For the last twenty years Ray has headed up the Mathematics department at a private secondary school in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In a teaching career that has spanned almost forty years, Ray has taught in a number of government and private schools throughout Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga. Ray has a genuine interest in the growth and welfare of the young people of the schools he has served in, especially in the area of Mathematics. He takes delight in seeing the mathematical light bulb turn on in the minds of his students. Ray has seen many different approaches to teaching Mathematics in his teaching career. It was after a short period of tutoring tertiary students at Avondale College, New South Wales, that Ray developed a greater interest in how best to enable students to develop competent numeracy skills. He decided to undertake a Master of Education (Honours) program and to devote his thesis to examining one system of teaching Mathematics that was popular in south-east Queensland at the time, namely the Booklet System.