Reflection Questions

The reasoning behind creating this particular project stemmed from the importance of people feeling comfortable with the material they are learning. Math is often a subject area where people feel "weak" or "defeated." Students may feel that they will never be able to succeed with the material and, therefore, will not try to get better at it. The thought process for the project is that by relating a difficult topic to the students' culture, they will be more engaged with the learning and more interested in continuing to try to understand the concepts. Even if the student feels unsuccessful with the math portion they will still feel small sucessess in creating their recipe and the food associated with their culture. 

I chose a few different types of articles to help me develop my project. My first few articles talk about general pedagogy regarding teaching through food. Overall, my theory that students will be further engaged with material when food is involved was supported by these articles. The students will be able to focus on aspects of the mathematics lessons and stay engaged, knowing that the end project involves a big celebration of cultures and food. The last few articles I found included pedagogy on how food relates to mathematics, and more specifically, fractions. The article mentioned how food assists individuals with visualizing mathematics, and specifically, in the case of fractions. Students often understand fractions much better in food as they appear naturally without thinking too outside the box. I incorporated this thinking into my project since recipes constantly use fractions to ensure the food comes out properly. Students were able to wrap their heads around a concept that for many may come as a natural way of thinking.  

I hope this project encourages my students to learn more about the culture of their classmates. The goal of the project is to use math to promote cultural competency. I want to ensure students are realizing that the end goal is cultural competence and not a full understanding of fractions, decimals, and percentages. If the students become more culturally competent in the classroom, then they will be able to support each other in the classroom. This project would be done at the beginning of the year, to ideally create a positive classroom environment where students feel comfortable being themselves and being vulnerable to learn more about themselves, their classmates, and the material.