Abstract:
The purpose of this project was to examine how Social Justice Math (SJM) can help students in urban school districts make real-world connections between the mandated curriculum and issues, topics of need, and concern in their own communities. The goal of Social Justice Math is to help students not only become more aware of the needs of their community through units of study such as this, but to become agents of change themselves. We selected Newark as our target community, and began our project with a walking tour of the city and neighborhoods encompassing several of its public high schools. Our tour, recorded in the form of field notes, revealed that the type of stores, businesses and services readily available to Newark citizens was severely limited in the poorer neighborhoods. This particular disparity between neighborhoods gave rise to a lesson plan and unit analyzing community businesses and services in poorer neighborhoods of Newark, and drawing comparisons to more affluent communities. Using SJM can enable students to “read their world” and develop creative solutions to real problems.
Reflection
As I've written in other blogs, I feel as though my group and I have unearthed something really special in social justice math. In previous blogs, I've candidly admitted to being cautious of SJM. Enough of that. I want to write about the present and the future. SJM has really allowed me to see where I can take a mathematics class, which I never believed possible. Beforehand, mathematics was as I had learned it. As a student, I reveled in mathematics. It was to me, a puzzle that never ceased to interest. For all my reveling, however, I liked other subjects equally well. History and English, for example, were two favorites of mine. I greatly enjoyed analyzing a piece of poetry or prose, or reading of the plight of American's during the Civil War. I still do today: Why this Christmas, I finally read Vidal's Lincoln, an excellent read, for sure. But I digress.
Where I'm going is this: In History and English class, there was always the possibility of relating the class to the real world. I remember reading articles about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski in 8th grade American History class, for example. In Junior Year Spanish, I read Spanish articles about the aspirations of select tennis students. All throughout undergrad, I read food articles for Travel-Writing class. In each of these cases, my teachers brought the real world to the classroom, and extended the curriculum by allowing us to interact with it.
Mathematics class, however, was never about the present or present situations. It was always about hypothetical situations and ridiculous notions. It was about two trains meeting in the night, or Chinese Postmen doing their rounds, or walking across bridges in eighteen-century Prussia. I loved that stuff. Most every did not.
I see SJM as a way to bring the joy I experienced in the non-mathematics classroom to the mathematics classroom. I see it as a way to make mathematics into a real, tangible, and practical tool that students see the necessity in. With it, math becomes something that exists outside of math class; it becomes a language spoken by people who are not math teachers. But at the same time, math is furthering these students' understanding of their world, the parts they play in it and the very real part they play in it. To me, this dual nature is powerful, as it says the following: First, mathematics is important; second, you are important. I think this sort of dual-empowerment is really necessary in the classroom, and is the sort of encouragement needed of students.
In closing, I'm very happy that I did this project (with the help of others) on social justice math. It's totally changed the way I look at the classroom, and opened doors like I'd never expected. It's also challenged me to discover future methods of tying mathematics to social situations, and allowing students to explore the mathematical underpinnings and truths of those situations. I find this combination of possibility and challenge very satisfying. It's enough to wonder, though, what else this teaching gig has in store for me.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Reflections of a Semester
When I think back to the beginning of the semester, I find that I've learned a lot about possibilities. In a mathematics class which I had with Brian Miller--the adjunct professor whom my group interviewed--I learned that there are often two types of applications of math. There's what's most common: Teachers inventing situations based their perceptions of reality. This version inherently leads to contrived situations that both artificial and hardly engaging. Specifically catered to the perceived interests of students, these applications deter students more than interest them.
Then there's the other form. It's not so common, but which is gain interest amongst educators. It turns the previous form on its head. Instead of inventing situations based on perceptions of reality, it takes actual situations and requires students to use critical-thinking and problem-solving skills to understand and provide solutions to them. Social Justice Math is but one exploration of this application-based approach, but an effective version, nonetheless. With Social Justice Math (SJM) students learn of power-relations in society, either by examining the microcosm inherent in their own day-t0-day life, or the macrocosm of our world and the injustices we tacitally accept. Rather than using newspaper articles or text books, however, students in sjm situations use something more powerful in understand the world and inequities: Math.
When I first came to MSU, I believed only in the first of these two applications. I had no notion of how I would even do the second. After this semester and my explorations both of the application approach to mathematics and social justice math, in both CURR 523 and Math 579, however, I view has changed. I see now that teaching Mathematics is full of potentially interesting, captivating topics that I can use to excite or intrigue my students. I can also make math into more than procedures, but of concepts, which ideally, is what mathematics is truly all about. But there's more. With this new tool, I see that I can show my students that mathematics is more than just right or wrong answers. It's about history, our past and where we've been . It's about the present, who we are and how we are. It's about future, where we're going and how we'll get there. It's about us. There are no right or wrong answers, here, only opinions.
