Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

The Expert Within You and Your Math Students

Presented by Andrew Stadel

Students and teachers are encountering a bizarre and uncharted world of education. The reality is that no one is an expert right now. NO ONE! Let’s collaborate on strategies that spark meaningful conversations in our math classes so teachers and students can experience the best connection possible.

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

You can also visit our new YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

From the Writing Team

Seeing Systems
 

I wrote this piece before hearing about the unjustified shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When will it end?
 
You may have seen this scale before. It helps to analyze where you are in your unlearning of racism through your actions and words. My question to you regarding the graphic is not where you are, it’s where have you moved FROM.

Where were you when you heard about Tamir Rice? Where were you on the scale when they started removing Confederate statues?

And with Breonna Taylor? Ahmaud Arberry? George Floyd? And now Jacob Blake? 

Do you consistently have to “wait for the details” to know whether or not you feel the shooting of an unarmed individual was just? Does it require the end of human life for you to move or is there a way to have you move against racism without the consequence of death to so many Black lives?

Reflect on where you were and where you want to be, and the COST it has taken to move you so far. Realize that the cost to move you on this scale is HIGH, and yet, we need you to move in order for “justice for all” to be attainable. 

…

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arberry, the world banned together to address the injustice of their murders at the hands of members associated with law enforcement. Thousands of human beings joined in solidarity to demand justice for their deaths, while also showing that the system that allowed these deaths to occur needs to be disrupted, dismantled, and redesigned. For many people, this moment caused an awakening to how systems have been built to support racial injustice, oppressing the many while privileging the few. In the aftermath, I have listened to educators wonder about how they could understand the injustices often sustained by such systems, how they impact their classroom and practice, and where to begin. 
 
Understanding systems requires historical knowledge to understand the foundations upon which systems were created and who they were created to serve. For many Americans, this requires significant unlearning, as our K-12 schools often teach a palatable history in exchange for a truthful one. Look no further than the Twitter response to the first episode of Watchmen in which thousands of Americans first learned about the Tulsa massacre of 1921, or this summer when Twitter exploded when it realized that Juneteenth was about more than just a family cookout. It was as if people had an eye exam and could finally see clearly that there were reasons for why they never learned about either of those historical events in their K-12 education.  

Unlearning false history requires real work and real time. For one, unlearning false history requires the decentering of one’s own experiences to realize that, well frankly, you’re not the only one on the planet and that people’s experiences vary. Our opinions and beliefs are built from what we know, and what we know is largely shaped by our experiences. The vision to be able to see past one’s personal experiences to understand how existing systems are at work requires practice, especially when you benefit from the system remaining in place.
 

With everything going on these days between the opening of school during a pandemic to the natural disasters happening across the continent, we are all doing a lot of cognitive juggling.  Recalling the way you felt in May or June may be difficult, but it is important that you try. Those that benefit when the system remains in place are banking on you forgetting how you felt in May, on the conversations you had with fellow educators, and the questions you asked then. Those in power are counting on your amnesia and the current distractions of the daily job so that the system will remain intact, unquestioned, untroubled. I invite you to a moment of pause and reflection, to practice the work of seeing systems as you begin the year. 

 
Here are a few questions to guide your reflection: 

• How are systems based on race, gender, and/or class evident in my classroom? My school? My district? My state? 
• Who benefits from those systems being in place? 
• Who is oppressed by the continuation of those systems? 

 
Lauren Baucom
@LBmathemagician

Get Involved with the Newsletter
 
Our team of writers and curators is committed to produce content that is reflective of our Statement of Solidarity and with the goal of moving these words into action.
 
With this in mind we are calling for new volunteers to expand our perspectives and raise our collective voices to move this publication forward. If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor or would like the opportunity to contribute as a guest writer, please fill out this form.

Online Professional Development Sessions

No webinar for this 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!

Join us for next week’s webinar by Andrew Stadel

The Expert Within You and Your Math Students

Students and teachers are encountering a bizarre and unchartered world of education. The reality is that no one is an expert right now. NO ONE! Let’s collaborate on strategies that spark meaningful conversations in our math classes so teachers and students can experience the best connection possible.

This Week’s Newsletter

#GMDWrites: Co/Authors & Co/Conspirators

Part of releasing the Global Math Department solidarity statement meant returning to it over the course of this summer (Zoom, email, google docs galore) to draft action items. One of the action items for our Newsletter, in particular, is to bring in more voices to contribute to the GMD – whether through a guest post or as a regular contributor. I’m honored to have been connected with Allison Krasnow for her very timely guest post this week (below).
 
The upcoming academic year is shaping up to be like none other. It is important to maintain a record of the happenings in and around the worlds of education. If you are willing to lend your voice to the GMD Newsletter, then we ask that you check out this form or, if you have questions, contact an individual member. (My DMs are open.)
 
