This Week at Global Math – 6/2/2020







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Edited By Chase Orton  @mathgeek76

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Revolution is Needed in High School Geometry

Presented by Dr. Jenny Tsankova

Dr. Jenny Tsankova will present an argument in favor of changing the way we communicate to students the following essential ideas: 1) the idea of proof, 2) the language of Geometry, and 3) the traditional topics we teach, such as constructing the perpendicular bisector. The goal is for the mathematical ideas to be accessible to all students, connected to other mathematical ideas, and embedded in relevant context without sacrificing the cognitive demand.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 

Global Mathematics: An Elective Mathematics Class for ALL Students

Presented by Dave Ebert

This session will describe how one school created an elective course, Global Mathematics, that helps students understand and critique the world while also experiencing wonder, joy, and beauty. This course engages students at every ability level through the study of the history of mathematics and the usefulness of mathematics to address global, regional, and local issues.

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

Closing Thoughts without Closure

This is my last Global Math Department newsletter contribution for the 2019-2020 academic year, which is wrapping up in much of the United States. I’m proud of the newsletters I’ve written this year, and ways in which I have been more involved at GMD (including managing the Twitter account since April 22). To this end, I want to shout out all the GMD contributors – past and present – as all work has been foundational to pushing further forward in thought and action.

Four closing items, which I will briefly name so that you can read, scroll, or avoid as desired:

  1. Nepantla Teachers Community posts;
  2. Opposition to proposed anti-Chinese legislation that targets graduate students in STEM;
  3. Seattle Public Schools and the continued pushback against their wonderful Ethnic Studies Framework;
  4. Three online happenings over the summer.

First, check out the Student Voices in Remote Learning series from the Nepantla Teachers Community.

See also their Statement of Solidarity with Communities of Color:

Pay attention to which organizations and institutions are speaking out at this time — and which ones aren’t — and be sure to hold them accountable. In this sense, the Global Math Department, followed by over five thousand math educators, cannot be seen as exempt, even as it has not issued analogous statements in the past. Look out for something to come from GMD, and hold us accountable thereafter!

Second, note the beginning of public-facing political stances taken by GMD in the following tweet about Sinophobic, xenophobic, and racist legislation proposed around Chinese graduate students working in STEM:

Third, be sure to read Shraddha Shirude’s post borne from the continued pushback against the Great Work done on Seattle’s Ethnic Studies Framework, as well as related tweets from Xi Yu and others.

Fourth, and finally, this is shaping up to be a summer in which we need to strengthen ourselves. For some, this means digitally disconnecting after too many Zoom calls, too many emails, too many videos that autoplay without trigger warnings, and, more generally, too much of too much. Do not burn yourself out!

For others and/or at other times, there are a number of webinars, conferences, seminars, and various forms of professional development (so to speak) that may reinvigorate. To mention just three:

Even without upcoming newsletters, I can be pinged (on Twitter or otherwise) if there is something in or adjacent to the worlds of mathematics education that you believe should be amplified. I’ve recently been thinking about math trails (related thoughts very welcome!) and will likely be on the grid for most of the summer.

And, in case you haven’t heard/read it recently enough: Black Lives Matter.

– Benjamin Dickman [@benjamindickman]

Moving the #MTBOS toward Anti-Racism
 

The murder of George Floyd served as a tipping point for many in the nation struggling to process the recent deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaudd Arbery. These three murders involved three different people in three different parts of the country. One constant in all of these cases was a response from police and the criminal justice system which implied that their lives did not matter.  

As we look for ways to move forward, all of us in the #MTBoS and #iteachmath community need to engage in anti-racist discourse and actions. This will be a challenge for our group of largely white educators. The following tweets may be helpful resources for white educators in our community looking for more actionable steps to further this anti-racist discourse. 

Symbolic actions such as officers Portland Police taking a knee with protestors deliver hope that we can bridge our racial divisions, but it’s only a first step. (Check out Julie Wright’s, @julierwright, retweet of the video.) Likewise, our actions in this moment must be followed by sustained efforts to dismantle racist policies and practices at our schools and in our math classrooms.
 
-Carl Oliver @carloliwitter
 

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This Week at Global Math – 5/26/2020




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Edited By Nate Goza  @thegozaway

View this email in your browser

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Attending to Equity in Mathematics During a Pandemic:
Supporting Inclusion, Access, Fairness and Respect for All

Presented by Ruthmae Sears, Caree Pinder

This presentation will describe means to attend to equity in the era of a pandemic. We will describe factors that can impact equitable learning outcomes, and identify strategies that can address equity when teaching remotely.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 

Revolution is Needed in High School Geometry

Presented by Dr. Jenny Tsankova

Dr. Jenny Tsankova will present an argument in favor of changing the way we communicate to students the following essential ideas: 1) the idea of proof, 2) the language of Geometry, and 3) the traditional topics we teach, such as constructing the perpendicular bisector. The goal is for the mathematical ideas to be accessible to all students, connected to other mathematical ideas, and embedded in relevant context without sacrificing the cognitive demand.

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

From In-Person Education to Disaster Distancing Learning and Back Again
 

Joni Mitchell and The Counting Crows once sang:
 
“Don’t it always seem to go \
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone \
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot”
 
That’s what I think about when I reflect on how in-person education has melted away and become disaster distance learning
 
For sure, education has never been “paradise”, especially for marginalized and oppressed students, families, communities, teachers, and staff. But the pandemic brings into sharp relief just how much school does for us as an institution, and just how little the United States does for it:


Source
 

Next year, I”ll be teaching mathematics teaching methods courses to pre-service teachers who, from today’s vantage point, will be entering an uncertain future. And I’m racking my brain on how things will work and look like. 
 
