GMD Newsletter June 14, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

The Status Quo in High School Math is Unacceptable

Presented by Eric Milou

Today, it seems as if nearly everyone agrees that high school mathematics needs to change. For far too long, math has not worked for far too many students. Math has not changed substantially in my lifetime, nor has it changed substantially for most students, teachers & schools. It is clearly an issue – and it is time to discuss and make serious changes.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 6/28

Data Rich with Diagnostics

Presented by Kat Hendry

I love a good story, more so, a data rich story. We live in a world of data…but do we always use it and use it effectively? As educators, data informs our practice but we are often plagued with the task of how to manage it, review it, and break it down. Leaving us to ask how does diagnostic data support us?

Click here to register for this webinar!

#GMDWrites

Resting and Reflecting: An Invitation to a GMD Community Conversation

By: Sara Rezvi and Janaki Nagarajan
Dear Global Math Department Community,
We begin with acknowledging that this school year has been intense for many math educators in the United States. Some highlights: Florida rejecting math textbooks under the guise of anti ‘critical race theory’, anti-SEL sentiments, and anti-trans legislation bills sweeping states throughout the country with ~ 240 bills being put forth as of March 2022, the tragedy and massacre of 4th grade Latinx children and two educators in Uvalde, TX by an 18 year old man armed with an assault rifle, and the subsequent increased calls for teachers to be armed. While this list is by no means comprehensive, it points to the sheer heaviness teachers in the last year have faced. Teachers (and math teachers in particular) are not a monolith, nor can and should be treated as a universal, homogenized group of people with the same perspectives and politics; however, the structural realities impacting the teaching profession have us reflecting on the culmination of this year.

We wrote this short piece as an invitation to reflect as a community rather than solely centering our own thoughts about our specific educational roles. For context, Janaki is an elementary school teacher in the Seattle area and has been teaching for 3 years. Sara is a former high school math teacher, current program director of the Math Circles of Chicago and a doctoral candidate in math ed.

The end of this tumultuous and heartbreaking year has left us with questions, complicated feelings, tensions, and numbness for the both of us. It has also given us pause to reflect on the subtle moments of joy, serenity, and hope that comes with working with children.

We invite the GMD community to engage in the questions and resources we have included here and to offer additions as well if you so choose as an attempt to reflect beyond this piece and with(in) the community so many of us might need to process this year. We also invite readers to engage in a slowchat using the hashtag  #GMDReflects (and tag us @/arsinoepi and @/janaki_aleena) with A# as a response to the questions below [Example: A3: #GMDReflects and tag us]. We hope to engage with you all as we take stock of the realities of this year as a community. We ask folks to communicate in good faith as we intend to do the same.

As an overarching question, we ask folks to consider this as a framework for the remaining questions below, which is, how do we intentionally reflect on our math teaching practice without falling into the trap of white (and white adjacent) saviorism and complicity? How are we intentionally choosing to be ‘key makers and not gatekeepers’ (Marian Dingle, @/DingleTeach) (especially in a field like math that has and continues to be mired in exclusivity?) See: Lorena Escoto German’s “Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices

Q1: As writers and educators, what is our role in sharing the stories of others (i.e. when and how should we share, and when shouldn’t we?), knowing the stories will be filtered through our own lenses and biases as the writer, and filtered again through the lenses and biases of the readers?

Q2: Consider the nuanced practice of boundaries in professional-emotional-caretaking settings. How do we establish where I end and you begin? With colleagues? With families? With self? What are the complexities that must be attended to in the emotional labor that is so often required amongst those who have been racialized and gendered into caretaker roles (such as teaching) without losing ourselves in the process? What intentional and productive boundaries do you intend on setting next year? Similarly, how do we recognize and mitigate the impact of emotional labor of marginalized students navigating math classroom spaces?  See: Racialized and Gendered Labor in Students’ Responses to Precalculus and Calculus Instruction, Battey, et al, 2022)

Q3: How do we seek to grow, reflect and push ourselves professionally while respecting our own well-being? What role do privileged teachers and students have in centering the well-being of historically marginalized teachers and students? What are some examples or actionable steps your organization or individuals within it took this year towards making this happen? See: Tony Sun’s Thread on Supporting Trans Children (@/poetpedagogue)

Q4: What is the difference between a responsibility and an obligation? How does that show up in mathematics educational spaces in the United States? Is there a difference? What is our responsibility towards the communities and children we have chosen to serve and truly engage in the ‘deep practice of listening’ (paraphrased from Thich Nhat Hanh “From Mindfulness to Heartfulness, p. 49)? This question inspired by Christina Torres Cawdery (@/bibliophile)’s tweet screenshotted with permission below.


Q5: In light of the ongoing alt-right attacks on LGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latinx children, as educators how do we show up to affirm the humanities of the most vulnerable in mathematical spaces? See: Alex Shevrin Venet’s “Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education” or Dr. Brandie Waid’s website thequeermathematicsteacher.com.

Q6: Related to the tweet screenshotted with permission from Annie Tan @/AnnieTangent below – How do we teach in ways that center student knowledge and expertise in the midst of standardized curriculum and assessment systems, that prioritize certain types of knowledge and expertise that are born from white supremacy culture? (Tema Okun, Dismantling Racism Works)


Q7:  Related to Janaki’s tweet screenshotted below, our final question is where (or to whom) have you looked to for hope and inspiration this year? What helped you grow? Reflect? Expand? (with respect to your math teaching practice). Do you have any book recommendations, podcasts, readings, artwork, music, or any other sources that have kept you afloat this school year? How did it help you?


We hope that in the midst of all the heaviness this year, you are able to find a bit of peace and healing this summer. If these questions resonate with you please chat with us on Twitter using #GMDReflects per the instructions above.

We close this piece with a few lyrics from an old Nirvana song and ask you to come as you are.
As a friend.
As a friend.

Take care and rest well this summer,

Janaki and Sara

Next Year We Want Your Voices!

We’d love to share this space with teachers and their students who feel compelled to share with our community!

Please reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com if you’d like to get involved or contribute an article (or articles).

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

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GMD Newsletter – May 3, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

What is Experience First, Formalize Later (EFFL)?

Presented by Luke WilcoxLindsey Gallas, and Sarah Stecher

In this presentation, we will present a few lessons that have been developed for a student-centered classroom. In these lessons, students work in small groups to experience the learning before the teacher formalizes the learning with definitions and formulas. Using this learning structure, students engagement and retention increases, leading to better conceptual understanding over rote memorization.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 5/17

Rethinking the Traditional Warm Up

Presented by Juan Gómez

Typical warm up problems in math class often take longer than expected. How do you invite students to join classroom thinking without taking a significant amount of class time? This presentation will show some ways to invite students to find patterns, activate prior learning, and join classroom thinking.

Click here to register for this webinar!

#GMDWrites: Sara’s Story

Sara’s Story

Written by Sara Rezvi for Sines of Disability (sinesofdisability.com)

Content Warning: Includes references to hard topics including abuse, harm, and PTSD.


In the Islamic faith, knowledge is considered sacred. According to tradition, the first Quranic word revealed to the Prophet (peace be upon him) was ‘iqra’, which quite simply means to read. My parents, and particularly my father, encouraged the learning of mathematics as one avenue of beautiful study. A lifelong journey that began with dollar store fridge magnets and a Chicago Public Library card led to majoring in mathematics, where I was exposed to both profound intellectual insights and systemic harm. From there, I went on to obtain a Masters in teaching, and had the honor of teaching children about a discipline that has captivated me for so long as a middle and high school math teacher. After teaching for close to a decade in a variety of different settings (public, private, and charter) along with different school districts (New York City, Chicago, and Mexico City), I left my career to pursue a doctoral degree in mathematics curriculum and instruction, with a concentration in gender and sexuality and to work at a non-profit organization. As program director of the Math Circles of Chicago, I work within a wide range of communities to support the joyful exploration of mathematics with teachers, families, and students from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds. While I have outlined in brief my connection and journeying with mathematics here, such sketches need to be filled in with greater and more painstaking detail. In my case, those details revolve around abuse, trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, financial precarity, and the slow but steady unwinding of deep intergenerational pain as a first generation, Pakistani/American, disabled, queer woman.

What role have disability and ableism played in your mathematical journey?

The immediate reaction to responding to this question is one that words cannot describe, a slow movement of air and lungs struggling to make sense of this fragmentation. It remains perpetually trapped in my throat – a keening, shaking ache.