Based on what I've learned this term, I've stopped seeing the teaching of mathematics as merely what it is. I've started to see it as it could, or someday, might be.
Then there's the other form. It's not so common, but which is gain interest amongst educators. It turns the previous form on its head. Instead of inventing situations based on perceptions of reality, it takes actual situations and requires students to use critical-thinking and problem-solving skills to understand and provide solutions to them. Social Justice Math is but one exploration of this application-based approach, but an effective version, nonetheless. With Social Justice Math (SJM) students learn of power-relations in society, either by examining the microcosm inherent in their own day-t0-day life, or the macrocosm of our world and the injustices we tacitally accept. Rather than using newspaper articles or text books, however, students in sjm situations use something more powerful in understand the world and inequities: Math.
When I first came to MSU, I believed only in the first of these two applications. I had no notion of how I would even do the second. After this semester and my explorations both of the application approach to mathematics and social justice math, in both CURR 523 and Math 579, however, I view has changed. I see now that teaching Mathematics is full of potentially interesting, captivating topics that I can use to excite or intrigue my students. I can also make math into more than procedures, but of concepts, which ideally, is what mathematics is truly all about. But there's more. With this new tool, I see that I can show my students that mathematics is more than just right or wrong answers. It's about history, our past and where we've been . It's about the present, who we are and how we are. It's about future, where we're going and how we'll get there. It's about us. There are no right or wrong answers, here, only opinions.
Based on what I've learned this term, I've stopped seeing the teaching of mathematics as merely what it is. I've started to see it as it could, or someday, might be.
Online Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to look at documents presented by the LSNJ, such as The Real Cost of Living in NJ and A Desperate and Widening Divide and to put these studies into context by seeing how the six families studied in Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods would fare in Essex County. The perception is that as educators our students will tend to be represented by one of the nine archetypes represented by Lareau’s study. As teachers in NJ—possibly Essex County, a county with which we as students are familiar—it is further important to be aware of our students’ financial and socioeconomic situations. Therefore, this analysis and comparison of data allows us as teachers to get even closer to the reality of our students and their lives.
Comparing The Real Cost of Living in NJ with the families in Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods paints a grim picture indeed. Of the families studied, only the most affluent families—those of the Tallingers and Williamses—should make it easily in Essex County. Of the remaining families, only Marshalls just get by; even then, it really is just getting by. In Essex county a four-person family with 2 adults and 2 school-aged children costs about $50,000 per year per parent. Therefore, in such straits, the minimum for this lifestyle in Essex Country is $100,000 per year. Ergo, the Marshalls, who made $100,000 in the study, seem to fit perfectly. However, there is a caveat: Based on the report, we learned that Mrs. Marshall felt uneasy about their living situation; working as a computer programmer, she felt as though employment was tenuous at best. Given Mr. Marshall’s employment as a civil servant, were Mrs. Marshall loses her job, there can be little doubt that a major life-style change would be necessary.
Then there are the families who wouldn’t make it in Essex County—The Taylors, the Brindles, the McAllisters, the Drivers, the Yanellis, and even surprisingly the Handlons. The tragedy here is two-fold. In terms of low-income families like the Taylors, Brindles, McAllisters, Drivers, and Yanellis, it begs the question, how do low-income families get by in Essex County. Not every town is Newark, and not every town is Livingston: Essex County is a varied county, with a gamut of salaries, ethnicities, and classes. From Lareau’s study, these five families represented the students I will encounter from low-income families. But if they can’t make it in Essex County, let alone in Lower Richmond, how will this affect their lives, school attendance, and performance?
As I mentioned earlier, the issue of families not making it in Essex County is two-fold. In the case of low-income families, the impact is apparent. However, the impact is less apparent for those families from middle-income households. In this case, I am referring directly to the Handlons who miss the 100K per year mark for 4-person families by 5K to15K. $85K to $95K per year is no small amount of money, and given that yearly income, most Americans would pigeonhole them as middle-class. Regardless, it just goes to show how expensive Essex County is, and further begs the question: If a 4-person family (as most American families are) requires $100K just to be self-sufficient (neglecting miscellany like activities), what happens to the rest? It is a daunting prospect, indeed.3
Matters for low-income families become worse when you take LSNJ’s A Desperate and Widening Divide into account. These families—many of whom are on public assistance and live in the projects—would have to move to Newark, if they chose to move to Essex county. Those families which would most likely fall into this category include: the Brindles, the McAllisters, and possibly the Yanellis.