The CDC just released some guidance, which include requiring staff to wear masks, encouraging increased ventilation with outside air, turning student desks in the same direction and spacing them six feet apart (I kid you not), and cancelling extracurricular activities. 
 
The Learning Policy Institute has a summary of what five other countries are actually doing as they reopen schools:


 

But I’m not a classroom teacher right now, and I doubt many of the people designing school reopening policies are either. As Annie Tan (@AnnieTangent) and Dr. Kristopher J. Childs (@DrKChilds) point out:


 

Jennifer Gonzalez (@cultofpedagogy) also states in her article Reopening School: What it Might Look Like:
 
“All of these ideas completely suck compared to pre-pandemic life. They are depressing and repressive and in a lot of schools, not even realistic.”


 

But let’s come back to Joni Mitchell and the Counting Crows for a minute (a sentence I never imagined I would write). School is not a paradise, and as David E. Kirkland (@davidekirkland) explains in the Guidance on Culturally Responsive-Sustaining School Reopenings authored by the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (NYU Metro Center):
 
“We don’t want to “go back” to normal; we want things to improve…A joy-based reimagining of schooling is one where we replicate spaces that center students of the global majority (BIPOC) and let go of anything that continues to marginalize, exclude, and harm them.”
 
The NYU Metro Center offers up suggestions for reimagining schooling. A few that stood out to me include:

  • Gatherings that occur in circles for all school community members
  • Embracing curricula driven by students and that elevates community histories
  • Eliminating homework
  • Removing metal detectors
  • Eliminating suspensions for non-violent offenses

Yes, COVID-19 has completely paved over in-person education this semester. But it wasn’t and never has been the beautiful, lush garden that reporters, policymakers, and politicians sometimes like to make it out to be.
 
When schools eventually reopen, we must continue to seek new possibilities for education that (1) center the voices of marginalized students and communities, including BIPOC and students with disabilities, (2) promote rehumanizing curricula such as Seattle’s K-12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework, (3) reduce or eliminate standardized testing, which creates racialized and gendered hierarchies under the guise of a neoliberal myth of meritocracy, and (4) prioritize joy and love above concerns such as accountability and grit.

@melvinmperalta

How Are Teachers Making Sense of Teaching During COVID-19?
 

Over the last few weeks, our research team has had the opportunity to speak with several secondary mathematics teachers about their experiences moving from in-person teaching to remote teaching. One thing that has become apparent during these conversations is that a lot of teachers are wrestling with the same questions as they continue to navigate the new jobs they find themselves in. Here are some of those questions and the things teachers have said as they think about them:
 
Is there a way to support students’ mathematical exploration through an online learning platform? 

Teachers that are accustomed to teaching conceptually don’t have access to manipulatives or don’t have the time or the resources to find or create videos that engage in conceptual ideas vs. procedural ideas. Live video platforms like Zoom aren’t set up to support the types of rich, inquiry-based discussions that many math teachers planned for their classroom lessons. Furthermore, students don’t show up to class or don’t turn in assignments for a variety of reasonable and understandable reasons.

One way for teachers or school leaders to support mathematical exploration is to strategically choose topics for learning that lend themselves well to online tools of engagement, such as statistics, probability, or geometry (if possible). Other teachers have found some success combining different online resources, like having students work through a Desmos activity during a live Zoom class, to curate opportunities for engagement that move beyond procedural lectures even with kids’ videos turned off.
 

Can teachers feel confident claiming what their students know or don’t know? 

Checking for and building on student understanding can be difficult even in the classroom setting. Without the ability to elicit student thinking during remote learning, teachers are forced to provide feedback to students’ finished products and not throughout their process of understanding. Teachers often rely on visual cues like students’ facial expressions for signs of confusion or understanding, a source of information that is no longer available to them now that teaching has moved online. 

Creating a culture of open communication can help students not only feel safe reaching out to teachers when they don’t understand something, it can also support them in explaining the mathematical details of their misunderstanding. Efficiently using feedback features of online resources such as Google Forms, Google Classroom, Desmos, EDpuzzle, etc. can also help cut down on the time of providing students individual feedback. 
 

How do teachers build and maintain relationships with students if they can’t see them in person?

One thing that is clear is that teachers are constantly trying to balance their role as a math teacher with the reality that their students are people living through a pandemic and may not be able to be students right now. Not only that, but students now have the option to just not show up to class or turn in work with very little, if any, consequences. Teachers are faced with the daunting task of creating an online environment that a middle- or high-school kid wants to come to instead of sleeping in.  Over time, the impersonal nature of online teaching has taken its toll on teachers who enter the profession because of their love of connecting with people and students.

Teachers have begun to use their platforms for learning to support students’ mental and emotional well-being, such as using their schools’ messaging platform to notify students of free meal offerings, or using Desmos to ask how students are feeling. Adjusting conceptions of “good teaching” to include more opportunities to make students laugh and focus less on teaching mathematical formulas is a necessary adaptation in this unique context. We all know that math will always be there and there will always be gaps in students’ understanding, so when faced with the choice of teaching math or teaching kindness, teachers choose kindness time and time again.