According to the DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD, I meet the following symptoms:

  1. Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence
  2. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event(s).
  3. Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be trusted,” “The world is completely dangerous,” “My whole nervous system is permanently ruined”).
  4. Persistent inability to experience positive emotions (e.g., inability to experience happiness, satisfaction, or loving feelings).
  5. Marked alterations in arousal and reactivity associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred
    1. Reckless or self-destructive behavior.
    2. Hypervigilance.
    3. Problems with concentration.
    4. Sleep disturbance

Complex PTSD includes these criteria but also has the additional factor of the trauma being continuous, ongoing, and intertwined – in short, there is no moving on because the trauma never ceases to fully end. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD a few years ago, though I have been struggling with the realities of the condition for most of my adult life. While the DSM criteria above are helpful to a certain extent, they do not quite capture the fullness of what it has meant to go through this experience. After intensive therapy these past few years, I am recognizing that this diagnosis requires accepting two interrelated conditions. I must carefully attend to the nebulous terrain of my mental health as a lifelong endeavor but also do my best to live in joyful, intentional, and conscientious praxis. Self-awareness, movement, intention, mutual reciprocity, access to resources, gentleness and acceptance with(in) community have allowed me to start internalizing these hard-won insights. And so, I am finally able to write these words here, in the hopes that they may serve others as well.

Trauma does not occur in a vacuum. For me, it is a direct consequence of interlocking systems of oppression (Combahee River Collective, 1977) working in concert with one another to produce outcomes to benefit the few at the expense of the many. In a previous publication, I, along with my sister-scholars, have attempted to map how systemic oppression undergirded by white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and xenophobia have been reified in our respective attempts at entering the STEM fields (Madden et al, 2020). My attempt to locate these interlocking systems of oppression were constructed below in Figure 4.3. At the time of the original publication, I was not yet ready to admit to nor accept my neurodivergence and C-PTSD symptoms as necessarily interconnected within my identity map. This is why it does not appear in the figure below though I hope to rectify my reluctance to name the impact of ableism in my mathematical journey in this piece.

I focus my initial excavation on my childhood and its role in my C-PTSD diagnosis. South Asian patriarchy as experienced in my close-knit Pakistani community ensured that the spiritual, emotional, and sometimes physical abuse the female members of my family endured by my father was ongoing and continuous up until his death in 2020. This was generally accepted as a personal problem to be resolved in the home and thus upheld by community withdrawal and negligence. While I was more or less groomed to fit certain cultural expectations both within and external to community parameters such as ‘loving mother’, ‘dutiful and self-sacrificial eldest daughter’, ‘docile caretaker’, and ‘devout woman’, I refused to fully entertain these demands. My refusal to partake in my own oppression resulted in erasure, shaming, abandonment, disavowal, and further entrenchment of ongoing harm.

As first-generation, Muslim immigrants to the United States, my parents hoped to preserve a way of life that was increasingly threatening to disappear due to white supremacist conscriptions of assimilationism and allegiance to adopting anti-Black, Asian model minority myths – a straddling of amorphous and fluid boundaries, and a negotiation of self, identity, and social location – what bell hooks describes as being within ‘the margin…as part of the whole but outside the main body’ (1989, p. 20).

As someone raised within notions of community and caretaking, I respect and honor their sacrifice, dedication, and willingness to leave everything they knew in Pakistan to create a different life in the United States. However, I am aware of the liminality of time and history, how we carry it with us and through us – our skin, blood and bone contain both the resilience and beauty of our ancestors and the deep wounds they were unable to heal from due to British occupation, colonization and the violent 1947 partition of India and Pakistan as separate and sovereign nation-states (Dalrymple, 2015; Khan, 2008). Interspersed in my family’s history is the unnamed but acute awareness of mental health issues that continued to trespass upon each generation. South Asian taboos prevented these conversations from fully being addressed or known, despite whispered longstanding familial histories of suicide, sexual assault, depression, and abuse.

When we speak about intergenerational trauma, we must also speak about the reproduction and reification of untreated mental health issues that refract through immigrant South Asian families and communities attempting to survive in an increasingly violent xenophobic society that operates on federal, state, local, and individual levels to ensure white hegemonic control (Hilal, 2021; Lughod, 2011; Kishi, 2015). Statistically, the highest rate of suicide deaths (CDC, 2008) can be attributed to young female Asian Americans and Pacific-Islanders (15-24 years old), a social location I occupied for many years as a formerly suicidal person.

Ableism & History

A working definition of ableism developed in community by Talila Lewis and disabled Black/negatively racialized folks is defined as follows:

“Ableism: a system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression that leads to people and society determining people’s value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, “health/wellness”, and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, “excel” and “behave”. You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.” (Lewis, et al, 2022)

One cannot emerge from childhood abuse without feeling the humming heaviness ever present in one’s veins. In 2002, I began the study of mathematics as a bruised and empty shell socially conditioned to overachieve, hyper aware of the belief in my own imagined shortcomings, and trained to fawn and people-please to my own detriment. In retrospect, it is not exactly surprising that entering the teaching workforce (and later, academia) built on interconnected ableist mechanisms of gendered and racialized exploitation further exacerbated the trauma I had already endured. In the next few sections of this piece, I connect how my past experiences of childhood abuse endured and expanded under the systemic conditions I found myself navigating in both academic and professional mathematics spaces.

Intersectionality is a framework and lens that can help uncover how ableism is woven into the racialized and gendered treatment of women of color in STEM. Black women scholars such as Kimberle Crenshaw (1991), Sojourner Truth (1863), bell hooks (1984; 2000), and Patricia Hills-Collins (1990) along with the 1977 Combahee River Collective statement have been at the pioneering forefront of theorizing how differential systems of hierarchy and oppression interact and reify one another. Adopting an intersectional framework towards understanding how disability, race, gender, class, ability and sexuality are in constellation is critically important in contextualizing how mathematics is experienced within institutions and can be extended to the diverse but interconnected realities of Asian, Latinx, and Indigenous women as is evidenced by the work of feminist scholars such as Sarah Ahmed (2014; 2015), Haunani Kay-Trask (2005), Cherrie Morraga (1986), and Gloria Anzaldua (2007).

Analyzing interlocking systemic oppression is dynamic and at times, contradictory – one of the reasons why it is so incredibly difficult to name these processes is because of the need to carefully and thoughtfully attend to contextual realities. For this reason, I am focusing particularly on how intersectionality can provide a lens through which we can interrogate how neurodivergence is entangled with my lived experiences as an immigrant, South Asian, queer woman in STEM.

Ableism, CPTSD, and Mathematics

In the following table, I attempt to outline the intersection of ableism and its interaction with C-PTSD in mathematics learning spaces as a gendered and racialized person. I will preface this by stating that this is by no means comprehensive, but is an attempt at naming what I have kept silent for too long. I recognize that in this act of naming, of illuminating, and of heaving into existence is one action that I can engage in to repair and confront, and to recover and heal.

As I made my way through my undergraduate mathematics journey, my experience with childhood abuse and ongoing trauma was further exacerbated by my inability to address it in any meaningful capacity, a dark road carved out by multiple suicide attempts and the many razors slicing my body to dull the pain of daily existence.

Upon graduating and entering the teaching workforce as a twenty-something year old, I did my best to utilize the health insurance that I finally felt safe in accessing only to find that teaching full-time leaves no capacity to do anything but work a minimum of 9-12 hours per day including weekends, especially as an untried teacher in new settings. Now, at the age of 37, I am finally confronting the ongoing harm I’ve continuously experienced all these years at the intersections of mathematics, ableism, and racialized and gendered oppression along with my own complicity in unconsciously reproducing these circumstances.

The same violence that cannot be critiqued, that remains coercively unspoken, must never be held accountable. I have noticed that as soon as an attempt by an oppressed person is made to correct wrongs, the punishment for daring the attempt increases multifold. The oppressed person, thus, learns to be quiet, to be still, to freeze, to please, and to navigate a carefully cultivated fragile ‘calm’ in order to survive another day. As Arundhati Roy incisively observes – ‘there’s really no such as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.’

I think about this quote often and how my mental health waivers daily – an oscillation that feels less like a sine wave and more akin to a jagged piece-wise function. I am always already a knife’s edge away from falling into an anxious and panic-inducing void, an unmaking of my own making.  A strict combination of therapy, diet, and physical movement is slowly but intentionally allowing me to find a place where I feel stable, healthy, and able to handle the daily ups and downs. In that time, I have still managed to submit assignments on time, teach full course-loads as an adjunct instructor and teaching assistant, submit an IRB and successfully navigate qualifying exams, work multiple jobs, and prepare for an upcoming dissertation proposal defense.

And yet, we live under late-stage capitalism. We wade through the never-ending pressure to produce & to perform under the collusion of white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and ableism. As a disabled queer Muslim woman of color, I maintain defensive energy shields in my interactions unless I am absolutely certain that it is safe to lower them in predominantly white, cis-gendered, heteronormative, male, mathematical institutional spaces.

