A local math teacher is being celebrated as one of the top young talents in the country for his success and innovation in San Antonio classrooms.
Dashiell Young-Saver, an AP statistics teacher at IDEA South Flores, was included on the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2024.
“It was kind of a shock. There wasn’t a lot of lead up to it, but very thankful for them recognizing the work,” Young-Saver told KSAT.
The annual list recognizes some of the most successful professionals under 30 years old who have made significant impacts on their industry, including art, media, education, health care, technology, sports, marketing, energy, science and more. More than 11,000 nominees were winnowed down to the final list, which included celebrities like Kendall Jenner and NFL QB Lamar Jackson.
“Dashiell Young-Saver asked his students what they really wanted to learn. He heard answers of voter power, food deserts, the Spurs’s chance to win the NBA title, online dating and more. After infusing data about these topics into his lessons for a year, Young-Saver saw AP Statistics students’ passing rates jump from 2% to 42%,” his Forbes entry reads.
Young-Saver, 29, has taught for nearly seven years in San Antonio schools through Teach for America, according to his LinkedIn.
“The first year I did that curriculum shift, we had more students take and pass the AP Statistics exam than in the previous 16 years combined,” Young-Saver told Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “And more than the quantitative results, I noticed my students were more engaged and able to think critically as citizens when statistics were presented to them. When they tried to decipher data about the world, they’d be able to break it down in a nonpartisan way and figure out what’s going on.”
Young-Saver has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Harvard, and grew up in Thousand Oaks, California.
His lessons aren’t just for his own students, though.
“In June 2020, Young-Saver created the website Skew The Script and posted his lessons online. Now, the nonprofit provides free, relevant math lessons to 20,000 teachers and 400,000 students, boosting achievement among traditionally underserved student groups. The content has since expanded beyond statistics to include relevant, data-infused lessons for Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. Skew The Script has been awarded a $2.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Young-Saver is still teaching while also writing math lessons for The New York Times Learning Network,” Forbes wrote about the local teacher.
Way to go, Dashiell!