To me, implementing culturally responsive pedagogy means that students should be able to see themselves in the curriculum. I look for ways to incorporate students' prior knowledge on specific topics and general life experiences in my lessons. An example of this is an activity from a learning segment dealing with applications of percentages, students learned about sales tax and how it is calculated. Our curriculum included bland, word-processed receipts from different "restaurants," but I came up with a way to make the lesson more engaging. I asked students to bring in their own receipts from a recent shopping trip. In doing so, I got some insight into the students lives and gave them some ownership of the activity (e.g., "What did we find for Lia's receipt?"). This turned out even better than I had hoped, because the students lived in different cities—one of them has a higher tax rate—and we were able to talk about the reasons for this in a way that the students found much more applicable to their lives.

I incorporate social justice and equity in my teaching by fostering growth mindsets in my students and incorporating best-practices in mathematics pedagogy. As a teacher, I work to dispel the myth of the "math person" by celebrating the different ways students approach problems and holding high expectations for everyone in my class. I often ask students to share their work on a whiteboard and prompt the class to ask questions about their work. In selecting students to share, I focus on those who I think could use the confidence boost of having their solution validated by the class. Additionally, I use a number of "low-floor, high-ceiling" activities which allow all students to engage at the level which they are most comfortable. Struggling students are able to engage with the material with an emergent understanding of mathematics, while more advanced students can find challenging ideas within the same activity to expand their thinking.

I use social-emotional learning in my classroom to support social justice and equity. One way that I do this is through a variety of check-in strategies. I show students a "mood meter" and ask them to write about how they feel in the moment or the emotions they experienced over the past week, then give students an opportunity to share their thoughts with classmates (when they are comfortable) so that they validate each others' feelings and learn more about their peers. I also implemented a self-reflection and goal-setting activity at the beginning of my second semester of student-teaching. I asked students to evaluate how they did over the previous grading period with specific prompts for what they did well and where they need to improve. Then, I introduced students to the concept of SMART goals, and we set goals for the new semester. With this activity, I wanted students to gain meta-cognitive awareness and take accountability for their learning.