One might ask, how do I know that mathematics is an example of a white institutional space?

Simple.

I look at the walls.

They speak in their silence. The portraits and the photographs whisper to me, white man after white man, university hall after university hall, all wondering puzzlingly what on earth I am doing here.

Foucault (2012) theorizes that one goal of disciplinary societies built on surveillance is for individuals to internalize it. This manifests for me in the hypervigilance required to interact with the world at large and in mathematics communities in particular. A world that feels fragmented under the combined impacts of a failed government response to a global pandemic, the existential threat of climate change, and the mandate to produce and perform in spite of the overwhelming need to be human, to grieve as human, to cherish as human, and to reclaim as human.

I am not necessarily aware when I am practicing hypervigilance in mathematics spaces. It is a permanent anxiety, a nested surveillance of self and others. What can I say? How will it be transmuted into something not meant but presumed nevertheless? A critique described as an accusation. An unmet need rendered into a problem (Ahmed, 2014), in which I become the problem.  It was my therapist who noticed that when I spoke about the emotional and sometimes physical abuse that I’ve endured over the years, I frequently held my right hand to my throat. It’s as if my body unconsciously is trying to move me from silence to speech. I do so here in these words, on this paper, reflected in the swirling emotions I am dissociatively observing flow through me as they are rendered into existence on this document.

We have all been coerced into retelling the entrenched myth that racial hierarchies which privilege whiteness and capitalism as intertwined constructs will be our collective salvation. Ableism is embedded into these logics, where the demands of attending to academic hyperproductivity has been further enhanced under the pandemic. Our allegiance to maintaining this myth is destroying us insofar as we attempt to maintain it in academic institutions and beyond. We are like the ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. We remain deeply unaware of what we are consuming because we have been conditioned to avoid confronting it structurally. A telling example of this is to simply look at who has been able to actively pursue research interests, attend virtual or in-person conferences, publish in journals, and continue enhancing their careers and who simply has not been able to keep up with ableist, racist and gendered expectations; in short, who has been kept safe from the mass disabling event of the global pandemic and who has been actively forced to endure its impact directly (Myers et al, 2020; Guarino & Borden, 2016).

Elsewhere, mathematics education research has increasingly focused on the lived experiences of women of color in STEM fields. Some findings include: (1) heightened microaggressions (gendered and/or racialized) (Brown, 2008; Kachchaf et al, 2015) through both covert and overt remarks towards women of color in STEM; (2) being subject to ‘hypervisibility’, which Ryland (2013) defines as ‘scrutiny based on perceived difference, which is usually (mis)interpreted as deviance, p. 2222’; and (3) the overreliance of student and privileged faculty alike to ‘perceive and expect female professors to be more nurturing than male professors are’ (Alayli, et al, 2018). How are these experiences potentially trauma-inducing events? How do we protect the most vulnerable from ongoing and continuous harm? When do we confront this reality and collectively wake up to the ongoing harm reproduced in academic communities to this day?  How do we ensure that disabled STEM scholars (and particularly non-binary and transgendered people and cis women of color) are treated with respect, grace, and reciprocity? For those that are granted institutional power and authority, how might these privileges be leveraged for a more radically aware and explicitly transformative mathematical community and ethic of care? Is that even possible?

I leave these as questions to the reader to explore and interrogate. I believe that this work can be meaningfully attended to and one that must be concretely addressed with leadership, vision, and hope centering the intersectional realities of disabled, gendered, sexualized, classed, and racialized people in STEM. In my retelling of the interstitial spaces of hurt and healing, I hope that these words inspire a more thoughtful reflection and institutional awareness of the work yet to be done and the radical yearning of claiming what must be done.

Thank you for reading and affirming – please know it comes directly from my heart to yours.
For a list of references please visit Sara’s page at the Sines of Disability website.

We Want Your Voices!

We’d love to share this space with teachers and their students who feel compelled to share with our community!

Please reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com if you’d like to get involved or contribute an article (or articles).

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

GMD Newsletter – April 5, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
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Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

Reigniting our passion: Ten tips to thrive post-pandemic (are we there yet…?)

Presented by Sean Nank

Here we are, still perpetually caught in a purgatory none of us saw coming. Let’s talk about what really happens in classrooms, help each other to re-center our efforts, and explore actionable steps to embrace math, value every student, and advocate for your classroom while staying true to and rediscovering your passion for mathematics in a (hopefully soon) post-pandemic era. We will discuss 10 strategies and mindsets no one has told you – but they should have! Whether it is your 1st or 41st year of teaching, come learn how to embrace your passion for teaching. Topics include knowing your why, thriving with any colleague or administrator, and advocating for students via voice and choice. Leave with actionable steps to help take care of yourself, your colleagues, and your students while using your personal stories to learn how to do and be better together.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 4/19

Powerful Moments in Math Class: Why Certain Experience Stand Out for Students and How to Create More of Them

Presented by Mike Flynn

As teachers, we want our lessons to leave a long-lasting impression on students. When we understand the psychology behind our memories, we can use that knowledge to design powerful moments for our students. According to Heath and Heath (2018) memorable positive experiences contain one or more of the following elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. We will learn how to leverage each of these elements in math class to create meaningful and memorable experiences for all students.

#GMDWrites

#GMDReflects Part 4: Resisting Inertia 

This is the fourth and final part of the year-long #GMDReflects series. Before I jump into today’s reflection, here is a brief summary of what we’ve discussed so far.

  • Part 1 (linked here) introduced the practice of Self Study as a tool to help guide our actions as math educators to better reflect our values as human beings.
  • Part 2 (linked here) summarized some details about my personal findings and linked to research on how socioeconomic class affects our behaviour in academic classrooms.
  • Part 3 (linked here) presented the idea of looking outside of ourselves — to artifacts of our work to trusted colleagues — in order to learn things about ourselves that we might not be able to see through introspection and observation.
  • From the beginning I extended the invitation for you all to join in a Self Study project of your own and share your reflection on Twitter with the hashtag #GMDReflects.

My journey in self-study began when I read a research paper on Ontario classrooms (like my own) which found that (1) teachers talk to boys more than girls, (2) teachers discipline Black boys most often, and (3) White, middle-class boys get more positive contact with a teacher than any other group. I wanted to see if the same dynamic existed in my classrooms, and sadly some version of it did. Even as I received positive feedback from girls and from Black, brown, and immigrant students and their families, I was dismayed that boys (often white, often affluent) and students from affluent backgrounds were claiming a disproportionate amount of my time in the classroom.

This realization led me to the most important lesson that I have learned through studying myself: when we join a system, the inertia of the system implicates us all. If inequity is built into a system then we, as agents of that system, will be the agents of inequity. It is not enough to have good intentions, the right values, or even belong to marginalized groups.  Nor is it enough to make cosmetic changes – when inequity is systemic and baked into the culture of an institution, change only happens when we are intentional. We will be agents of inequity unless and until we intentionally and actively push back.

What I have shared in this series is not a guide to systemic change, it is just a tool to begin to see ourselves within a system. How and where are our actions fortifying inequities? How are we perpetuating larger trends that lead to marginalization and pushout? Where can we individually make changes to radically disrupt the power and resource imbalances in our classrooms?

There is lots of learning to be done about how to teach in more just, equitable, and less oppressive ways; ongoing introspection and honest self-evaluation are a critical part of that learning. Books and webinars will not change us unless we want to change, learning about injustice will not change us unless we believe that we need to change.

Above all else, if you have been following the series I hope that you take this message with you: systemic issues live within us and changing a system starts with changing ourselves.

Wishing you strength and fortitude in your journey – Idil (@idil_a_)

Grading Policies that Work for Kids
Last summer our district was challenged to read the book “Grading From the Inside Out” (GFIO) written by Tom Schimmer. It was a comprehensive look at how standards-based grading can “establish a new mindset, followed by new practices that will alter the grading and reporting realities within any classroom.”  Archaic practices are explored with updated and relevant practices explained. My biggest take away from this book is the notion that we should be “using assessment in service of learning rather than exclusively for evaluation.”

