This Week at Global Math – 5/19/20 / Global Math Department

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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.

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.