 
Do these questions resonate with you? What are some of the things you have thought about or conversations you have had about these ideas? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

 

Written by Katherine Schneeberger McGugan (@kath_schnee)
with support from Ilana Horn (@ilana_horn) and Jessica Moses (@Jess_Moses1)

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This Week at Global Math – 5/19/20







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Edited By Casey McCormick  @cmmteach

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Deliberate Practice: How Math Teachers Can Close the Professional Development Gap

Presented by Chase Orton

I have a confession—math class isn’t working for some of my students. Despite my best efforts, I continue to struggle to meet the myriad of social, emotional, and academic needs of all my students while also moving learning forward for the whole class. Maybe you or someone you work with is also facing this same challenge. Maybe math class isn’t working for some of your students too. If so, please know it’s not your fault. Math teaching is a difficult and complex task, and I know we all want to get better at it. But to get better, we need to close the gap between the PD we’re offered and the PD we need. In this webinar, I will share my thoughts on what’s wrong about our current approaches to PD while also offering you a pathway for a more coherent, teacher-centered approach to your professional learning as a math teacher. While teachers of mathematics are the intended audience, this webinar has value for any educator vested in improving the quality of teaching in the math classroom.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 


Attending to Equity in Mathematics During a Pandemic: Supporting Inclusion, Access, Fairness and Respect for All

Presented by: Ruthmae Sears and Caree Pinder

This presentation will describe means to attend to equity in the era of a pandemic. We will describe factors that can impact equitable learning outcomes, and identify strategies that can address equity when teaching remotely.

Register for the webinar here, and join us next week!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

 

Laughable Graphs

This week, the state of Georgia shared the following graph as evidence for why it reopened the state for “normal business operations”. 



What do you notice? What do you wonder? What’s the story this graph is supposed to tell?

 

What you might notice is that the dates along the x-axis come in no particular order. You may wonder if the story being this graph is to lead viewers to believing the state has had a significant decrease in the number of COVID-19 cases over time. The governor has since issued an apology addressing the misinformation the graph represents. Can you believe it? A mathematical misrepresentation generated an apology! This is big news. 



When I first viewed this graph on Twitter, I could not help but laugh at the captions. Not a maniacal laugh. Not a “haha that’s so funny” graph. No…this kind: 

The kind that recognizes that these graphs are used to make real decisions that impact real people. 

Bob Lochel (@bobloch) shared the balanced sentiment of the joy of having new content to talk through with students and the sunken pit of the stomach feeling that the new content even exists.  Same, Bob. Same. 

So I culled together several laughable graphs (jokes on you, it’s not that funny) that have been used in real situations. For each one, I suggest asking yourself the same three questions as before: 



What do you notice? What do you wonder? What’s the story this graph is supposed to tell?



I’d also invite you to ask yourself one more question: What’s the real story? 



With all the (mis)information being passed around right now, it is important to find sources for data that describe the real story, what is actually happening, rather than the fictional world we wish we had. 

 

 

 

 


 

Oh. Wait. That last one is just the story of my own life right now, and I’m sure the same for some of you as well. Solidarity, friends. 

 

Remotely Yours, 



Lauren Baucom

@LBMathemagician

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This Week at Global Math – 5/12/2020







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Edited By Chase Orton  @mathgeek76

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Making (Math) Thinking Visible: Embracing Edtech to Help Students Demonstrate Understandings

Presented by Stacey Roshan

This session will examine specific examples using Pear Deck, Flipgrid, and Sutori. Participants will learn how to create student-paced Pear Deck activities with embedded Flipgrid prompts to create exercises that allow students to reflect on how they are understanding the new information they are receiving. At the conclusion of the Pear Deck activity, teachers can use Pear Deck Takeaways to have students revise errors and talk about how their understanding of the topic has improved to help them arrive at a new solution to the problem. Having students evaluate how they approached problems done in the past is an important component of the learning process. By actively reflecting on what they learned and how they learned it, students are able to grow their understandings beyond rote memorization. And in the reflection process, students become aware of holes in their knowledge. This awareness is a powerful component in helping students learn how to learn.

Sutori is another edtech tool that will be showcased in this session. Participants will be walked through an activity asking students to look back on past work and document how it relates to their new knowledge. Reflection is key to learning, and this project provides students the opportunity to tap into prior knowledge and form a deeper understanding of connections between the chapters being studied. As with the Pear Deck activity, Flipgrid is infused into this activity to allow students the opportunity to talk out their thought process directly to their webcam.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week!

Deliberate Practice:
How Math Teachers Can Close the Professional Development Gap

Presented by Chase Orton

I have a confession—math class isn’t working for some of my students. Despite my best efforts, I continue to struggle to meet the myriad of social, emotional, and academic needs of all my students while also moving learning forward for the whole class. Maybe you or someone you work with is also facing this same challenge. Maybe math class isn’t working for some of your students too. If so, please know it’s not your fault. Math teaching is a difficult and complex task, and I know we all want to get better at it. But to get better, we need to close the gap between the PD we’re offered and the PD we need. In this webinar, I will share my thoughts on what’s wrong about our current approaches to PD while also offering you a pathway for a more coherent, teacher-centered approach to your professional learning as a math teacher. While teachers of mathematics are the intended audience, this webinar has value for any educator vested in improving the quality of teaching in the math classroom.
 

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

“Disaster Distance Learning”: 5 Items After 2 Months

[The term “disaster distance learning” is from a blog post by @TheJLV.]

Before getting into this week’s updates, one GMD note from me: The Global Math Department has allowed me to manage their twitter account. I’ve been trying to use it more actively, and will appreciate any and all feedback from anyone willing to give it! What would you like to see more or less of as the school year comes to an end and over the summer vacation (as applicable)? There is some really great content in our newsletters and webinars, and I am hoping GMD can be a source of information that helps rather than overloads. ?

This contribution contains 5 items; please read in accordance with your bandwidth. I’m listing the 5 items before their respective tweets.

