Speakers and Abstracts

Conference Materials Folder

Rebbeca Noton, Massachusetts Maritime Academy:

Collaboration session: Working together to adapt “general” equitable teaching practices for the mathematics classroom.

Professional development sessions focused on equity tend to be filled with lots of great ideas for humanities/social science classrooms.  Wouldnʻt it be be nice if there were some equally good techniques for the mathematics classroom?!  During this working group session, we are going to put our heads together to try to develop some.  We will consider several “general” classroom practices that promote equity and try to figure out if, and how, they might be adapted for the mathematics classroom.  Can we figure out how to keep the parts of the techniques that promote equity while also changing the parts that would make them feasible to enact in a mathematics classroom?  Dr. Becky Norton will facilitate the session and bring a variety of techniques with her for participants to consider.  Participants are also welcome to bring their own ideas!  (Please be ready to share a brief description of the technique and how it promotes equity).  The bulk of this collaboration session will be spent in small groups with time left at the end for each group to share their thoughts/progress/frustrations/conclusions.  Following the conference, the work from our session will be shared on the NE-COMMIT Wiki page. 

Ileana Vasu, Holyoke Community College:

Humanize mathematics: culturally responsive pedagogy in the math inquiry classroom.

As mathematics teachers, we have the power to humanize mathematics classrooms.  Our students’ identities, our own identities, and the different contexts of our classrooms all shape the learning that happens and speak to the careful work that we as teachers must intentionally do to create inclusive learning spaces. Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) offers us some key principles to do this work.  In this interactive workshop, participants will brainstorm how the core fundamental principles of CRP can be deconstructed and embedded in their inquiry-oriented mathematics classroom. Interested participants will be also able to connect with each other and create a working group after the session.

Donivyn Schmidt, Peter Ward, Kenneth Horwitz, Bruce Buckiet, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Turning Everyday Active: Utilizing Active Learning Methodologies to Prepare Urban High School Students for Success in College Mathematics.

In this presentation, we discuss one component of an innovative yearlong project that combines different active learning methodologies with college math instruction for rising high school seniors from an urban district. Specifically, we will discuss the strategies used to build student confidence and teamwork skills through daily Challenge Time sessions and identify and fill learning gaps through Active Learning sessions in key Math content areas for Precalculus and Calculus. Additionally we will demonstrate the conversion of a lecture based lesson into an active learning lesson.

Samrat Pathania, Wallkill Central School District

Weaving Climate Solutions into Introductory Mathematics Courses - A Practical Approach.

Mathematics courses are often densely packed with content, and this leaves little time for special units. In this workshop, Samrat Pathania, New York Master Teacher Emeritus and Co-Founder of Educator Collective for Environmental Justice, will describe how climate solutions can be purposefully integrated throughout introductory mathematics courses like Pre-algebra and Algebra by taking examples from his classes. Regular integration of these solutions achieves multiple goals by: increasing student engagement with real-world examples, making mathematics concepts relevant to solving current societal problems, and showing students the hopeful side of a topic that is too often presented only in depressing terms. 

Michelle Page, Brattleboro Union High School, Vermont Council of Mathematics Teachers

Mindfulness in the  High School Classroom.
The Anti-Do Now. Michelle uses mindfulness and meditation as a way to start all of her high school math classes. A few simple principles and a prepared script can assist any teacher to introduce mindfulness into their classroom. Teachers will participate in a meditation session and begin to craft their own script to lead mindfulness with their students with confidence. 

Xavier Ramos Olive, Smith College

ChatGPT for the classroom - a brainstorming session.

Join us as we collectively brainstorm the practical applications of Chat GPT within the classroom. Together, we'll envision innovative ways to incorporate AI technology for the benefit of both instructors and students, while remaining mindful of the equity challenges this new technology presents. Your valuable insights will contribute to a shared pool of ideas, which will be disseminated through the NE-COMMIT Wiki, empowering fellow educators to thoughtfully integrate Chat GPT into their teaching strategies.

Laura Callis, Curry College

Integrating Social Justice Topics into Introductory Statistics.

Seeing how statistics can address important issues, such as racism and gender equity, can motivate students to continue engaging with mathematics. This session will share problem sets and projects that draw on real studies and data sets about social justice issues and address topics in introductory statistics courses. 

David Clark, SUNY New Paltz

Inquiry-Based Learning Mathematics Courses for Future Teachers.

I will explain how the key mathematics courses we use to prepare math teachers need to, but largely fail to, give them the skills and knowledge they need.  I will describe three inquiry based textbooks I have recently published that follow these two principles: Euclidean Geometry at the sophomore/junior level, The Number Line at the junior/senior level and High School Geometry at the senior/graduate level.  (See my wiki page under NE-COMMIT Members for a detailed description of these texts.)

Going through each of these texts, future teachers will prove a graduated sequence of theorems that underly the topics they will later be teaching.  However, the first chapter of Euclidean Geometry contains no theorems.  Instead, it gently draws students toward theorem proving with informal definitions and logical arguments. I will conduct one or more activities to illustrate this technique with audience members working in pairs on problems from transformational geometry.