As with many districts, our grading policies are very clearly defined so that all stakeholders can understand what is expected:

  • Grades should reflect a student‘s relative mastery of the curriculum and should provide feedback on student progress. Students will be able to receive credit for evidence of increased mastery for major grades 84 and below for a maximum score of an 85.  Students scoring an 85 or above on the original major grade will not have an opportunity to reassess for a higher grade.  
  • Students will have a window of five school days after the grade is returned to re-assess.  (Remediation and reassessment must be completed by the end of the five-day window.)
  • Reassessment may be targeted to areas not mastered on the original assessment.
  • Requirements to reassess, such as attending tutoring sessions and/or completing remedial assignments, will be determined by campus guidelines.
  • Minor/Major Grades that are completed on time, but students didn’t demonstrate mastery:
  • Minor grades can be reassessed/corrected up to a 70%.  
  • For minor grades, students should have at least two or more opportunities to show mastery (up to a 70%).
  • Major grades can be reassessed/corrected up to an 85%.  
  • For major grades, students should have at least one more opportunity after the original assessment to show mastery (up to an 85%).

Does this look familiar? So deeply rooted in policy. I posit: Shouldn’t our grading policies be deeply rooted in student SEL, future ready skills, and a general desire to teach students to love the learning processes?

Changing grading policies is not a task designed to be tackled quickly nor without deep consideration of student needs. I dug into the process a little this year and am excited to share what I have discovered.

The first discovery I made when I moved past the 5 day required time limit and allowed students to set the time for their retesting was that students took more ownership of their learning. Not all students, but a majority. This came with heavy modeling and explanations at the onset. Our team developed a tutorial tile on Canvas (our LMS). On this link were videos, practice websites, worksheets, as well as our classroom resources that students could access at any time to review, rehearse, reconsider. Putting the responsibility back on the student to access the materials, practice, develop their own questions for the teacher, and arrange a tutorial time for follow up led to a more meaningful learning process. Let’s be honest, chasing down students and demanding they learn on MY time just doesn’t work for any of the parties involved and is a vibe kill to a positive learning environment. But when students come prepared with questions and ideas to share developed on their own, the learning process becomes a celebration and takes on a new frame of mind.  In these tutorial and reassessment sessions I had students explain to me how their learning had grown and what their thoughts were about what hadn’t worked the first time around. The metacognition piece has helped my students grow in their learning capacity this year and their trust in themselves.

Allowing students the time to take responsibility for their own learning is a necessary part of SEL as well as many of our core character traits (grit, perseverance, attitude…). My students have adapted to a growth mindset this year thanks to my adapted grading policy of retesting until they show mastery. They know that one test grade does not dictate the end product. They have learned to think through what they understand and what they don’t. They’ve learned to seek out activities on the tutorial site that will further their learning on concepts they don’t have mastered yet. The retest until mastery concept allows students to focus on their specific needs. This is a brilliant concept that I love using in my classroom. It’s taken the pressure off of students to perform on demand. A challenge I have faced is the mindset that we are not preparing students for the real world. I truly get that, but my 6th graders are not at all ready for the real world, nor should they be. These small steps I’m taking are developing their future ready skills and when adult life comes I know they will be prepared to tackle the challenges.

Beth Collins, a science coordinator in my district put it this way: If one student learns to ride a bike and one student takes a couple more weeks to get it down, didn’t they both learn to ride a bike? So why does one student get the mastery score, and the other receives a reduced score only because their learning was delayed? Archaic thinking. But I understand why this mindset exists:

  • Students won’t learn to study and do it right the first time. 
  • We are giving students a free pass to be mediocre.
  • I have to create so many different assessments.
  • How do I keep track of who mastered what and when?

There’s lot of barriers that prevent teachers from jumping in with both feet to this concept. The archaic grading policies are still posted, and it’s been a challenge to change minds on my team. I hope to be a leader for change in my district to see the principles in GFIO become our norm. I encourage you to check out “Grading From the Inside Out” and see how it can guide you to making your grading practices more meaningful for students, yourself, and all stakeholders. I love teaching students to love the learning process and I’d love to share more if you’re interested in learning together. You can find me on Twitter.

Written by Casey Gordon (@mscaseygordon)

We Want Your Voices!

We’d love to share this space with teachers and their students who feel compelled to share with our community!

Please reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com if you’d like to get involved or contribute an article (or articles).

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

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GMD Newsletter – March 8, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

If You Let Your Students Surprise You, They Will

Presented by Eli Luberoff

For many students, math class embodies the opposite of surprise: getting the right answer and using the right way to get to that answer. But the most joyful learning-and teaching!-happens when we relish ambiguity, invite the unexpected, and let students surprise us with their varied brilliance.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 3/22

Halt 8 Thinking Thieves

Presented by Traci Jackson

How do we unintentionally limit student thinking? What should we do instead? Come engage in an interactive session on how to combat 8 thinking thieves and learn how the 8 effective teaching practices champion student thinking!

#GMDWrites

To say it’s been a tough year for educators is a gross understatement. Here at the Newsletter, we’ve done our best to keep the content coming, but it hasn’t been easy. Which was why it was especially nice to receive this letter from Neil Hamilton, a maths teacher in Australia earlier this month:

My thanks to the Global Math Department

Maths has always held a fascination for me, the way that ideas can be connected through the use of symbols has a kind of beauty and simplicity that has always appealed.
Out of interest I spend time searching and reading to develop my understanding and try to work out why I want to teach maths in the way I do.  I always felt like an outsider.  Much of the maths content I find comes from overseas.  I have often been inspired by reading the work of mathematicians and wished that I had the resources to travel and hear them present in person.

When my world slowed down through COVID, I happened to find the Global Maths Department’s professional development sessions.  They gave me the chance to interact with a wider range of educators and to hear and think about Maths in a much wider context.  I began to realise that their focus on personal relationships as a part of Maths education was I was subconsciously looking for.  Other educators also started to provide webinars and record the sessions in response to the inability to travel or meet during COVID.  Suddenly Australia didn’t seem so far away from everyone else.

My own experiences with COVID restrictions at school in Australia started me questioning my beliefs about education and where my priorities were.  It was at this time that I read one of Hema Khodai’s contributions to the newsletter.  Her words were the inspiration I needed.  They made concrete the abstract thoughts and feelings floating around in my head.

They were the beginning of a new routine for me. I look forward to reading the newsletter each Wednesday morning, usually while I am sitting at the beach waiting for it to be light enough to swim in the ocean.  It is a highlight of my week.  I read, thinking about maths in a way I haven’t before and let those thoughts work through my brain while I swim.  By the time I get to school I am often changing my daily program to incorporate these.  I tell my students we talk and do maths together, rather than me teach it.  The things I will talk about are affected by the things I read.

As the world and schools start to open up again, we are getting busier and busier, and we spend more time trying to catch up rather than think ahead or reflect I feel it is my turn to write and contribute and give my thanks to those that have inspired me.  Through my interactions with the Global Math Department, I have more self-belief in the way that I teach Maths.  I have come to realise this is what is important to me.

We Want Your Voices!

We’d love to share this space with teachers and their students who feel compelled to share with our community!

Please reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com if you’d like to get involved or contribute an article (or articles).

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Twitter
Visit our Website Visit our Website
Copyright © 2022 Global Math Department, All rights reserved.
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GMD Newsletter – February 22, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
View this email in your browser
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

Developing Mathematical Literacy through Equitable Teaching Practices

Presented by Farshid Safi

How do we develop mathematical literacy with our students through equitable teaching practices in order to make sense of an ever changing world? In this interactive session, we will explore intentional ways to effectively engage K-12 and post-secondary students in collaborative practices that leverage their identity, brilliance, and lived experiences. Together we will highlight specific ways in which mathematical reasoning plays a pivotal role in making well-founded decisions to bring about a more just society.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 3/8

If You Let Your Students Surprise You, They Will

Presented by Eli Luberoff

For many students, math class embodies the opposite of surprise: getting the right answer and using the right way to get to that answer. But the most joyful learning-and teaching!-happens when we relish ambiguity, invite the unexpected, and let students surprise us with their varied brilliance.

Click here to register in advance for this webinar!

Want to get involved with our Newsletter?

We’d love to hear your voice! Reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com.

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Twitter
Visit our Website Visit our Website
Copyright © 2022 Global Math Department, All rights reserved.
“Thanks for opting in to receive the weekly newsletter from the Global Math Department.”

GMD Newsletter – February 8, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
View this email in your browser
Tweet
Forward

Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

Flexibility Through Facts

Presented by Ann Elise Record

Fluency has three aspects: flexibility, efficiency, and accuracy. Let’s explore the heart of the strategic thinking for all 4 operations and discuss how we can begin that conceptual understanding while developing students’ fact fluency. Not only will students develop fluency for their basic facts, but they will be setting a foundation of flexibility that will naturally progress to their grade level content. Together we can create positive math journeys for ALL our students!