1) Virtual Advisory: Zoom-based morning Advisory/Homeroom from Sam J Shah;
2) Where are the educators?: Chalkbeat on NY Governor Cuomo ‘Reimagine Education’ Council;
3) Blaming Teachers?: Brian Robinson unpacks a thread from Nikole Hannah-Jones;
4) Preprint: Cathery Yeh and Laurie Rubel (2020) “Queering Mathematics: Disrupting Binary Oppositions in Mathematics Pre-service Teacher Education”;
5) #31DaysIBPOC: I strongly recommend a piece by fellow GMD contributor Hema Khodai.

Tweet and Blog Post:

Tweet and Link:

Quote-Retweet Commentary and Original Tweet (a bit of a rabbit hole):

Tweet and Preprint (quick read if you have it in you!):

Tweet and #31DaysIBPOC Contribution:

A closing word from Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

I know that we will Move Beyond (whatever that means) the present conditions; but, we need caring educators to preserve themselves. Please do not neglect self-care!

Benjamin Dickman [@benjamindickman]

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This Week at Global Math – 5/5/2020







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Edited By Nate Goza  @thegozaway

View this email in your browser

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Rich Math Tasks & 5 Practices in Online Teaching

Presented by Theresa Wills

Explore strategies to implement rich mathematical tasks and discussions in your synchronous online classroom. In this webinar, you will engage in interactive slides to complete a task. You will incorporate multiple representations such as using concrete, pictorial, and abstract. Then, all participants will engage in a math talk that utilizes the 5 practices. Register to see how to transition your pedagogical practices into the online environment and keep your math class fun, interactive, collaborative, and rigorous.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 

Making (Math) Thinking Visible: Embracing Edtech to Help Students Demonstrate Understandings

Presented by Stacey Roshan

This session will examine specific examples using Pear Deck, Flipgrid, and Sutori. Participants will learn how to create student-paced Pear Deck activities with embedded Flipgrid prompts to create exercises that allow students to reflect on how they are understanding the new information they are receiving. At the conclusion of the Pear Deck activity, teachers can use Pear Deck Takeaways to have students revise errors and talk about how their understanding of the topic has improved to help them arrive at a new solution to the problem. Having students evaluate how they approached problems done in the past is an important component of the learning process. By actively reflecting on what they learned and how they learned it, students are able to grow their understandings beyond rote memorization. And in the reflection process, students become aware of holes in their knowledge. This awareness is a powerful component in helping students learn how to learn.

Sutori is another edtech tool that will be showcased in this session. Participants will be walked through an activity asking students to look back on past work and document how it relates to their new knowledge. Reflection is key to learning, and this project provides students the opportunity to tap into prior knowledge and form a deeper understanding of connections between the chapters being studied. As with the Pear Deck activity, Flipgrid is infused into this activity to allow students the opportunity to talk out their thought process directly to their webcam.

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

Shared with permission from Bean, this is a different kind of article written for the GMD Newsletter…
 

I love grappling with everything related to mathematics education. I dream about it in all of its puzzling, perplexing, and messy glory and shortcomings. It preoccupies my every weekday-thought; who am I kidding, it also seeps into all of my weekend thoughts. 
 
So it breaks my heart every time Bean and I sit down to do math homework and my little one cries out with frustration. This little kid, who for years has been my eager partner in #tmwyk, now dissolves into tears every time we log in to Google Classroom. I’m serious. She’s a puddle on the floor at my feet. My arms cannot begin to gather the viscous pool of disengagement and defiance spreading across the carpet at my feet. (@MathStudio_Usha says she is “her Mother’s Daughter”.) I can’t help but feel like an abysmal failure both as an educator and a mother that the love I have for learning and the joy I experience when mucking about with mathematics isn’t shared by my only child. 
 
We sit in seething resentment, my mind spinning with all the strategies that I would normally try and wondering if I should in turn threaten, cajole, punish, surrender, my mini me into getting the worksheets done so I can feel better about it. 
 
“Mama, I want to show you the Coronavirus tracker.”
 
I’m still angry and don’t give a sh_t about the tracker of this stupid disease that’s ruining my life. (See how in the midst of a global pandemic, we continue to center ourselves?)
 
She goes on to show me anyways; comparing the total confirmed cases in Canada to the total confirmed cases globally. (By the end of Grade 4, she only needs to be able to read, represent, compare, and order whole numbers to 10000.)

She reads, describes, and interprets the secondary data presented in this image, pausing to pose purposeful questions to ensure I understand the magnitude of the information she’s sharing.


 

She effortlessly toggles back and forth between the chart view and the table view in the section below, carefully reviewing the labels on the axes while drawing conclusions from the comparisons between provinces.


 

It took me longer than I care to admit to really hear the depth of understanding my daughter has developed for herself; the complex data she has unpacked and was now offering to me as an olive branch. A glimpse into the learning she was choosing to engage in and generously inviting me to enter.
 
I have no profound words of wisdom, no wonder-filled revelation about humanity. This is simply a story that I wanted to share. An experience that gave me some comfort. A reminder that we don’t need to force learning because children (and grown-ups) will learn about things that interest them when they are ready.

@HKhodai

Wealth, Shown to Scale

Megan Bang (@meganbang3), an education professor who has written incredible articles on indigenous STEM practices (among other work), shared this website of wealth inequality, shown to scale. The authorship is not clearly indicated, but the website is hosted through Matt Korostoff’s github account, so he may be its creator. Scroll through everything. It takes time. But then again, that may be the point.

mathartchallenge

This has been covered already in the GMD, but it’s worth plugging yet another reminder that #mathartchallenge continues, thanks to the incredible work of Annie Perkins (@anniek_p) and everyone else who has been creating math art from their homes and other spaces.

