Math in reStructuredText with LaTeX

I would like to use a lightweight markup language to take notes in my college classes.

My editor of choice is gedit, and I found reStructuredText Tools for Gedit, which will run the reStructuredText processor and render the HTML in a pane in gedit. This is great, and 80% of the way there.

But for many of my classes I need to include math equations or greek characters in my notes. Although I'm not very familiar with LaTeX, my understanding is that it has these capabilities.

How can I use LaTeX in a reST document? Would the reST document need to be processed into LaTeX, then that rendered into HTML, or is there a better way? Would markdown make this easier? I can modify the gedit plugin if necessary.

Lastly, does anyone do this? Any other suggestions for taking class notes in a plain text editor?

Thanks!