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 2/22

Developing Mathematical Literacy through Equitable Teaching Practices

Presented by Farshid Safi

How do we develop mathematical literacy with our students through equitable teaching practices in order to make sense of an ever changing world? In this interactive session, we will explore intentional ways to effectively engage K-12 and post-secondary students in collaborative practices that leverage their identity, brilliance, and lived experiences. Together we will highlight specific ways in which mathematical reasoning plays a pivotal role in making well-founded decisions to bring about a more just society.

Click here to register in advance for this webinar!

#GMDWrites

#GMDReflects Part 3: Looking Outside of Ourselves
This is Part 3 of the year-long #GMDReflects series. In part 1 (linked here) I introduced the practice of Self Study as a tool to help guide our actions as math educators to better reflect our values as human beings, and in Part 2 (linked here) I shared some details about my findings. I also extended the invitation to join in a Self Study project of your own. In each part of this series I will be sharing prompts to guide your self-study, they will also be shared on Twitter with the hashtag #GMDReflects.

In the introduction of this series I outlined 5 features that any effective self-study should include:

  1. have a clear focus: address 1 specific practice/dynamic
  2. be systematic: observe, reflect, change, reflect, repeat
  3. be honest: you will learn difficult things about yourself, that is precisely the point
  4. include feedback from others and artifacts 
  5. result in professional and personal change
The first three features have been covered in Parts 1 and 2, in this part we will think about artifacts and feedback.

Artifacts

If you, like me, are examining teacher-student communication, take a close and dispassionate look at whatever written communication you have on hand. Review all of your report card comments with a researcher’s eye; see how many and what kinds of emails you’ve sent to parents and administrators about students; assess the tone and details of emails sent directly to students; take another look at the written feedback on your most recent batch of assignments before returning them. What trends and patterns do you see?

We leave a lot of evidence about our (conscious or unconscious) thoughts, beliefs, and values in the artifacts of our work. While we may not be conscious of the different ways in which we communicate to and about students, they are. Students compare assignment feedback, report card comments, and even our email responses or response time with their peers. This kind of audit is a worthwhile activity and, in my experience, it is easier to develop more equitable systems for written communication than it is for other kinds of behaviour.

Include Feedback From Others

Despite the name, collaboration is a critical part of self-study. Once you have determined your focus and spent some time observing your own practice, find a trusted colleague to act as a thought partner in your journey. An outside view can help us gain deeper insight or a new perspective on our work.

Depending on your needs, your thought partner might provide:

  • space for you to process difficult realizations or emotions as they arise;
  • honest feedback on your practice based on their observations;
  • insights or potential actions related to the focus of your self-study.

Some years ago, a friend and colleague asked me about my experience with a student who we will call Maya. I taught Maya the year prior and shared my experience of her as hard working and funny, but not particularly excited about math. My colleague told me that she was having trouble connecting with Maya. Even though she was struggling with the course content, Maya was not receptive to my colleague’s attempts to support her and their relationship was becoming challenging. We have these conversations often as educators — searching for insights into challenging students — but our conversation went deeper. My colleague had come to me after a reflection activity that revealed a concerning pattern. She went through her class rosters to make notes on each student’s progress and found that she was consistently struggling to connect with Black girls (like Maya). After we discussed Maya, she shared this revelation with me. I didn’t have answers for her, but I gave my colleague a non-judgmental space to think aloud, express her feelings, and begin to think of next steps. The conversation has stayed with me for years. I was taken aback by my colleague’s honesty and vulnerability, but I was especially impressed with her resolve to grow. She did not come to me to verify that Maya was, in fact, a difficult child, or in search of some kind of absolution from a Black woman for her challenges with Black girls, she came for information and received it with an open mind.

So I leave you with that advice: as you deepen your reflection and self-study, keep an open mind to the information as it presents itself.

I look forward to connecting with you at #GMDReflects. – Idil Abdulkadir (@idil_a_)

Wanna Quit Teaching? You’re Not Alone. Three Ways to Reclaim and Rekindle Our Professional Flourishment

You don’t need me to tell you how demanding and outright exhausting it is to be a classroom teacher. And given the realities of our professional landscape these days, many of us are more than just exhausted. Every passing day, I hear more stories of teachers who feel defeated, demoralized, and ready to be finished.

What is flourishment and why is it essential to our work?

Think of your best moments as a teacher—moments when you saw all of your students curious and thriving, developing positive identities, and actively engaging in thinking, reasoning, and debating with each other. Professionally speaking, nothing nourishes us quite like those moments, right? We feel validated, enthusiastic, and filled with a desire to flourish. I call that  feeling “flourishment.” It is our most precious resource as imperfect teachers because it’s what keeps us going day to day and year to year and gives us the courage and resolve to remain unfinished and continually striving for betterI think we are all craving—needing—more flourishment, perhaps now more than ever.

Full disclosure, my background is in mathematics education and I primarily work with math educators, so I view and translate my thinking through the lens of math teaching. That said, anything you read here is generalizable. I’m so concerned about our collective sense of efficacy as teacher—especially math teachers—that I wrote a book about it. The Imperfect and Unfinished Math Teacher: A Journey to Reclaim Our Professional Growth outlines a journey we—K-12 classroom math teachers and those who directly support our work—can take together to reclaim control over our professional growth and rekindle our sense of professional flourishment.

Here are three “beacons” that can serve as guiding principles for us on our journey to becoming more fulfilled and nourished teachers. For each of these beacons, I invite you to take a specific action that can nourish your teaching passion and help you discover ways that you can flourish at your craft.

Beacon #1: Flourishment requires a lot of grace because it requires us to break down the silos that divide us.

I want to tell you something: math class doesn’t work for all of my students. Even during those stretches when my flourishment is elevated, I know that some of my students aren’t having enough positive experiences in my classroom. And despite my best efforts, I know that there are always a few students who think less about themselves mathematically when they leave my classroom at the end of every school year. My failures trouble me deeply.

If you’re feeling insecure about your teaching expertise, you are not alone. Each and every one of us feels troubled, perhaps even a twinge of shame, by the outcomes we are experiencing in our classrooms. And if you’re thinking about quitting because you don’t feel like a very good math teacher, I want you to know that you belong, you are capable, you are not alone, and I am honored that you are my colleague.
I tell you this because being an imperfect and unfinished math teacher requires a lot of grace, and it’s something that we must learn to give to each other. The siloing effect of school structures and our teaching schedules normalize the professional act of teaching as a private practice conducted alone behind closed classroom doors. As a result, we often find ourselves without the necessary relationships we need to talk authentically about our teaching struggles and to collaborate together as active partners who support each other’s professional learning.

Action to help us break down the silos that divide us:

Find a teaching “buddy” or two or three. Meet a few times a month after school and talk about the passions that drive you as a teacher. Try to choose moments when you know that you can relax and not have to worry about what’s next.
Here are some questions to help you get started with having authentic conversations.

  • What is your teaching story? Tell each other about your career path and how you came to the position you are in.
  • What is your math story? Tell each other about your experiences in math class as a student. How might your personal relationship with mathematics impact your teaching, for better or worse?
  • What does your ideal math classroom look, sound, and feel like? What “human data” are you striving to achieve with your students? What data are you seeing in your classroom that troubles you the most?
  • What do you want your legacy to be as a teacher? How do you want to be remembered by your students? By your colleagues?

Beacon #2: Flourishment is something we must bring about for ourselves and each other as capable producers of our own professional knowledge.

We work in a system of math education that is designed to serve its own needs, not ours. The current structure of math education is designed to standardize the teaching and learning of mathematics, establish tools of accountability and assessment, enforce compliance to mandates by attaching funding to performance, and to implement these tasks as efficiently as possible in a one-size-fits-all bureaucratic approach. This top-down philosophy extends to professional development where we are positioned as passive consumers of our professional knowledge rather than capable producers of it. And despite decades of research that tells the professional development is underperforming, it has remained relatively unchanged. And it’s time that we do something about it.

Our need for a robust sense of professional flourishment is  uniquely individual. It  requires a teacher-centered, teacher-directed approach to improving the teaching and learning of mathematics in the classroom. We must take more ownership over our own professional development and position ourselves as capable partners in each other’s professional growth.

Action to help us direct our own professional learning:

Spend time in each other’s classrooms. Even 20 minutes every other week can be enough to help you shift some thinking. The purpose of these observations is not to evaluate your colleagues. You are there to watch math class from the student perspective and to think about your own math class and your own instructional craft. Even your presence in the classroom has a powerful impact on the students in the room. From their perspective, they learn to see us as life-long learners who are continually striving to improve.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself while you watch:

  • What are students seeing from their perspective?
  • What is being valued most in the classroom? Are students valued for giving the right answers? Or are they valued for their thinking and reasoning behind the answers they give?
  • How is authority shared in the classroom? Are students expecting the teacher to be the answer key or do they turn to each other to see if their answers agree?
  • How is student voice elevated in the room? How are they valued for what they already know from their lived experiences?