Math Summer 2020

Howie Hua (@howie_hua) is organizing two hour-long sessions of low-floor, high-ceiling problems every Wednesday from 10am to 12pm (PDT) from June through August. If you would like to host a problem, please sign up in the google doc.


 

On a separate note, Howie has been killing it in the math twitter humor department recently. You can find a repository of some past tweets that have been well-received. For some, a little bit of humor can go a long way to help through these rough times.

@melvinmperalta

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This Week at Global Math – 4/28/20







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Edited By Casey McCormick  @cmmteach

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Tonight!

Utilizing Math History to Embrace Equity, Failure, and Authentic Problem Solving

in Leadership Communities


Presented by 

 

Sunil Singh

In order to move forward in math education with clarity, conviction, and passion for equity, we need to have a broader lens. Specifically, one that looks back at our past and the multitude of interwoven stories from thousands of years of global contributions. The thematic development of mathematics, with all of its historic struggles, human resilience, and collective journeys, must be braided into our equity goals and mandates for the math leaders of today and tomorrow.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 


Rich Math Tasks & 5 Practices in Online Teaching

Presented by: 

Theresa Wills

Explore strategies to implement rich mathematical tasks and discussions in your synchronous online classroom. In this webinar, you will engage in interactive slides to complete a task. You will incorporate multiple representations such as using concrete, pictorial, and abstract. Then, all participants will engage in a math talk that utilizes the 5 practices. Register to see how to transition your pedagogical practices into the online environment and keep your math class fun, interactive, collaborative, and rigorous.

Register for the webinar here, and join us next week!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

Happy Hunger Games: AP Edition

There have been some amazing responses of how parents, teachers, schools, and businesses have come together across the last couple weeks to solve the problems that have arisen amidst the coronavirus pandemic.  There have also been some pretty poor responses. One such response is that from the College Board in how they are handing AP Exams for students this year, enacting a literal Hunger Games in which the system is heavily exposed, and the people who lose are those who are forced to play. 


 

With all of the noise pointed at the coronavirus, there is little collective attention or organization from teacher groups to discuss these issues openly and to disrupt the injustices that are occurring. You may not have seen this, but a group of AP teachers came together to write an open letter to the College Board to address the inequities that their current solution presents. The exam, which is normally 2-3 hours, is now only 45 minutes; students without devices are being told to use smartphones, while students with desktops will be able to print questions out. The exam is only open for a small window across the world, meaning some students will take the exam at midnight, while others will take the exam at noon. Why is it that this inequitable injustice is the best solution that College Board has come up with in order to “award” students college credit for courses they take “early” during high school? And what do they think the scores will look like when they return, when students from more affluent communities achieve higher scores, not because of better instruction or more content knowledge, but because they had a printer and a large screen computer? Will students who score 5s feel as though they have accomplished something as compared to their 1 scoring peers?

 

Students in AP courses are being told that “this is the best we can do for you”, and many are naively going to try to do their best on a test that will measure little but privilege and wealth, believing that not doing so will somehow keep them from succeeding in the colleges to which they’ve already been accepted. 

 

As others have said about many of the systems we have used in education simply because of tradition, it is time to question whether the system of Advanced Placement seeks to serve students or the system of capitalism so that the for-profit company of College Board can continue to earn a dollar on the backs of teachers and students worldwide. Instead of banding teachers together right now in the name of learning, the have pitted students and teachers against one another in a game they will name as grit and sacrifice for the sake of tradition. 

The system of AP courses has always struggled with inequity as the populations of students in the courses almost never reflect the population of the community around it, making the courses a system of elitism for the dominant population to believe their students are “ahead” of other groups simply by gaining entry to the class (Just go check out your school’s OCR data to see how y’all are doing) . By no means am I here to judge any teacher who is still trying to “make it work” for the students enrolled in their class, trying to make the best of what you have been told you must do to “help your students”. May you come to realize, though, that in doing so, without speaking up about what is occurring, about what we know is wrong, you are just a pawn in the game they are playing. 

 

 

In continuing to pretend to go on as normal, you normalize their behavior as acceptable and send the message to your students that “this is just the way things work here.” It is in times when we know an injustice is occurring and we choose to be silent that we continue to let these systems, run on tradition, prevail.

 

To those AP teachers whose students are testing these next few weeks, may you find space to name these injustices and ways to dismantle the system. May you join together to dream a new dream of what these learning spaces could be. Lest we “go back to normal” and pretend to not know what game we are really playing. 

 

 

 

Masked Solidarity,

Lauren Baucom

@LBMathemagician

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This Week at Global Math – 4/21/20







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Edited By Chase Orton  @mathgeek76

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Creating an Inclusive Environment Using Project Based Learning in Middle School Mathematics

Presented by Rhonda Hewer

Is there a way for students to engage in the mathematics outlined in the curriculum in a relevant, practical way that will improve understanding and retention? Answer: YES! In this webinar the audience will be exposed to the components of a quality project based learning program in math through the narrative of the geodesic dome project. It will be evident how this type of “instruction” supports diverse cultural and learning needs of the classroom while digging into rich mathematical thinking at a level appropriate for all learners. The project involves multiple strands from the mathematics curriculum while developing global competencies of collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking and citizenship. Register now to hear how this group of Grade 8 students developed a strong understanding of math by using their toolbox of strategies to solve practical problems for an authentic audience.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 

Utilizing Math History to Embrace Equity, Failure, and Authentic Problem Solving in Leadership Communities

Presented by Sunil Singh

In order to move forward in math education with clarity, conviction, and passion for equity, we need to have a broader lens. Specifically, one that looks back at our past and the multitude of interwoven stories from thousands of years of global contributions. The thematic development of mathematics, with all of its historic struggles, human resilience, and collective journeys, must be braided into our equity goals and mandates for the math leaders of today and tomorrow.

