Good number sense comes from more than textbook teaching and learning. For Ann LeSage, Ph.D., it’s about fundamentally changing the way pre-service teachers approach their own learning and mathematics teaching to engage children at an early age. As an Associate Professor at 's Faculty of Education, Dr. LeSage is passionate about changing children’s experiences with math by changing the perceptions of pre-service educators coming into the program. Dr. LeSage first noticed this gap early in her elementary teaching career. Students struggled to understand math from teachers who didn’t have a firm grasp of mathematical concepts and were unable to engage students in learning. She has always been enthusiastic about teaching math and science and wanted to make a meaningful difference in the lives of children. At the University of Western Ontario, Dr. LeSage earned both her Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Geology, and her Bachelor of Education in Primary-Junior Education in 1988, and 1993, respectively. Upon graduation, she began teaching Grade 2 abroad at the Abu Dhabi International School in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and served as a mathematics and biology (IGCSE) teacher for the American International School in UAE. In 1998, she furthered her global teaching experience as a mathematics teacher (pre-algebra) at Colegio Bolivar in Cali, Colombia. Dr. LeSage returned to Canada to pursue graduate studies, and in 1999 she completed her Master of Education in Curriculum and Leadership at Nipissing University (NU) in North Bay, Ontario. She joined the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Education Studies (OISE) as a research assistant in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning in 2000; where she earned her Doctorate in 2005. She also held the appointment of tenured assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at NU before joining in 2006. Here, she quickly realized how few math and science courses were offered to pre-service teachers, and what little background they had in these areas. Her role at is in developing pre-service teachers’ understanding of math and science to foster lifelong student engagement in these critical subjects for the benefit of society. For her work in this area, she was awarded the Best Practical Paper at the 2011 International Association for Development of the Information Society e-Learning Conference in Rome, Italy. Ontario Tech University Ontario Tech University Ontario Tech University