After observing, think about your own actions as a teacher in your own classroom. What might you do differently? How can you make math class work for more of your students?

Beacon #3: We find flourishment when we align our practice with our purpose.

In our current culture, we’re incentivized to value test scores as the measure of our success. The constant (and ever increasing) focus on assessment data continually threatens our sense of flourishment. Most of us didn’t become teachers because we wanted to treat our students like they’re test scores that need to be raised. Our teaching hearts are nourished by more noble calls to action such as social justice, equity and fairness, and the emotional well-being and intellectual development of the young people we teach. We want our students to feel capable, to be curious, and to have a math story that is unfinished. And we want to be remembered as loving mentors who challenged them and believed in them.

Action to help you align your purpose with your practice:

Imagine it’s the end of the school year, and you are interviewing your students about their math identity. What do you want your students to say about themselves? What beliefs do you want them to have about their math abilities? How do you want them to feel about themselves in math class next year? How do you want to be remembered by them in the years to come?

Your answers say a lot about your passions as an educator and what motivates you to flourish. With this in mind, collect data from your students that can help you improve in ways that matter to you. Too often, the only evaluative feedback in math class goes from us “down” to them. Find ways to elicit feedback from your students. These can be weekly surveys or “report cards” where students reflect and write about their experiences or they can be done orally as a group.

There are no quick fixes to the formidable obstacles we face. These three beacons may not be  a magical salve for all that ails your teaching spirit, but I hope they help shift some thinking about what you need to be nourished as a teacher. I hope these actions help you find ways that you can grow your craft as a capable teacher passionate about the well-being of the students in your care.

Written by Chase Orton (@mathgeek76)

Want to get involved with our Newsletter?

We’d love to hear your voice! Reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com.

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Twitter
Visit our Website Visit our Website
Copyright © 2022 Global Math Department, All rights reserved.
“Thanks for opting in to receive the weekly newsletter from the Global Math Department.”

GMD Newsletter – January 25, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
View this email in your browser
Tweet
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

Improving College Readiness through Mathematical Modeling

Presented by Denise Green and Alison Lynch

What does it mean to be college-ready? How do we prepare more students to succeed in college-level math? In this session, we will share how integrating mathematical modeling into K-12 and post-secondary classrooms can change classroom practices and position more students for success. You will learn about our cross-institution collaboration and engage in example modeling tasks.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 2/8

Flexibility Through Facts

Presented by Ann Elise Record

Fluency has three aspects: flexibility, efficiency, and accuracy. Let’s explore the heart of the strategic thinking for all 4 operations and discuss how we can begin that conceptual understanding while developing students’ fact fluency. Not only will students develop fluency for their basic facts, but they will be setting a foundation of flexibility that will naturally progress to their grade level content. Together we can create positive math journeys for ALL our students!

Click here to register in advance for this webinar!

Want to get involved with our Newsletter?

We’d love to hear your voice! Reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com.

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Twitter
Visit our Website Visit our Website
Copyright © 2022 Global Math Department, All rights reserved.

GMD Newsletter – January 11, 2022

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
View this email in your browser
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

Building a Bridge to Grade-Level Math in MS & HS

Presented by Chrissy Allison

As secondary math teachers know, a history of struggle in math class starts to snowball as students move from K-5 to middle school, and then into high school. A lack of prerequisite skills makes it difficult for students to engage in grade-level learning, and over time many students come to believe they aren’t “good at math” — and that they will *never* be. In this session, participants will learn a proven, 5-part process educators can use to teach rigorous content while “bridging the gap,” both in terms of students’ confidence and understanding the mathematics itself.

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 1/25

Improving College Readiness through Mathematical Modeling

Presented by Denise Green and Alison Lynch

What does it mean to be college-ready? How do we prepare more students to succeed in college-level math? In this session, we will share how integrating mathematical modeling into K-12 and post-secondary classrooms can change classroom practices and position more students for success. You will learn about our cross-institution collaboration and engage in example modeling tasks.

Click here to register in advance for this webinar!

#GMDWrites

Math is Bigger than Measuring Cups
On the wall of an apartment hangs a wooden spoon – too large to be used as cutlery, too carefully placed to be a standard kitchen item. Even through the small, grainy rectangle of a computer screen, I can tell this spoon has a story.

The task that day was simple. It was only the second day of school, the sixth month of a pandemic and I was attempting to delicately balance building trust, relationships and interest amongst my new group of virtual students. We were on a math scavenger hunt – finding mathematics in the spaces and objects surrounding each of us – a unique task given that we were starting the school year outside of a traditional classroom.

When it was time to share, the student on whose wall hung the spoon, told about that object – he’d taken a photograph of it as well. The spoon was from his grandmother in Somalia, he said, and he was wondering about the spoon’s length. (What might be the most useful way to discuss or measure the length of a decorative spoon?)

What was a relatively simple beginning of the year exercise took on a whole new meaning in the realm of remote teaching. Despite the challenges and the traumatic circumstances that had necessitated this shift, there was a unique opportunity to bridge the worlds of ‘school’ and ‘home’. A grandmother’s spoon may not have crossed this student’s mind as ‘math’ in a traditional year, as we might have spent our time instead finding the math around us in our classroom or school building. This experience leads me to reflect on what may be gained when we are able to easily apply new learning to our own personal and cultural contexts.

Fast-forward until it’s one week before the last day of school, one year and three months into the pandemic. No longer greeting students through the computer screen but in flesh and blood, I stood in the warm breeze of the doorway between my classroom and the outdoors. Our class had spent the past week exploring the ways that math, art and culture are intertwined – particularly regarding the geometry of shapes and patterns. After studying examples, students were to search for an image that represented their culture or identity in some way, and find the shapes and patterns within it.

One of my students walked up the ramp and tugged on my sleeve. “I have something to show you,” she whispered. She took out a red bracelet with a black and white bead. “It’s a Mexican bracelet,” she explained. She had brought it as a result of our conversations the day before, noticing the patterns the braiding formed and wanting to tell me why it was meaningful for her. As she held it out, I asked her if I could take a photograph.

On a regular day, this student was often quiet, and for a multitude of reasons, teachers worried about her, or saw her as a compilation of the things she couldn’t do or hadn’t yet achieved. However, as we discussed as a class what connections we might find between our own cultures and mathematics, while many students struggled finding these connections, this student immediately gave an example of her family’s sombrero, and asked if she might bring it  to school.

While she ended up bringing the bracelet instead, the significance of the act remains the same. This student was not asked to bring an object from home – she was simply inspired by the conversation we were having in class and wanted to share a personal connection she had made, and in doing so, truly owned the mathematics in that moment.

I think back on the ways the spoon and bracelet are connected. As a teacher, I do not believe it is my job to tell young people the ways mathematics (or any discipline) should connect with their lives, but rather facilitate their ability to foster this for themselves. In many ways, school defines ‘mathematics’ by certain narrow ideas or experiences. The mathematical scenarios teachers present to students often mean little to them, and in turn often end up feeling like a puzzle to solve or a code to crack, rather than something meaningful that applies to their own lives.

As a teacher, there are things we may not be able to easily change – the curricula our school purchases, the expectations for grading student work or the assessments students must take. But what might happen if we, as teachers, recognize the gifts our students offer to us? If we take these gifts and use them to create a culture of mathematical learning that is defined by who we are as individuals and as a collective, rather than in spite of these things?

Written by Janaki Nagarajan (@janaki_aleena)

Trapezoids – An Argument for Inclusion

This piece has been adapted from a blog at StrongerMath.com

Picture a trapezoid. What comes to mind?

Does it look something like this?

That’s what trapezoids looked like to me, anyway. My teacher told me trapezoids have a pair of parallel sides, and every picture I saw in my textbook looked like this. I never really had a reason to question it any further. But one day, I started thinking about it a little more.

After all, we know what this shape is:

A square, of course! But none of us would bat an eyelash if someone called it a rectangle, because it meets all the rules for rectangles. It just has a little something extra.

And speaking of rectangles:

There it is. Two pairs of parallel sides and all. But wait, that means it’s also a parallelogram!

And while we’re on the topic of parallelograms, there’s this little cutie:

Who doesn’t love a rhombus? Or is it a kite? Oh, it’s all three!

We have no trouble accepting these multiple classifications for different quadrilaterals. But suggest that a trapezoid can have at least one pair of parallel sides instead of exactly one pair, and everyone loses their minds!


Unbeknownst to me, I had established what is sure to be a lifelong rivalry with Zak Champagne and wandered into a discussion that had been going on for some time: The Great Trapezoid Debate.