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

Coronavirus by the Numbers

Citing many statistics, Nikole Hannah-Jones (‪@nhannahjones‬) recently wrote a thread about how Black Americans are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and why this is the case.

Nikole ends the thread with the following statement: “Being black in America, a country built and maintained on a system of racial caste, kills. This virus is NOT the great equalizer, it is simply exploiting the grave inequalities that have always existed and hastening an early death that was coming for so many black folks anyway. If it is unacceptable now, it has to be unacceptable when we conquer this virus. And I hope we as journalists, we as society, will stop putting forth notions that a force — good or bad — can be equal in a vastly unequal society.”

To make these inequalities visible, Melvin Peralta (‪@melvinmperalta‬) shared his art on twitter which contrasts COVID-19 cases by race/ethnicity with the population by race/ethnicity in his current home state of Michigan.

Drawing on data from APM Research Lab, Melvin shared images of various U.S. states, comparing the state’s population by race/ethnicity to its COVID-related deaths.

Christelle Rocha (@Maestra_Rocha)

DO, WATCH, READ
 

My colleagues and I have begun using a simple structure during this sudden, pandemic-induced transition to remote learning. I will try to do the same with this newsletter, by suggesting one item to DO, one to WATCH, and one to READ. I have tweeted a longer description of this structure if you’re interested in learning more about it.

DO:

Fawn Nguyen tweeted out this puzzle with a request to avoid spoilers:

WATCH:

Marian Dingle and Jose Vilson are co-leading a webinar for NCTM’s #NCTM100 sessions that I invite you to register for and watch two days from now, on Thursday April 23:

Recordings will be available at a later point if this precise scheduling does not work for you. Check out NCTM’s 100 Days of PD site for more!

READ:

Check out this opinion piece in Forbes from John Ewing, the president of Math for America, who tweeted out a link:

DO, WATCH, and READ whatever you have the bandwidth for, even/especially if it is nothing at all: Remember to be kind to yourself.

Benjamin Dickman [@benjamindickman]

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This Week at Global Math – 4/14/20







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Edited By Nate Goza  @thegozaway

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

The Power of Words

Presented by Diana McClean & Sam Kaplan

Evaluating our word choice can help change our thinking. Overtime we (educators) have become numb to the powerful student facing descriptors that when used haphazardly can define student identity. This talk will put forward ideas to think deeply about ways we can shift our language to improve student identities.
 

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 

Creating an Inclusive Environment Using Project Based Learning in Middle School Mathematics

Presented by Rhonda Hewer

Is there a way for students to engage in the mathematics outlined in the curriculum in a relevant, practical way that will improve understanding and retention? Answer: YES! In this webinar the audience will be exposed to the components of a quality project based learning program in math through the narrative of the geodesic dome project. It will be evident how this type of “instruction” supports diverse cultural and learning needs of the classroom while digging into rich mathematical thinking at a level appropriate for all learners. The project involves multiple strands from the mathematics curriculum while developing global competencies of collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking and citizenship. Register now to hear how this group of grade 8 students developed a strong understanding of math by using their toolbox of strategies to solve practical problems for an authentic audience.

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

In mid-March, schools across the country began closing the week before our spring break. On Thursday March 12, my district closed for an extended spring break two days early. By Monday March 16, the closure was pushed to April 3rd. Teachers were told to treat our time like an extended spring break – no lessons, no assignments, no grades – and we were left waiting to hear about any distance learning options. The next week, the governor announced that schools would be closed until April 24th. After this, I knew it was very unlikely that we would return to school this year. I slowly came to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t get to see my students every day. I wouldn’t get to see my seniors walk across the stage; I wouldn’t get to see my kids dressed to the nines at prom; or spend the day with the senior class at the park for the senior picnic – the list of lost milestones is endless. We suddenly went from seeing our kids every day to not knowing when or if we were going to see them again. I felt this weight heavily as I tried to wrap my mind around what my new normal would look like in the weeks ahead. Everything surrounding school felt uncertain – would AP and end-of-course tests happen? What resources would we have to finish content and prepare our students? How will we know if students are eligible for graduation? Will next year’s standards be adjusted to allow for lost time and content? The uncertainty of how to try to move forward and the fear of the unknown was really overwhelming. 
 
Our superintendent told faculty and staff that we would not be doing any formal distance learning. Honestly, I was relieved. I knew there was no way that we could guarantee that all of the students in our district had access to the internet and devices, and I felt wary that distance learning was something that would just perpetuate inequities. The students who are “good at school” would be fine, and the students who lack a strong social network and struggle in school would just continue to slip through the cracks. While I was spared the stress of trying to master a totally new learning platform as I have watched colleagues in other districts try to handle, the lack of structured time with my kids has been a huge struggle. I’m grateful that without specific requirements, we are able to meet kids where they are and give them activities to engage without the pressure of grades and due dates. But I also feel disconnected without any type of consistency in place. 
 
In the midst of the uncertainty and worry and grief, I’ve felt such deep gratitude for new ways of experiencing community and connectedness. Zoom meetings with students and family and Marco Polo (a video chat app) threads have allowed me to talk to and see the many people that I miss so much. The #mtbos Twitter community has been incredible – they are supportive and sharing resources and tools for distance learning. Spending time in isolation has made me so grateful for the relationships I do have. While these virtual communities are somewhat of a facsimile for the socialization and connection that I’m used to, it still helps me to feel a part of something bigger and cared for. I know we are in this for a long time, but it won’t be forever. I hope that our experience through all of this informs a new normal – more space, connection, flexibility, and grace.

