Dr. Stacy Costa
B.A. (Semiotics & SocioCultural Anthropology, minor in Sociology), M.A., Ph.D. (Education)
Subject: Language Arts / Math and Problem Solving
What will my child walk away with? Students leave my class with stronger argumentation skills, greater comfort with asking questions, design and critical thinking, and a more sophisticated understanding of how knowledge is built and communicated. My doctoral research at University of Toronto explored how students metacognitively reason, problem solve, frame, argue, improve their misconceptions and build knowledge and those findings shape every lesson I design.
What can families expect? An innovative, puzzle-rich classroom where learning feels genuinely engaging. I am an enigmatologist and puzzle designer, which means I take play seriously as a pedagogical tool. Students don’t just “get answers” but instead shift to idea improvement. Parents can expect a teacher who is rigorous and creative in equal measure.
What does class actually feel like? Dynamic and participatory. I integrate puzzles, divergent thinking, and the ability to connect unrelated ideas through problem-solving challenges, creativity, lateral thinking and conceptual depth on how students can explain why and knowledge-building discourse into every session. Students are active contributors to the class, not observers, and the moments when something clicks — the “aha” moment — are what I teach toward.
How do you challenge a curious mind? I connect STEM thinking to creative and communicative problem-solving. I emphasize non-routine problem solving and teach students that the process of solving is more important than the answer. A bright student who can solve a problem quickly needs to learn how to explain their reasoning, evaluate alternatives, ask questions and consider what they might have missed. Those are the higher-order cognitive skills I deliberately target to learn confidence and long-term understanding.
Credentials and Experience Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development, OISE/University of Toronto (Collaborative Program in Engineering Education). M.A. in Curriculum Students with a focus in Math Education & Cognitive Sciences. and Honours B.A. in Semiotics and SocioCultural Anthropology, University of Toronto. Enigmatologist. Extensive knowledge of STEM, accessibility and learning initiatives & student reasoning in the age of AI. Public speaker on the role of puzzles in education and problem-solving development. TED Talk on puzzle-based STEM learning.
Why Stacy? Why Brain Power?
I have spent my academic career studying how students learn to think, argue, and build knowledge, and Brain Power is the rare enrichment program that operationalizes those research findings in an actual classroom. I advocate for a shift towards deep thinking and the goal that education is no longer information acquisition but intellectual empowerment! That alignment between research and practice is why I am here.