Math 413: Statistics |
What we do |
Reflecting on how my own identities and experiences in schools inform my practice is relatively second-nature to me. I am from Alachua, Florida: Santa Fe High School class of '12. My particular insights, affect and experiences from my rural, working class background have always informed my scholarship and been a source of pride for me. I left Amherst College in 2017 feeling really great about my senior thesis, "Remember Your Home-training: Black Masculinities and Black Men's Lives in Context." It was a very personal look at Black families, challenging misogynistic and heteronormative notions that single Black mothers are responsible for toxic Black masculine behaviors and the socioeconomic struggles of some Black folk. Additionally, I explored and documented counter narratives to some pervasive, classist and elitist ways of assessing Black men's value and impact on young Black boys' lives as care takers and role models. Ultimately, I write and exist from the love of and dedication to the folks that are systemically impeded from "prestige" in a world that values prestige and credential. Therefore, it is no surprise that my wonderings and passion led me to this particular set of questioning (Excerpt from Master's Thesis).
The artifacts displayed below are from an introductory lesson using datasets that relate to mass incarceration in the U.S. and ongoing debates regarding a prison-industrial complex.
Social justice issues and examples, however, encompass only a fraction of the values and methods that we employ in our course and daily practice. One of our primary goals, in addition to teaching them quality statistics, was to prime our students to constructively contribute to the climate of their current and future mathematics classrooms, embracing the possibility that they may play a pivotal role in their peers' learning experiences and STEM persistence. Seth and I tried to demonstrate what collaboration may look like every day for students, drawing on both of our strengths as teachers and scholars.
Click on the hyperlinked methods or values below to catch a glimpse of how we incorporated them into our classroom:
Click on the hyperlinked methods or values below to catch a glimpse of how we incorporated them into our classroom:
- Collaboration
- Current Events
- Assessments
- Student Voice/Feedback
- Active, Student-Centered Learning
With that being said, we identified three major caveats for ourselves entering our collaborative teaching experience. First, we wanted to avoid implying that girls and underrepresented minority students can only do math well with social justice applications or implications. Additionally, we did not want to undermine my presence in the mathematics classroom by replicating similar typecasting patterns that we were attempting to disrupt through students’ perceptions of my role, their Black teacher, as “the social justice teacher.” Similarly, we wanted to avoid perpetuating or creating this notion that “social justice work” is the work of folks with marginalized identities. Rather, we wanted the students to observe Seth’s competency and investment in a number of human rights issues and social justice topics (Excerpt from Master's thesis).