Kayla

Teaching Math With Social Justice

friend Brie (left) and me (right)

About Me

My name is Kayla Kennedy and I am a Secondary Education and Mathematics major in my sophomore year of college. I grew up enjoying math but was also exposed to more advanced math from a young age. My own math education was not taught through any kind of social justice lense, but I think it could have been. As a future educator for 6th-12th grade, I think there is so much neglected opportunity to bring different social justice topics into the math classroom, but I plan to change this in my own future classroom.

The Purpose:

Teaching about social justice in general is something that clearly lacks in the American education system. Integrating topics surrounding social justice is something that originally may be thought to only be done by English or History teachers, but it can be applied to any discipline! The sources presented below can be used for inspiration for ways to teach about social justice through math at any level. Exposing students to these topics in all subjects not only increases the awareness students have about social justice, but can show them how it is present in all areas of life. Teaching about social justice through math can also impress on students how what they are learning applies to their actual lives.

Sources:

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"Skew the Script"

Skew the Script is a website that promotes the integration of math learning with current real world issues. They offer a multitude of lesson plans for math educators and a variety of topic examples to implement into certain lessons and chapters. Their topics focus on those of Statistics, Algebra I, and Algebra II. The site is relatively easy to navigate and is a free resource anyone can access.

My own certification will allow me to teach 6th-12th grade, but at least initially I plan to teach middle school. With this, I would most likely be taking ideas from the Algebra I area of this website. For example, when discussing the topics of functions versus non-functions and representing these with maps, graphs, and tables, examples about the electoral college and voting power can be used. Another idea given from this site relates the topics of linear equations and finding slope to "predatory lending in low income areas."

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Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers

This book, edited by Eric Gutstein and Bob Peterson, is a resource that can be used by all math teachers, no matter the specific topic discipline. While the book contains many specific topic example for integration of different issues, it also provides ideas of reflection questions for lessons or assignments that can help to enforce the the underlying non-math portions of said assignment. A lot of sources are more specific to one grade level or class, but this book covers a wide breadth of topics from Algebra to Geometry to Integrals. The benefit of this is that even if the exact lesson one was teaching is not discussed in this book, a similar topic can be found or general examples given can be used.

In my own future classroom, I see many ways that I can utilize this book. Specifically for Geometry, there are interesting example ideas given for certain population densities in areas of different radii. The reflection questions mentioned above also intrigued me. Questions like "Why do you think these data are the way they are?" or "How was the math important for you to understand the social and political issues?" are useful to ask and can prompt individual reflection which can be very powerful in understanding these kinds of issues. One more lesson idea that caught my eye in this book was using wealth and population disparities to teach about percentages, proportions, and absolute/relative comparisons. While many different topics can be covered in examples for this specific lesson, wealth versus population can be taught in a way that relates back to the population of the students own town.

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GGSE Website

This website looks at new styles of education in general. Specifically in the "prosocial math" section, they discuss what it is, why it is important, and examples of how to incorporate it into one's teaching. Not only do they give topic examples for different lessons on top of explaining the importance of incorporating these topics into the classroom, but they also bring up ways to organize one's classroom or group activities that can be more advantageous to students interactions.

For my own future lesson plans, I would definitely look at this site for topic examples. One example this site gives that stood out to me was a Geometry based problem. It states to "find the area of the circular plume from an oil spill and how many seabirds will be affected." Other sources I looked at focused a lot on issues based on human interaction but this website gives an environmental example. When discussing issues the population faces, the environment is sometimes over looked, but it is still important to discuss in all disciplines. Being that the next generation of students will be facing a much more pressing environmental crisis than we did at that age, discussing it in all classrooms should be even more of a priority.

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Learning for Justice

This website is another that can be a resource for teachers of almost any subject. The classroom resources provided can be sorted by subject, grade level, and underlying topic domain. Having the ability to narrow the field of search to these specifics makes the site relatively easy to use and simplifies the process of finding lessons greatly. They also offer things like printable posters that can be hung in any classroom. This allows students to be visually exposed everyday even if the lesson of the day is standard without any secondary messages.

For my own future classroom, I would focus on and explore more of the specific lesson plans. One that I can see myself replicating in the future is one on air quality. This lesson is another that focuses on the environment and is one that can span multiple days. While exposing students to data and trends on the quality of air in different areas, it also covers all different kinds of modeling such as bar graphs, stem-and-leaf plots, and box plots. The step-by-step layout of the lesson plans allow me or any other user to follow the written lesson exactly or put their own spin on it. The variability of something like this can be very useful in a math classroom and it something that I would appreciate referencing in my teaching.

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RadicalMath

As per the mission statement on the home page: "RadicalMath empowers educators to address issues of social and racial justice in math classrooms through curriculum, lesson planning resources, and professional development opportunities." The website offers a plethora of resources and lesson examples. One feature gives a database search that allows results to be filtered by content area, resource type, and social justice issue. The types of issues covered seem to stretch across many different domains, as well as ranging in lesson plans from simple adding to complicated calculus.

As a future teacher, this website is one I see myself going back to very often. The fact that there are lessons for all grade levels, as well as being well organized, makes this site one of the best resources I found in my personal opinion. In terms of specific lessons, I was drawn to one that relates women equality and gender wage gaps to graphing, averages, data analysis, etc. Additionally, I see myself revisiting a lesson that connects hunger and poverty to geometry (perimeter, area, etc.). The website also talks about the pros and cons of teaching social justice through math. This feature is one that would encourage me to share it with fellow teachers in my future school. This could help to make teaching through social justice a cross-departmental reality.

"Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country" - David Hilbert (German mathematician)

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