It has also been a summer like none other, and there is far too much to say in one entry. Here I mention only two items. If you haven’t seen it already (and even if you have – I watched it twice) head over to the homepage for TODOS and listen to the talk from Olga G. Torres. If you want a link timestamped to the start (9:41) you can also click here (from a tweet of mine that is full of multiply-embedded tweets and links).

 
We must also mention, with heavy hearts, the loss of a wonderful, well-known member of numerous math education communities – #MTBoS, Math for America, the Global Math Department, and many others – Wendy Menard (@wmukluk)

In this thread, you can find a small selection of Wendy’s writing. You can also find a piece about Wendy’s retirement from her school of the past 8 years that was written in February, and entitled Ms. Menard Concludes a Heartfelt Career. It is a privilege to write in the GMD Newsletter and know that Wendy shared so much of her wisdom in its earlier years.
 
For now, here is just one more piece about Wendy, as written poignantly by José Vilson:

 
Here’s to hoping that Fall of 2020 and beyond will allow us to continue to celebrate the lives and work of those who raise us up and help us become better versions of ourselves.
 
by Benjamin Dickman @benjamindickman

A Call to Math Educators: Hollaback!

 
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
                                                                     – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
 
Recently, a colleague of color shared with me that some of their Tweets had been published without permission in a right-wing publication. This act of using someone’s words without permission is an attack on one’s humanity and personal safety. The act causes emotional and mental trauma, on top of a constant fear of personal and professional harm.
 
I realized that I needed to be able to offer a lot more than empathetic words. I was seeking more ways to act so that the emotional and physical labor required to respond to harassment could be held by as great a community force as possible. Taking anti-racist actions, instead of simply thinking anti-racist thoughts was a place I needed more tools. 
 
Reaching out to my city’s local newspaper, Berkeleyside, I asked if there was someone there who could help me learn what recourse any of us can have in this situation and what our legal rights are. She suggested that I take a course from Hollaback!, an organization whose mission is “to end harassment in all its forms by transforming the culture that perpetuates hate and harassment.” Hollaback! has a bystander training guide and an extensive series of Bystander Training workshops. They also run a website where you can report online harassment and receive support on next steps.
 
I took their course on bystander intervention to address anti-Asian-American and xenophonic harassment. In the training they ask that we not record or reproduce screenshots as they want to encourage everyone to take a training in person and not simply read about it. Definitely do that.
 
One striking piece of data was from a 2019 study which found that when harassed, 79% of people surveyed said they wished someone had stepped in to help them when, in reality, only 15% of people actually received help. I wonder how many had friends, like me, who at times had only the hollow response of “I’m so sorry.”
 
There is a spectrum of types of harassment and by ignoring things we hear that are lower on the spectrum it can often allow greater forms of harassment to go unchecked. For example, in February, UC Berkeley’s Health Center posted an infographic on social media stating that xenophobia in response to Covid-19 was a normal reaction. That reporting has since been retracted, but is an example of how harassment can become normalized.
 
The focus of the course was on the 5Ds of Bystander Intervention:

• Distract: De-escalate by drawing attention away from the situation, start a conversation with the person being harassed, ask directions, drop something.
• Delegate: Consider your power in that space and if necessary, ask someone nearby to help out.
• Document: Take screenshots as often online harassment is removed before it can be recorded; film by pretending you are checking your email. Give the documentation to the person who was harassed so they have the choice of what to do with it.  Never post video without permission from the person who was harassed as they may not want to relive the experience. Always first offer to help the person being harassed before you document it.
• Delay: Check in with the person who experienced the harassment and see if they are ok.  Ask: Can I sit with you? Can I accompany you somewhere? What do you need? 
• Direct: Insert yourself directly into the situation. Name the behavior, name what you observe and ask a question.

 The key is not having the PERFECT response but simply having A response. This really resonates with me. In different situations depending on how well I know the person being harassed (if at all), where it takes place, and whether or not it’s online would cause me to react differently. But having so many possible ways to intervene, some direct and some indirect, means that so many more of us can hold ourselves accountable for ALWAYS responding.
 
The bystander training offerings through Hollaback! are extensive. You can read about them all here. Have you witnessed or had a friend or colleague tell you they were harassed, in person or online, and not known what to do? Online harassment particularly towards members of our Twitter math community is happening all around us. Can we commit, as an online community of math educators, to taking action? 
 
As a community of math educators, let’s hold ourselves accountable to always responding because saying “I’m sorry” and offering to listen when we know someone who has been harassed is kind, but not anti-racist. If, like me, you are white, we are the ones who must ensure we are constantly ready to act because we don’t necessarily deal with the microaggressions and extreme trauma that so many of our colleagues of color have repeatedly faced. Having a variety of ways to intervene ensures that the emotional toll and physical time required to respond to these incidents is spread wider amongst us. Through consistent, collective action we gain power, as a community, to address and prevent harassment in all of its awful forms.
 
by Allison Krasnow @allison_krasnow

Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight!