Camps had been established on opposing sides – those who defined trapezoids using an exclusive definition — a trapezoid has exactly one pair of parallel sides —  and those using an inclusive definition — a trapezoid has at least one pair of parallel sides.

Now, you might not particularly have a firm opinion one way or another, and you wouldn’t be alone. And that’s totally okay! But I want to take a moment to talk about why (I think) this matters.

Math has a little bit of a reputation problem. It’s boring, it’s dry, there’s only one right answer or one right way of doing things. Everything is settled and nothing is up for debate. While the tides have started to turn a little bit, by and large this is still what comes to mind when most people think of math because this is what they experienced when they were in school.

Memorize this definition, use this algorithm, don’t ask questions.

The reality, however, is far more intriguing. Many of the things that we accept as fact in mathematics did not start out as universal truths. Equal signs, irrational numbers, negative numbers, even zero itself were up for debate until a collective agreement was reached, for one reason or another. Just recently, a fascinating conversation came up on Twitter about whether 0.999… is equal to one. I’m still not convinced that “convenience” is a good reason for zero to the power of zero to be equal to one instead of being undefined. But, I digress.

If we truly believe that our students are capable of being mathematicians and engaging with math authentically, then we also believe that they are capable of forming their own opinions and setting criteria that make sense to them and to others. Our job isn’t about building everything for students, but handing them the tools they need and offering guidance and encouragement. It’s about showing kids (and adults) that they, too, are able to examine evidence and come to a conclusion. It’s about demystifying a subject that has been exclusionary for far too long.

And that is why the Great Trapezoid Debate matters.

Written by Shelby Strong (@Sneffleupagus)

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Copyright © 2022 Global Math Department, All rights reserved.

Newsletter – December 14, 2021

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

Beast Academy Playground: Math Games and Crafts to Foster Curiosity and Build Problem-Solving Skills

Presented by Mark Hendrickson

Think of games you loved to play as a kid: Tic-Tac-Toe, Crazy Eights, Connect Four, Tetris. Many of these involve strategic thinking and problem-solving. When we give students opportunities to play and be creative, they’ll ask genuine questions, try new things, fail, and try again! Let’s bring more math games and activities into the classroom to foster these same qualities, while at the same time practicing basic skills. In this session we’ll explore a collection of games, crafts, magic tricks, optical illusions, and more that can be used to supplement math instruction in the elementary and middle school classrooms.

Click here to register for this webinar!

#GMDWrites

#GMDReflects: Noticing (Concerning) Patterns in Our Work

This is part 2 of the year-long #GMDReflects series. In part 1 (linked here) I introduced the practice of Self Study as a tool to help guide our actions as math educators to better reflect our values as human beings. I also extended the invitation to join in a Self Study project of your own. In each part of this series I will be sharing prompts to guide your self-study, they will also be shared on Twitter with the hashtag #GMDReflects.

The inspiration for my first formal Self Study project was a research paper on teacher-student contact in Ontario classrooms like mine. The study found the following:

  1. Teachers talk to boys more than girls.
  2. Teachers discipline Black boys most often.
  3. White, middle-class boys get more positive contact with a teacher than any other group.

I wanted to see if I, a Black woman, would have the same dynamic in my classroom. For about two weeks I informally kept track of which students I spoke to throughout the course of a day. The results were upsetting. I found that, in the classroom, I had more interactions with boys than girls and that White, middle-class boys had the most contact with me. While I was dismayed, I was committed to better understanding the dynamics that created this imbalance, so I continued to observe without changing my behaviour, but this time focused on who initiated conversations and the types of engagement we had. In this round of observation I was struck by how often and how easily that same group of students — White, middle-class boys — initiated contact with me and asked questions compared to their peers. In addition to whatever bias I was showing, this new focus on student-initiated contact left me wondering why some individuals feel more comfortable talking and advocating for themselves in the classroom.

Here I will take a step back and point you to a short twitter thread by Dr. Jessica Calarco, a sociologist who studies families, schools and inequality, and the author of Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School.

In this thread, Dr. Calarco shares the results of a series of poll questions that she posed to her students about situations where they might ask for help — during a test, to round up a final grade, for a parent to deliver their forgotten homework — broken down by parent education level (a proxy for class). A clear pattern can be seen: students’ likelihood of asking for help in each scenario was positively correlated with their parents’ education level. This pattern matches the findings of her book, Negotiating Opportunities, in which she explains:

“Through their parents’ coaching, working-class students learn to follow rules and work through problems independently. Middle-class students learn to challenge rules and request assistance, accommodations, and attention in excess of what is fair or required. Teachers typically grant those requests, creating advantages for middle-class students.” (Calarco, 2018)

As we examine our biases and behaviour as individuals it is crucial to also step back and examine wider social dynamics. While some individuals may use these as excuses to not change their practice (it’s not my fault! What’s the point?), for those of us who are committed to serving every student to the fullest this kind of information is invaluable. Beyond the impact of class-based culture, I’ve taken a broader lesson from Dr. Calarco’s work: there are all kinds of subtle cultural forces influencing the dynamics of my classroom and without examining them I will perpetuate the status quo.

Early in my career I assumed that my good intentions, and in fact my very identity, would insulate me from being “part of the problem”. The first step in my Self Study journey was asking myself “am I part of the problem?” and it was a powerful shift. But along this journey of learning I have come to find that the more realistic question is “how am I part of the problem?”.

Knowing that student-initiated contact made up the bulk of my engagement throughout the day, I began to intentionally connect with the groups of students least likely to walk up to me, raise their hand, or interrupt a lesson when they were struggling. I incorporated the following routines into my day:

  • I intentionally sought out quiet students to build connections.
  • I intentionally spent time talking to Black girls and boys about their learning.
  • I intentionally sought out opportunities to validate or praise the thinking Black boys.
  • I made sure that I interacted with every student at least once beyond a greeting.

As you begin to notice patterns in your own work that result in inequalities, I ask you to remain curious about what small changes you can make now to disrupt those patterns. Human interaction is complex, and the road to understanding our biases is a long one, but we don’t have to have it all figured out to begin shifting our practice.

I look forward to connecting with you at #GMDReflects. – Idil Abdulkadir (@idil_a_)

Want to get involved with our Newsletter?

We’d love to hear your voice! Reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com.

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

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Newsletter – November 30, 2021

Curated By Nate Goza @thegozaway
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Online Professional Development Sessions

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST

My STEM Education journey featuring SACNAS

Presented by Amy Beth Prager

Come hear Amy Beth Prager share research and teaching ideas related to diversity and inclusion in STEM. Amy will describe the work she had done with organizations that promote diversity and inclusion, including SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in STEM).

Click here to register for this webinar!

Coming Up on 12/14

Beast Academy Playground: Math Games and Crafts to Foster Curiosity and Build Problem-Solving Skills

Presented by Mark Hendrickson

Think of games you loved to play as a kid: Tic-Tac-Toe, Crazy Eights, Connect Four, Tetris. Many of these involve strategic thinking and problem-solving. When we give students opportunities to play and be creative, they’ll ask genuine questions, try new things, fail, and try again! Let’s bring more math games and activities into the classroom to foster these same qualities, while at the same time practicing basic skills. In this session we’ll explore a collection of games, crafts, magic tricks, optical illusions, and more that can be used to supplement math instruction in the elementary and middle school classrooms.

Click here to register for this webinar!

#GMDWrites

Global Math Department Honors Indigenous Mathematicians: Dr. Belin Tsinnajinnie

By: Sara Rezvi (@arsinoepi)

This month’s contribution to GMD seeks to learn from the thoughtful insights of Dr. Belin Tsinnajinnie (@LoboWithACause).

Dr. Tsinnajinnie (Navajo/Filipinx) is the Associate Professor and Co-Chair of Mathematics at Santa Fe Community College and lives with his family on the unceded territories of the Pueblo peoples – what is commonly known as New Mexico.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Tsinnajinnie in honor of Native American Heritage Month. This piece offers some highlights of our conversation and the many resources Dr. Tsinnajinnie generously shared for the Global Math Department community.

Could you share a little bit about your background and your mathematical journey? 

I started off doing math, knowing that I would be part of an underrepresented group in mathematics. And at first that excited me and that was kind of into the status of being one of the only Native Indigenous peoples in mathematics. But that kind of shifted and changed as I went along.