Written by Lizi Metts (@LiziMetts)

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This Week at Global Math – 4/7/20







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Edited By Casey McCormick  @cmmteach

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Six (Un)Productive Practices in Mathematics Teaching

Presented by 

Juli K. Dixon

Juli Dixon reveals six ways we undermine efforts to increase student achievement and then she goes on to share what to do about them. These teaching practices are commonplace and often required by administrators. Many of them may have been generated from practices in English language arts (ELA) and might work very well in that content area. As a result of this session, you will understand that they are often unproductive when applied during mathematics instruction and may even lead to issues of access and equity. This session helps you to see why these practices are unproductive and also assists you in generating a plan for what to do about them. Participants will: · Make sense of six (un)productive mathematics teaching practices; · Explore reasons for why the practices exist; and · Learn productive strategies to counteract the madness ☺.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 


The Power of Words

Presented by: Diana McClean and Sam Kaplan

Evaluating our word choice can help change our thinking. Overtime we (educators) have become numb to the powerful student facing descriptors that when used haphazardly can define student identity. This talk will put forward ideas to think deeply about ways we can shift our language to improve student identities.

 

Register for the webinar here, and join us next week!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

Surprised by Joy

 

“Be surprised by joy. Be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of the barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.” – Henri Nouwen



It’s a strange idea in the current state we’re in. I get it. It’s significantly easier to be surprised by despair, disappointment, frustration, and the constant need to adjust right now. I have found myself at moments overwhelmed by the state of surprise in all of these feelings. Here’s some real phrases that came out of my mouth in the last 24 hours that exemplify those types of surprises in my life right now. 



In reference to my mom, while talking to my sisters virtually: “She went WHERE? To get WHAT!? That is NOT ESSENTIAL.”

In reference to my husband’s birthday, which we celebrated alone, to the despair to my extroverted heart, “It’s not that I didn’t know we wouldn’t see anyone, it’s that I’m all the sudden overwhelmed with how disappointed I am that we can’t.”



And, to every parent out there with a toddler, the inevitable: “You can’t sit on my face right now. Mommy is in a meeting.” 

We are settling into a month’s long shelter-at-home order here in North Carolina, and we are one week in. About two weeks ago, I noticed the number of people mentioning how family had become their new center, rather than work. It happened quickly, as people realized the number of physical hours we normally spend with our immediate family increased drastically from our regular span. As more educators fluctuate between spring break and beginning teaching online, we feel a new strain that wasn’t there before, as we sense the tension in being physically housed in the same space as our loved ones without the freedom to spend time with them as we typically have when we are together in this space. Our bodies are place-conscious; they know how we normally act in certain spaces and places. When those places change, our bodies and minds struggle with that tension – the tension between place, emotion, and space. 



The same is true for our virtual spaces, such as the #MTBoS community or here within the GMD. Our virtual space is place-conscious; it reflects back to us a certain way of being, the way we normally associate with one another, the typical topics we share. As the current crisis has required, the virtual space has required our minds, thoughts, and tweets to adjust, and there is a tension between what we once were and where we currently are. 



For me, that is why this week, I have been overwhelmingly surprised by joy #onhere. There is no shortness of joy in the midst of change in the #MTBoS, but I have been surprised at where I have found it recently. 



Sometimes it’s in the seemingly simple of what once was. 



Like when @RPhillipsMath shared about her kids doing math at home:


 

Or when @ChezBoogie was living a real math problem and got mad hype. 





 

Sometimes, I find it in beautiful things. 

Like in @Fawnpnguyen’s garden, and the smell of jasmine. 

 

 

Or in @Samira_Mian’s video of #islamicgeometry, where I never knew what she would do next. 


Sometimes, I find it through what we share together. 

Like @HthrLynnJ’s wildscaped backyard


And in EVERY SINGLE #MathArtChallenge posted by @anniek_p and submitted by others

But especially listening to the joy in the video posted by @DavidKButlerUoA of his submission  of the Hitomezashi Stitching. 

 

Sometimes, I find it in humor. 



Like in @SamPerrinNTNU’s perfect dad-tweet to the strange y-axis post going around. 

 

 

Or every tweet @Howie_Hua has posted lately, but for sure this one that went viral. 

 


And sometimes, I find joy in the way the world has found math humanizing this week. 



Like @mathillustrated finding the wage gap being taught in a text book. 

 

 

Or when @TinaCardone appreciated her energy company’s critical use of data in *not* posting this month’s energy savings in comparison to last year. 

 


Each one of these posts surprised me with joy. I found myself grinning from ear to ear, feeling my heart swell, and bringing me hope. For even in a time when despair, disappointment, and frustration are easy to find, there is still joy to be found. 

 

I hope you find yourself pleasantly surprised by joy this week wherever you are, but especially #onhere. 

