Online Professional Development Sessions

Next week Ranjani Krishnan’s presentation is called “Teacher Cloning.”  If that piques your curiosity click here to read more and register ahead of time!

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…

All In

The Ontario Association for Mathematics Education held its annual conference in the nation’s capital this past week. Many thanks to the host chapter, @ComaOttawa, for the incredible planning and organization of this professional learning experience.

Many of us first time presenters, like myself, were comforted by friends, colleagues, and new acquaintances that offered words of wisdom to soothe frayed nerves, a lending hand to troubleshoot technical difficulties, and provide directions to water bottle refilling stations. Of particular note is the way fellow educators showed up to support first-time attendees and first-time presenters alike. This community of mathematics educators was all in.

Ilana Horn (@Ilana_Horn) spoke to members of the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (@OMCAMath) about Designing Motivational Math Classrooms. She posed a question on belongingness, “What gets in the way of belonging in math class?”

The prominent student-centered message is mathematics educators are invited to create learning cultures in which students see themselves as doers of mathematics, to spark joy in their mathematical discoveries, to establish brave spaces where mathematical discourse and rough draft thinking/talking/writing is encouraged.

The emergent themes for educators in the sessions I attended at the OAME annual conference were identity, community, and vulnerability. Featured speakers, Sam Shah (@SamJShah2) and Matt Baker (@Stoodle) had a full lecture hall of educators roaring with laughter and then weeping into shirt sleeves as they shared their stories about the power of #TeacherVoice. Tracy Zager (@TracyZager) modeled a beautiful experience of community by sharing high-yield mathematical interactions and we were hooked as we worked independently and then collaboratively to discuss Magic Vs. Jamie Mitchell (@realJ_Mitchell) and Matt Coleman (@MrColemanArt) shared their journey of innovation and humbled us with their transparency and courage.

This tweet perfectly captures the spirit of #OAME2019 – a community of mathematics educators coming together to learn, share, and collaborate. Derek invited attendees of the mathematics conference to collaborate on a shared document in order to “learn about sessions that you missed…see what others took from the session…get some learning from a distance.” The Google Doc was 83 pages long at last check!

We will each have returned to our regularly scheduled life events by the time this article is published; however, the learning continues. Peruse the hashtags, take a look at the many presentations that have been shared by presenters, and keep sharing how you will action what you have learned at #OAMEChat.

@OAME2020 “In Focus” will be held at UOIT/Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario from May 7^th – 8^th, 2020. Stay tuned to oame.on.ca for details and practice your live-tweeting skills for #OAME2020.

Hema Khodai (@HKhodai)

A People’s History of Math

A couple of weeks ago, Anna Haensch (@extremefriday) asked the Twitterverse about suggestions for a “People’s History of Math”. There were lots of great replies, mostly about histories beyond the white, male, Eurocentric stories often told about mathematics.

One very thorough response came from Michael Barany (@MBarany). He warns against the common pitfall of framing non-Western math as taking place in the past and serving as a mere predecessor to modern mathematics. I was struck by his pointing out that this origin myth was actually created by a prejudiced process of early modern Europeans.

Barany’s thread continues, and he includes a handful of fascinating links I had never heard of. One essay that you might particularly enjoy is Lady Wranglers by Joy Rankin (@JoyMLRankin). The essay, along with Barany’s thread, helps readers reconsider the assumption that the history of math should be conceived as a linear march of progress. Rather, mathematics has had many moments of creating obstacles that people with marginalized identities have had to overcome. It’s a shame that so many popular books on mathematics, and even university courses on the history of mathematics, construct mathematics as a simple sum of the achievements of a few, positioned-as-brilliant men.

Other common names that came up in the thread include Sophie Germain, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Hypatia of Alexandria. One name that came up I was happy to see was Marjorie Rice, a non-university-affiliated mathematician who made discoveries involving tessellating pentagons.

Finally, one book that was left out of the thread was recently tweeted about by Annie Perkins (@anniek_p) – Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics. Guess what’s next up on my reading list?

And Speaking of Reading Lists…

#CleartheAir is bringing up so many educators into the process of introspection and action. Here is an image of books recommended by their various threads. #AntiracistBookfest:

And here’s a list:

Check out this simple tweet from @ClearTheAirEdu with 75 responses!

We have work to do, part of the work is self care, part is learning, part is challenging the status quo.

Here is a link to the find the local bookstores in your area (because we all love the convenience of Amazon, but let’s keep these places to browse in business too).

Happy Summer Time Reading,

Diana McClean (@teachMcClean)

Also this: ExxonMobile successfully used a mathematical model to predict our current global warming crisis – how can we teach kids to advocate for change when they are confronted with possible truths such as these?