Talk Less, Discuss More: Crafting and Implementing Open Ended Questions

Presented by Scott Miller and David Sladkey

Are you looking for ways to enhance questioning in your classroom? Do you wonder how to include open-ended tasks on a daily basis in online, blended, and in-person learning models? Experience a variety of types of questions that promote student thinking and learn how to create questions that facilitate student discussion.

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

The Newsletter Returns

The GMD Newsletter Returns for 2020
 

We are happy to announce that all the contributors to the GMD Newsletter are returning this school year with an increased focus on antiracist mathematics education.
 
Our team of writers and curators is committed to produce content that is reflective of our Statement of Solidarity and with the goal of moving these words into action.
 
With this in mind we are also calling for new volunteers to expand our perspectives and raise our collective voices to move this publication forward. If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor or would like the opportunity to contribute as a guest writer, please fill out this form.

Rest as Self Care

By: Hema Khodai (@HKhodai)
 

I constantly and continually fail at disrupting grind culture. It is a new practice to me, who glorified it not too long ago, measured my worth by it, and judged others by their inability to excel within it. Some label it as ascribing to the model minority myth, the desire to mitigate racial violence by leaning into whiteness. Some identify it as an immigrant mindset, an inheritance from those who traveled over distant lands and seas for a chance at survival. Some name it as a remnant of indentured servitude, memory that lives in bloodlines of survival inextricably linked to productivity. Some say I exemplify grit and resilience and have overcome so much adversity in my personal life. These romanticized notions of self-liberation through determination and hard work enmesh us deeper in capitalism, they lack a precision of language I attend to: grind culture is rooted in white supremacy.

Here are some ways complicity in grind culture appears in our lives with prompts to disrupt them:

Math is Political

That’s it. That’s the article.
 
Sometimes, when people see the statement ‘math is political’ they either scratch their heads or run for the hills. What on earth does 2+2=4 have to do with politics?
 
Well, it turns out a lot. As an ongoing Twitter debacle about 2+2=4 makes evident, math has a lot to do with politics. I won’t link any threads or articles about the 2+2=4 issue because many of them appear to miss a significant point: a widespread philosophical argument about mathematical foundations and objective truth has been built on a foundation of harassment aimed at educators of color, many who are women. 
 
Prominent articles and Twitter threads, while helping people become more receptive to a more “playful mathematics” and understand mathematics’ cultural dimensions, are also contributing to an erasure of women of color by prioritizing mathematics over them and the ideas they are actually trying to promote. These ideas include promoting critical mathematics education, anti-racism, ethnomathematics, rehumanizing mathematics, ethnic studies, and social justice math, among many others. Here’s a collection of things to look out for or look more deeply into:

• Last Saturday, Dr. Nicole Joseph (@projnicolej) and Dr. Luis Leyva (@LuisLeyvaEdu) led the Math & Anti-Racism session of the National Educators for Anti-Racism Conference. Summaries of the conference can be found through the Educators for Anti-Racism Twitter account (@EdAntiRacism). Rachel Ernest (@rachelernst) has a thread about it. Conference attendees were asked to read Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez’s (@RG1gal) article entitled Risky Business: Mathematics Teachers Using Creative Insubordination.

• Today (August 11) is the TODOS live session with Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez where participants will reflect on ways to rehumanize mathematics. The live session will take place at 4pm PST / 7pm EST. Registration can be found through this tweet from TODOS.

• Benjamin Dickman (@benjamindickman) is looking for collaborators for an Algebra 2 social justice curriculum.

• Dr. Kari Kokka (@karikokka) has compiled a Social Justice Mathematics and Science Resources google doc.

• Dr. Tia Madkins (@ProfTiaMadkins) has compiled a list of Resources for Understanding and Supporting #BlackLivesMatter

If you want to support these efforts and the people who stand behind them, consider deeply engaging with the scholarship on critical math education, anti-racism, and ethnomathematics, encouraging others to do the same, and supporting school teachers who want to apply these ideas in the classroom. Recent events have taught me an important lesson, one that I have recently felt a visceral level: silence is complicity. Math educators are part of the same community, and while we may not necessarily agree on everything (which I believe actually makes us stronger), it is important that we step in and speak up for one another.
 
What’s one thing that the coronavirus and racism, homophobia, patriarchy, ableism, and postcolonialism have in common? Too many people still think they don’t exist. How will we as educators of math–the supposed last bastion of ‘rationality’ and ‘truth’–respond?
 

@melvinmperalta