Summary:

Social justice is described as “recognizing and acting upon the power that we have for making positive change”. Teachers unknowingly do this, but they need to realize and see how important it is for them to be leaders in creating change. As teachers it is important that we realized we are leaders in creating change. We need to begin to connect our content areas to real world scenarios so students can begin to realize how impactful they could be to our future. One of the first and most important things a teacher can do is work to create a collaborative community for their students. This creates opportunities for students to voice their opinions and carefully respond to others. 

Connecting to a Math Classroom:

I think it is very important for teachers, especially in a math classroom, to work to create a collaborative community. I would do this by creating groups towards the end of class to do group work. I would ensure that these groups were crafted carefully considering the individuals skill levels and not placing all the “smart” students together.

Summary:

The video “maththatmatters” was made about fourteen years ago, but it is still relevant today. It focused on listening to the students' perspectives on why they think it is important to incorporate social justice topics into the math curriculum. One of the students said it began to feel like real work, in a good way, because you are connecting math to relevant things rather than to things you will never need again. One of the teachers said that “[i]f you want students to be empowered to make the world a better place, more fair, or more kind, you really need to talk about real life content; poverty, homelessness, hunger, power, capitalism, democracy, distributive justice. Those are the things students need to be thinking about and they need math to do it” (2:10). These students are young, but that is the best time to be teaching them these things. They still have an initiative to do what they can to fix the issue they are presented with. I believe that many teachers also fear that their content will become lost if they are to give meaningful examples, but one of the students in the video said that when connecting math with relevant topics, the math is easier to comprehend and remember. 

Examples in the Classroom:

In a statistics classroom, teachers could incorporate problems about poverty and hunger into their classrooms. They could have the students either create or analyze a scatter plot between whatever they see fit (i.e. poverty rates vs crime rates, poverty rates vs obesity, percentage of those in poverty vs percentage of those with a high school diploma). 

Summary: 

The article “Creating an Anti-Racist Classroom”, written in 2012, presented me with facts that I did not expect/know. In 2012, the gaps between white students and students of color were just as profound as they were in the 1950’s. Some school communities still were “just as unequal as they were in the mid-20th century” (Lee). The article provides educators with five things to do in their classrooms; “don’t ignore race”, “seek out established community organizations”, “remember that communities of color are not monolithic”, “read!”, and “self-awareness is the key”. The worst thing you can do as an educator is pretend that race does not matter. Race is a very prevalent topic in many other classroom subjects, so why is it never talked about in a math classroom setting? 

Connecting to a Math Classroom:

I would create a project where my students had to conduct research and gather numerical data regarding a topic one of the topics I provide them with. I would provide them topics on a few social justice and racial justice topics relevant at the time. I would have them create graphs and percentages as well as write a brief reflection on how their findings made them think and feel. 

Summary:

The article, “Practicing Anti-Racist Pedagogy”, discusses how being an anti-racist teacher is a lifeling process. The anti-racist pedagogy connects the students in the classroom with “personal and institutional contexts”. It attempts to teach about race and racism to help students with analytical skills as well as simply the knowledge of the topics discussed. As teachers, we need to ask ourselves how racism is operating in our classroom/school setting. We need to understand there are different levels of racism, it is not always as visible, but it still is happening. We need to understand that we are hoping to teach our students so they can create change in and outside of our classroom. We need to be able to self reflect periodically as this is an ongoing process.  

Connecting to a Math Classroom:

• The article focused mainly on the teacher's perspective and what we need to be able to do in our classrooms, but it did not talk directly about the math classroom. 

• As a future math teacher, one thing I would like to incorporate into my classroom is looking at the data from the past and today and analyzing how it has or has not changed. One example would be looking at the separation/segregation in schools at a year of their choice and in the present.