Math teachers are asking students to analyze\u00a0social-justice issues<\/a>\u00a0to make math relevant and compelling, reports Catherine Gewertz in\u00a0Education Week<\/em>. \u201cTeachers are drawing on high-profile issues such as policing patterns, the spread of the pandemic, and campaign finance to explore math concepts from place value to proportionality and algebraic functions.\u201d<\/p>\n In a social-justice math lesson, students may be asked to analyze data on the \u201cschool-to-prison pipeline.\u201d<\/p>\n A\u00a0new book<\/a>\u00a0with equity-based lessons for high school math teachers has become a bestseller.<\/p>\n Some districts are looking at teaching math through a \u201csocial-justice lens,\u201d writes Gewertz. \u201cThe Seattle school district developed a framework last year that weaves questions of power and oppression into math instruction, along with explorations of ethnic identity, but it hasn\u2019t been adopted.\u201d<\/p>\n Detractors called the Seattle plan\u00a0\u201cwoke math.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0It wasn\u2019t a compliment.<\/p>\n Trying to make math relevant to students isn\u2019t new. But, in the past, teachers often focused on how to manage a budget or plan a business.<\/p>\n Now, teachers are tackling controversial issues, writes Gewertz.<\/p>\n At New Los Angeles Charter School, middle school math coach Mikel Edillon\u00a0created a map of police shootings<\/a>\u00a0for a lesson on proportionality and graphing.<\/p>\n . . . San Antonio teacher Dashiell Young-Saver rewrote his Advanced Placement statistics course because his students always complained that they didn\u2019t see the point of probability exercises like calculating the chances of getting a red or a green M&M. They asked to study police use of force, so he used data from New York City police stops in a \u201csocially relevant\u201d approach to statistics. Young-Saver created a website,\u00a0Skew the Script<\/a>, to host lessons that use topics like wealth inequality and immigration to explore statistics concepts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Not surprisingly, some worry about political bias, while others think too much focus on social issues will mean too little focus on math.<\/p>\n Not every math topic is a good fit for social-justice teaching, concluded Andrew Brantlinger, an associate professor of math education at the University of Maryland, after trying it with remedial geometry students in Chicago. In a\u00a02013 paper<\/a>, Brantlinger concluded that linking math to social issues didn\u2019t help students learn, writes Gewertz.<\/p>\n He warned of creating a two-tiered system with students of color learning \u201creal-world math\u201d and advantaged students learning college-prep math.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d question if it actually is ‘relevant’. It\u2019s relevant, but is it really math? Math teachers are asking students to analyze\u00a0social-justice issues\u00a0to make math relevant and compelling, reports Catherine Gewertz in\u00a0Education Week. \u201cTeachers are drawing on high-profile issues such as policing patterns, the spread of the pandemic, and campaign finance to explore math concepts from … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-education-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62713,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62710\/revisions\/62713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.joannejacobs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Racial-Disparities-in-School-Infographic-AIR-hp-sm-01-1-600x346-1.jpg?resize=300%2C173&ssl=1\")
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