(The Yanellis, however are hard to quantify because we don’t know how much Mr. Yanelli takes home, or the hours that Mrs. Yanelli works. As at one time they both worked off the books, however, I suspect underhandedness on the parts of their employers; ergo, I have placed them into the low-income category, as opposed to the working-class category.)
Living in Newark, however, would be no boon for these families, for in the ten year previous, the median household income for residents fell by about $1200! This is a staggering amount of money for any group, but would be devastating for those families that don’t have much to start. At the same time, the Brindles and McAllisters are textbook examples of those families most struck by poverty: They are households run by single female mothers. Couple this notion with that statistic that Essex county’s poverty rate has grown by 8.9% over the course of 10 years, and it is not difficult to imagine the great hurdles over which families would need to leap to escape poverty.
Group in the working class families—the Taylors and Drivers—and the picture grows worse. The Taylors at $20,000 would find themselves far below the median household income for families in Essex County. According the PRI, they are also in effective poverty, seeing as Ms. Taylor makes under $27,000 per year. Given that the monthly cost of food for an adult and three children is about $639, or $7668 per year, a good 38% of her paycheck, Ms. Taylor may have to forego such luxuries as monthly trips to Sizzler and yearly trips to the beach. At the same time, the Drivers make at $45,000 per year. Accordingly, the Drivers are not in effective poverty, and are just at the Median Household income for Essex County Residents. However, they do represent a 4-person household, and as such require $55,000 more in order to be self-sufficient. This comparison begs the question: How would other Essex County residents in the Drivers’ situation get by? As I have mentioned before, 4-person families are common, so it stands to reason that the median household income for a country would be sufficient. Results such as these are greatly disappointing.
4.
As a budding math teacher, I find all this information invaluable. As a potential urban educator, it gives me a good picture of my students before entering the classroom. It also illustrates how vastly expensive it is to live in New Jersey, and asks questions about those families that don’t make 100K per year. It also highlights the great disparity in income increase. Why should the most poverty-stricken community only see a $144-increase in median household salary over a period of 10 years, while the most affluent communities see a $5,000 to $8,000 increase? It is greatly unfair, and students need to not only know about it, but should learn about it, and use that knowledge to excel.
This, as in Jin’s blog, leads me to how this is useful to me as a budding math teacher. It all comes down to mathematics, and in the case of our Curriculum Inquiry Project—Social Justice Math. Using social justice math, I can devise lessons that will enlighten students—and not just those from poorer communities—as to the economic difficulties and out-right poverty that exists in New Jersey. But at the same time, being aware of these difficulties also enables me to construct lessons that are strongly mathematics-based and which when coupled with social justice issues will enable me to develop critical thinkers, both in terms of mathematics (and later their careers), and in terms of society. And maybe out that some sort of change is possible.
Comparing The Real Cost of Living in NJ with the families in Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods paints a grim picture indeed. Of the families studied, only the most affluent families—those of the Tallingers and Williamses—should make it easily in Essex County. Of the remaining families, only Marshalls just get by; even then, it really is just getting by. In Essex county a four-person family with 2 adults and 2 school-aged children costs about $50,000 per year per parent. Therefore, in such straits, the minimum for this lifestyle in Essex Country is $100,000 per year. Ergo, the Marshalls, who made $100,000 in the study, seem to fit perfectly. However, there is a caveat: Based on the report, we learned that Mrs. Marshall felt uneasy about their living situation; working as a computer programmer, she felt as though employment was tenuous at best. Given Mr. Marshall’s employment as a civil servant, were Mrs. Marshall loses her job, there can be little doubt that a major life-style change would be necessary.
Then there are the families who wouldn’t make it in Essex County—The Taylors, the Brindles, the McAllisters, the Drivers, the Yanellis, and even surprisingly the Handlons. The tragedy here is two-fold. In terms of low-income families like the Taylors, Brindles, McAllisters, Drivers, and Yanellis, it begs the question, how do low-income families get by in Essex County. Not every town is Newark, and not every town is Livingston: Essex County is a varied county, with a gamut of salaries, ethnicities, and classes. From Lareau’s study, these five families represented the students I will encounter from low-income families. But if they can’t make it in Essex County, let alone in Lower Richmond, how will this affect their lives, school attendance, and performance?
