Teaching with her toes: Armless tutor inspires students.

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Mary Gannon, a 24-year-old math tutor, was born without arms and teaches with her toes, amazing and inspiring students and staff at Harding Middle School in Lakewood, Ohio. She’s become a living example that anything is possible.

Gannon drives, dresses, cooks, types emails and writes math problems on the board – all with her toes. Gannon is right-footed and jokes that she can’t read her writing with her left foot.

“I’m not saying I don’t get frustrated,” she admitted to TODAY.com. “Watching a normal person carry something heavy, I wish it would take me two seconds to carry groceries.”

As far as her students, Gannon told TODAY.com, “I personally go out of my way to explain.”

Gannon’s a natural because she’s been using her feet for hands her whole life. She doesn’t know why she was born this way. Gannon spent her early childhood in a Mexican orphanage and lacks early medical records.

The young teacher draws her enormous inner strength from the large, loving Ohio family who adopted her when she was 7 years old.

“They never gave up on me. They’re encouraging me to this day. They’re very supportive, especially my mom,” she gushed. “She’s a doctor and just watching her raise her kids and go back to school and get her master’s – if she can do it, so can I.”

Gannon was hired on her merit – she can teach and knows math, said Keith Ahearn, principal at Harding Middle School. Turns out, the parents and students love her. And later, the principal noticed she has something “intangible” – that X factor.