 

Flattening the Curve but not my waistline (GO SNACKS!), 

Lauren Baucom

@LBMathemagician

Distance Learning (to Tweet)

I’ve had my Twitter since 2012 and have sent out a few tweets while at conferences and retweeted a few things that resonated. Rarely have I felt comfortable putting my own thoughts out there (unless they were thoughts about reality television, neighbors doing rain dances in the middle of the night, or cats doing funny things). This is not a critique of the #MTBoS community, which has always been kind and helpful in the rare moments that I have tweeted about math and teaching, but a reflection of my own self doubt. Would the tweet be funny enough? Thoughtful enough? Ask the right question? Ask a question I should already know the answer to? But in this new situation we find ourselves in, I’m so desperate for answers, support, and community that I’m able to shake off the concerns and put myself out there more. Turns out, all I needed to turn from a lurker to a tweeter was a global pandemic. Here are some of the highlights from my more-active-than-usual week on Twitter:



From Neil Webb (@neilmwebb), the thing you’ve probably already seen but just in case you haven’t it’s definitely the thing you need to hear right now:



From Kate Ariemma Marin (@ProfessorMarin) the tweet to help you with all decision making moving forward:

 

And from Desmos, the update to help with your co-teaching struggles:

 

 

And from my own support system:

 

 

Happy tweeting! (or lurking… whichever makes you happy right now)

 

Written by Karli Orr (@msorrmath)

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This Week at Global Math – 3/31/2020







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Edited By Chase Orton  @mathgeek76

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Supporting Math from Outside the Classroom

Presented by Matt Vaudrey

We’re responsible for the math learning of all students, even when Math Education isn’t our daily practice anymore. As a math teacher, then instructional coach and consultant, then an administrator, Matt Vaudrey has gathered some insights. In a quick hour, we’ll:

  • Offer math teachers sentence frames to demand the support they need (while being open to needs they might not notice)
  • Offer coaches some practices (and case studies) to support math education when you don’t have any skin in the game.
  • Translate some values, so teachers and teacher-leaders can both speak a common language as we improve math education for all students.

Includes lifetime support, puns, and probably a Britney Spears reference.

To join us at 9:00 PM EST for this webinar click here!

Next Week 

Six (Un)Productive Practices in Mathematics Teaching

Presented by Juli Dixon

Juli Dixon reveals six ways we undermine efforts to increase student achievement and then she goes on to share what to do about them. These teaching practices are commonplace and often required by administrators. Many of them may have been generated from practices in English language arts (ELA) and might work very well in that content area. As a result of this session, you will understand that they are often unproductive when applied during mathematics instruction and may even lead to issues of access and equity. This session helps you to see why these practices are unproductive and also assists you in generating a plan for what to do about them.

Participants will:

· Make sense of six (un)productive mathematics teaching practices;
· Explore reasons for why the practices exist; and
· Learn productive strategies to counteract the madness ☺.

Register ahead of time by clicking here!

You can always check out past and upcoming Global Math Department webinars. Click here for the archives or get the webinars in podcast form!

From the World of Math Ed

One Page & One Puzzle

In an effort to minimize information, I offer here only two pointers.

The first is a one page note from Marian Dingle that was just published in NCTM’s Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12. You can find a direct link, without a paywall, here. It’s worth a read! As tweeted by Cathery Yeh:

The second is to toy with the puzzles Catriona Shearer has continued to churn out; don’t forget to seek joy – even in trying times. A recent puzzle tweeted by Catriona:

I hope you all are caring for yourselves and your communities, big or small, to whatever extent is manageable. And I’m hopeful that we will emerge better from these times.

By Benjamin Dickman [@benjamindickman]

Two Resources

The district I work for is not doing distance learning because of equity issues, but we are trying to keep some learning happening while at home. One idea was to create print documents with a few interesting problems, games, and/or challenge type problems. One resource that was particularly helpful for grades 6-12 was this spreadsheet from Illustrative Mathematics (@IllustrateMath). They also have a very helpful blog post with a list of resources for caregivers at home who need access to math learning for all grades. Here’s the tweet

The other resource that was also interesting and helpful was the hashtag #tmwyk, which stands for “talk math with your kid.” This hashtag always held my interest before, but now it’s even more meaningful as parents are at home talking math with their kids for a different reason. Highly recommend you check it out if you need ideas of how to engage your small people while we are at home together.

Also, if you are not currently an NCTM (@NCTM) member, they are offering free memberships that expire at the end of April. This will give you access to all the resources on their site. Here is the link to sign up: https://www.nctm.org/freeresources/

Stay safe. Wash your hands.

By Amber Thienel (@amberthienel)

Something for Everyone

Read what you need.

Something Humorous: I declare Howie Hua (@howie_hua) as our resident mathy comedian during this pandemic. 

Something Positive: Annie Perkins’ (@anniek_p) #MathArtChallenge has adorned my twitter feed with new, beautiful math art every day. Take a look on her website for more information.

Something Helpful: Desmos has granted us the ability to give students written feedback within a Desmos Activity! Students can see your comments live, and, if they were signed in, students may return to the activity to review your feedback. The des-blog also featured a post from Desmos Fellow, Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared), about connecting with students in distance learning.

Something Honest: When my school district shut down for shelter-in-place, teaching mathematics was the least of my worries because my mind immediately went into survival mode (which may or may not have been a result of recently having read Octavia Butler’s Parable series). The two factors maintaining my enthusiasm to teach are those students who still have the capacity to engage in mathematics and are looking to me to facilitate this engagement—and my newfound instructional freedom.

Something Political: In the previous two weeks, GMD writers Lauren Baucom (@LBmathemagician) and Melvin Peralta (@melvinmperalta) encouraged us to be critical consumers and producers of data, and in the same vein, if you have the time and the means, consider who needs your business most.

Something Hopeful: My neighborhood teacher friends reminded me that we need not wait passively to return to schools and systems that have long been inequitable and harmful to our students. We can use this unique time to imagine what we want our schools to be for students and our communities.

Stay hopeful,
Christelle Rocha (@Maestra_Rocha)

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