As I mentioned earlier, the issue of families not making it in Essex County is two-fold. In the case of low-income families, the impact is apparent. However, the impact is less apparent for those families from middle-income households. In this case, I am referring directly to the Handlons who miss the 100K per year mark for 4-person families by 5K to15K. $85K to $95K per year is no small amount of money, and given that yearly income, most Americans would pigeonhole them as middle-class. Regardless, it just goes to show how expensive Essex County is, and further begs the question: If a 4-person family (as most American families are) requires $100K just to be self-sufficient (neglecting miscellany like activities), what happens to the rest? It is a daunting prospect, indeed.3
Matters for low-income families become worse when you take LSNJ’s A Desperate and Widening Divide into account. These families—many of whom are on public assistance and live in the projects—would have to move to Newark, if they chose to move to Essex county. Those families which would most likely fall into this category include: the Brindles, the McAllisters, and possibly the Yanellis.
(The Yanellis, however are hard to quantify because we don’t know how much Mr. Yanelli takes home, or the hours that Mrs. Yanelli works. As at one time they both worked off the books, however, I suspect underhandedness on the parts of their employers; ergo, I have placed them into the low-income category, as opposed to the working-class category.)
Living in Newark, however, would be no boon for these families, for in the ten year previous, the median household income for residents fell by about $1200! This is a staggering amount of money for any group, but would be devastating for those families that don’t have much to start. At the same time, the Brindles and McAllisters are textbook examples of those families most struck by poverty: They are households run by single female mothers. Couple this notion with that statistic that Essex county’s poverty rate has grown by 8.9% over the course of 10 years, and it is not difficult to imagine the great hurdles over which families would need to leap to escape poverty.
Group in the working class families—the Taylors and Drivers—and the picture grows worse. The Taylors at $20,000 would find themselves far below the median household income for families in Essex County. According the PRI, they are also in effective poverty, seeing as Ms. Taylor makes under $27,000 per year. Given that the monthly cost of food for an adult and three children is about $639, or $7668 per year, a good 38% of her paycheck, Ms. Taylor may have to forego such luxuries as monthly trips to Sizzler and yearly trips to the beach. At the same time, the Drivers make at $45,000 per year. Accordingly, the Drivers are not in effective poverty, and are just at the Median Household income for Essex County Residents. However, they do represent a 4-person household, and as such require $55,000 more in order to be self-sufficient. This comparison begs the question: How would other Essex County residents in the Drivers’ situation get by? As I have mentioned before, 4-person families are common, so it stands to reason that the median household income for a country would be sufficient. Results such as these are greatly disappointing.
4.
As a budding math teacher, I find all this information invaluable. As a potential urban educator, it gives me a good picture of my students before entering the classroom. It also illustrates how vastly expensive it is to live in New Jersey, and asks questions about those families that don’t make 100K per year. It also highlights the great disparity in income increase. Why should the most poverty-stricken community only see a $144-increase in median household salary over a period of 10 years, while the most affluent communities see a $5,000 to $8,000 increase? It is greatly unfair, and students need to not only know about it, but should learn about it, and use that knowledge to excel.
This, as in Jin’s blog, leads me to how this is useful to me as a budding math teacher. It all comes down to mathematics, and in the case of our Curriculum Inquiry Project—Social Justice Math. Using social justice math, I can devise lessons that will enlighten students—and not just those from poorer communities—as to the economic difficulties and out-right poverty that exists in New Jersey. But at the same time, being aware of these difficulties also enables me to construct lessons that are strongly mathematics-based and which when coupled with social justice issues will enable me to develop critical thinkers, both in terms of mathematics (and later their careers), and in terms of society. And maybe out that some sort of change is possible.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Blog 11
Yes, this one is late. In fact, given the end of the year, they’re all late, but I think that is to be expected. I like to supply good, well-thought blogs when I write them, not a few paragraphs strung together to fulfill an assignment. But enough of me: Onto the blog.
One of the blogs for week 12 was to reflect on what we had learned regarding the inquiry project, and how it has shaped my understanding of public education. Admittedly, I tend to cringe when I read essays that proclaim how much their life is forever changed due to such and such project, and how in succeeding years, he/she will implement these ideas in increasingly dynamic ways. Blah blah blah. The irony, here, is that I genuinely feel this way regarding our project—that of social justice math— and its direct relation to my future career as a teacher of math.
Before I knew anything about social justice math, I wasn’t really sure of its place in the mathematics classroom, a common notion. As I began to dig deeper, I started wondering if I had been exposed to bits and pieces of it while in school and as and editor. Certainly, I had seen items that exposed students to environmental issues, such as tracking the fossil-fuel build-up in the atmosphere. In its own way, this is social justice math, but in terms of inner-city students—in fact all students— it’s also a hair removed. Learning about global warming can empower students to be more eco-friendly, but it is also a hair removed from students’ lives.
