 27. They are all significant and different. I realized how much they would help in understanding mathematics, because these communities, as they're trading between these different number systems, have to interpret and change different systems. That's what we are doing every day. That helps us every day, from telling the time to coding a computer. These are all connected and based in our bodies and in our methods of understanding the world around us. When we learn mathematics in school that is very standardized and disconnected from our body, our culture and our experiences, we don't have that same connection.
Does that answer your question?