So I made a switch to math education. Because I saw education as a way of serving my communities, and is kind of a calling that I felt came from our family. Both of my parents are teachers and educators, my grandparents. So my parents, me and my sisters have been involved in education. So not only that, but I have a better opportunity to find positions here in New Mexico or and be able to live and raise a family in our community. So that’s what I did. I was fortunate enough that my advisor, Dr. Marta Civil, really engaged in looking at equity and social justice, math and math education. So I was able to use Dr. Seville as an advisor and got engaged in math research that looked at the relationships between culture, mathematics and power. And so it is exciting because I was able to use my background and my experiences, my lived experiences within the work that I did, the work that I do, and work today and continuing to do. And that fits in with my positions at a Tribal College Institute of American Indian Arts…so, I am trying to see how I can align those experiences and perspectives with the missions of serving the community through tribal colleges and community colleges.

When I was doing my dissertation. I came in with the mindset that I was wondering when I was looking at the voices and stories from Indigenous and Latinx learners and their parents. [In particular], I was wondering if I knew the history of my own ancestors who went to boarding schools in those histories. I was wondering if that still had an impact on our current system, and listening to their voices provided evidence that those same forces of assimilation in discounting parents and their perspectives are still ongoing today.

I know Dr. Danny Martin’s work resonates with me because he is one of those connectors who has always been there. And, you know, the boarding school era still has gone and extended into the late 1900s. Many of those policies and practices in some way were shut down with the Meriam Report in the early 1900s, but the mindset and practices were carried over and the mindset didn’t really stop.

And I bring in work on the histories of identity and Indigenous education, how those practices weren’t there for the sake of being racist. Those practices were there to colonize minds to gain access to labor and resources. And very intently, those same things are still going on today. And that’s what Danny Martin talks about as well – that all those projects disguised as equity and equality for Black learners are still all under the guise of serving nationalistic efforts for labor and access to resources and access to Black and Indigenous minds.

What is something that is currently bringing you joy – within the realm of mathematics or outside of it (or maybe that distinction doesn’t exist)? 
I think I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had the opportunity to work from home and be spending more time with my family. And I can. And early on with the pandemic. That’s how we kind of tried to reframe things as a chance to step back and re-examine what’s important in the relationships that are most important to us. That’s not to say that it has been easy to maintain and sustain that throughout all of our demands. But I’m still appreciative that each day that I get to spend time with my favorite coworkers.
Your profile states that you identify as Diné and Filipino. How has your heritage and/or cultural background shaped your journey and your worldview on mathematics?
This question drove my whole dissertation quite honestly [and my thesis revolved around this question]:

“How can we use identity to better understand the various sociocultural and sociopolitical influences on the mathematical learning experiences of Native American and Latinx youth?”

I can speak to something mathematical like how blood quantum is something that’s, like mathematized and quantified and is an attempt from colonizers to mathematize, our identities in those times reduce the extent to which we identify with the group.

A shorter answer to that question – it’s an indication of how we value quantification and measurement, and, in turn mathematics, because we value mathematics as an objective way of measuring things, but that’s an example of things that have no business being measured in those ways.

And, by extension, we think about the how measurement is so prevalent in education systems, whether it’s grades, whether it’s researching grant proposals, and how we quantify or attempt to quantify success and achievement in our education systems, and how in there are many ways that we can extend that to other situations where math is so valued as objective and neutral that we try to quantify everything that I can measure and compare things that quote unquote, objectively and that, that the need to challenge that is, is inherent, and is so important in in its impact on how we engage in value or identities in our backgrounds and our knowledge and experiences. Math is (supposedly) neutral and object free. But we still see disparities, we still see unequal outcomes. If it’s all that, then what are you saying about us? What are you saying about marginalized communities? If we think it’s balanced and fair for everyone? Are you really seeing what you think you’re seeing?

In the past month, a viral racist video* emerged of a white woman math teacher appropriating Indigenous culture in a mathematics classroom to teach trigonometry. If you are comfortable responding, could you offer insight on how you think about ideas of Indigenous futurity and sovereignty? In your view, what would a mathematics classroom space look like that served, honored, and loved Indigenous and Black youth?
I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised that it’s prevalent. I’m not surprised that it’s there.

There’s a scarcity of research and scholarship in Indigenous math education. With those google searches comes all those essentializing reducing and stereotypes of Native Indigenous culture.

What we have to filter through when we’re searching for the good stuff is all that appropriation and all that essentializing of Native cultures, and we’re doing that. And even though that video made a lot of headlines, there are bigger issues and concerns that come out of what it means to engage in culturally responsive and culturally sustaining mathematics for Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities that are marginalized communities.

To what extent do we just look at what is culturally relevant? Does it have to be things that we dress up, but is it still mainstream mathematics with a teepee on top of it? Is that what we’re aiming for?

When I think about Dr. Rochelle Gutierrez’s work, because she talks about rehumanizing mathematics when we’ve always been doing mathematics, along with Dr. Martin – we’ve [Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people] have always been engaging mathematics in humanized ways. And that was disrupted with schooling, colonization, and assimilation. So how do we go back to recognizing and understanding that and so there’s an importance in understanding our histories and seeing the experiences and cultures of our histories? As mathematics, but at the same time, if we want to do math and we love math as is, we should be able to do the math that makes us happy. And without ever feeling the sense that we have to limit or reduce our identities in order to do mathematics. And so that’s part of the envisioning is that if we like the mathematics that we call mathematics, in dominant culture and in universities in schools that if we want to engage in that we should have the opportunity to do so while feeling our whole selves.

We want to have that vision that people have for us that math is accessible for all. But on top of that, if we’re gonna think about the future of math for Black and Indigenous communities and scholars, is to not frame mathematics as a usefulness or to have it as job-oriented, but to rethink the roles of mathematics in our communities and for liberation. And sustaining our cultures in our communities. And what does that look like? And for that we need to go outside of our scope of mathematics and think about the movements and soft movements that our peoples are involved in? What roles does math can map to be a part of that? In what ways is it not even suitable? And is it even relevant? There’s lots of thinking about that. And, I appreciate Dr. Piper Harron on Twitter thinking about those things out loud.

______________________________________________
In addition to the thoughtful insights offered above by Dr. Tsinnajinnie, he also provided resources to continue learning about the important contributions of Indigenous mathematicians to not only the field itself but the communities of people who shape this work beyond the current epistemologies of Western learning and knowledge.

Further Resources:

  1. Hear more from Dr. Tsinnajinnie by watching this interview: MEET a Mathematician!
  2. Bookmark and highlight Indigenous Mathematicians in your classroom.
  3. Subscribe to the Mathematically Uncensored podcast, which highlights the contributions of Latinx and Hispanic mathematical scholarship, hosted by Dr. Pamela Harris and her team.
______________________________________________

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, writes the following: “I dream of a world guided by a lens of stories rooted in the revelations of science and framed with an Indigenous worldview – stories in which matter and spirit are both given voice.” In reflecting on this interview, I am not only inspired by Dr. Tsinnajinnie’s ability to connect past, present, and future histories from a socio-political mathematical lens but am also reflecting on my own identity as a settler-immigrant, a Pakistani-American, who currently lives on unceded territories of the Three Fires Confederacy. In particular, I see my own doctoral work as part of a greater narrative forming around the purpose, place, and role of mathematics that centers the needs of BIPOC people versus that of larger colonial projects in educational settings.

Some further questions to ponder:

  • As non-Indigenous mathematics educators, what are some highlights you, as the reader, are reflecting upon?
  • If we recognize that educational institutions have structurally ensured limited understandings of Indigenous people and their scholarship, what is our collective responsibility to disrupt these narratives?
  • How should mathematicians and math educators openly discuss the realities of racism in mathematics (and beyond) when it comes to the erasure of Indigenous knowledge in these spaces?
  • What internal work and self-interrogation needs to be done as an ongoing conversation with the self – a dialogue that is not meant to shame or belittle, but to approach with curiosity, wonder, and emotional strength?
These questions are meant to be seeds, ones we might share and plant together as a means to begin germinating worlds where Indigenous and Black mathematical brilliance is seen, embodied, respected, honored, and heard.

Thank you for your words and insights, Dr. Tsinnajinnie and this welcome contribution to the Global Math Department.

In resistance. In strength. In love.

~ Sara Rezvi

______________________________________________
* The video in question is not linked but does exist on the internet. Prior to this publication, the writer and the rest of the GMD staff went through extensive conversation about what it means to write about harm without reproducing it and whether or not if that is even possible. To the extent that we can avoid reproducing harm, as a newsletter, we have chosen not to link to the video directly. We thank you for your understanding.

Want to get involved with our Newsletter?

We’d love to hear your voice! Reach out on Twitter or send an email to globalmathdepartment@gmail.com.

Check Out the Webinar Archives

Click here for the archives, get the webinars in podcast form, or visit our YouTube Channel to find videos of past sessions and related content.

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