The Whitebridge High School mathematics teacher attributes this to a wide range of life experiences - from her daughter's journey with disability, to watching relatives battle with cancer, to losing her younger brother to suicide in 2018.

"All of these events and experiences have significantly impacted on my outlook on life, and have definitely made me more determined to draw attention to issues facing our society today, including environmental issues," she said.

"I have always been raised to be a person who cares for others and also the environment.

"In our mathematics faculty, we are incorporating investigation style assessment tasks and have been looking at various alternatives for assessing student understanding of content."

In 2019, Ms Freeman created a task themed Water is Precious.

Students learned about the value of water and how to conserve and measure it. They were then invited to present their project at a forum, with some going on to test a new water usage calculator for Hunter Water's website before its release.

"At the time of writing the assessment task, water restrictions were not in place," Ms Freeman said.

"As the year progressed, water restrictions were introduced, and our students became very aware of how they can save water, and the effect of drought on our water supply.

"Access to clean water and sanitation is one of those things that we often take for granted.

"I am hoping that after this investigation, our students realise that water is a valuable resource and we all have a responsibility to conserve it, to ensure our access now and into the future."

Ms Freeman believes incorporating maths into everyday life is "extremely important".

"Often when I tell people that I am a mathematics teacher, their first response is 'I hated maths at school', or 'I am terrible at maths'," she said.

"I think making real world problems part of the everyday teaching of mathematics makes things more meaningful for students.

"I have had lots of positive feedback from my colleagues and also students who are concerned about their environment.

"Some of the biggest problems facing our world today are still yet to be solved, so now more than ever we need more people who are able to contribute to solutions to these problems.

"As a society we still need to be competent in working with numbers.

"The conversation around mathematics needs to shift, so that we encourage our students to keep going even when learning gets tough."

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