After our “walkabout” in Newark, however, I really began to see how social justice math can really be a tool to incorporate into lessons in teaching and a method by which to empower students to learn math and better understand the world around them. Although any cursory trip into the inner city tends to reveal the same types of businesses, I was never aware of the quantity of each type and their proximity to each other. I was also completely unaware of the total paucity of business I would have expected present, but which sadly were not. Based on our trip, I have come to realize that it really is possible to “read the world with mathematics,” as Eric Gutstein suggests, and that this contextual application of mathematics need not be limited to statistics classes, as I had previously feared.
While it is true that out of our walkabout, we came up with a possible set of lessons that teachers could implement, I feel that our project has had a more direct impact for me, as it has opened my mind to bringing more controversial and traditionally social studies type ideas into mathematics class. I find this idea riveting, for a host of reasons. One of these is that while I do enjoy mathematics (and during my free time can be found reading math journals and textbooks) my interests continue outside of math; they include music, history, and the humanities.
Why is this exciting? Well, for one thing it allows mathematics to be more interesting, not only for me, but also for my students. When I think of traditional applications of mathematics, the most common ideas are: 1) Story problems that have no bearing in reality, 2) the mathematics of science, and sometimes 3) the mathematics of music. However, with the inclusion of an idea like social justice math, the applications are more.
For example, for another class I put together a lesson that explored the relationship between race and salary amongst major league baseball players. For me, this lesson was not only interesting to develop, it used mathematics to explore a concept that has long been an element of the history of baseball, while also furthering students’ understanding of difficult statistical concepts like null hypothesis, alternative hypothesis, hypothesis testing, z-scores, and regression equations.
Given these two, very different lesson ideas, I can only imagine the world interesting and socially rewarding mathematics lessons allowed by social justice math, not only for myself, but also for my students.
One of the blogs for week 12 was to reflect on what we had learned regarding the inquiry project, and how it has shaped my understanding of public education. Admittedly, I tend to cringe when I read essays that proclaim how much their life is forever changed due to such and such project, and how in succeeding years, he/she will implement these ideas in increasingly dynamic ways. Blah blah blah. The irony, here, is that I genuinely feel this way regarding our project—that of social justice math— and its direct relation to my future career as a teacher of math.
Before I knew anything about social justice math, I wasn’t really sure of its place in the mathematics classroom, a common notion. As I began to dig deeper, I started wondering if I had been exposed to bits and pieces of it while in school and as and editor. Certainly, I had seen items that exposed students to environmental issues, such as tracking the fossil-fuel build-up in the atmosphere. In its own way, this is social justice math, but in terms of inner-city students—in fact all students— it’s also a hair removed. Learning about global warming can empower students to be more eco-friendly, but it is also a hair removed from students’ lives.
After our “walkabout” in Newark, however, I really began to see how social justice math can really be a tool to incorporate into lessons in teaching and a method by which to empower students to learn math and better understand the world around them. Although any cursory trip into the inner city tends to reveal the same types of businesses, I was never aware of the quantity of each type and their proximity to each other. I was also completely unaware of the total paucity of business I would have expected present, but which sadly were not. Based on our trip, I have come to realize that it really is possible to “read the world with mathematics,” as Eric Gutstein suggests, and that this contextual application of mathematics need not be limited to statistics classes, as I had previously feared.
While it is true that out of our walkabout, we came up with a possible set of lessons that teachers could implement, I feel that our project has had a more direct impact for me, as it has opened my mind to bringing more controversial and traditionally social studies type ideas into mathematics class. I find this idea riveting, for a host of reasons. One of these is that while I do enjoy mathematics (and during my free time can be found reading math journals and textbooks) my interests continue outside of math; they include music, history, and the humanities.
Why is this exciting? Well, for one thing it allows mathematics to be more interesting, not only for me, but also for my students. When I think of traditional applications of mathematics, the most common ideas are: 1) Story problems that have no bearing in reality, 2) the mathematics of science, and sometimes 3) the mathematics of music. However, with the inclusion of an idea like social justice math, the applications are more.
For example, for another class I put together a lesson that explored the relationship between race and salary amongst major league baseball players. For me, this lesson was not only interesting to develop, it used mathematics to explore a concept that has long been an element of the history of baseball, while also furthering students’ understanding of difficult statistical concepts like null hypothesis, alternative hypothesis, hypothesis testing, z-scores, and regression equations.
Given these two, very different lesson ideas, I can only imagine the world interesting and socially rewarding mathematics lessons allowed by social justice math, not only for myself, but also for my students.
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