CMC South 2021 62nd Annual Conference

There are Amazing Sponsors and Exhibitors to visit in the Exhibit Hall! AND we have raffles all conference long for fabulous prizes! See the attached files for all the updated details.

Pick up your raffle tickets when you pick up your Badge Holder and materials.

In this talk, we will use the context of the Marvel Movie Black Panther and our pedagogical imaginations to consider how we might transform mathematics classrooms to become equitable and empowering spaces for Black and Brown students. Leveraging the context of Wakanda this talk connects features of Wakanda to high quality mathematics teaching and learning. Strategies include connecting math tasks to problems of social justice, valuing and making space for students’ cultural identities and interests, and the use of “rough draft talk”.

This presentation will draw on particular moments from the Black Panther movie to illustrate the use of mathematics for solving real world problems, building one’s community, addressing problems of social justice, and more. In particular, the character’s problem-solving skills and integration of technology (i.e. Vibranium), engineering (i.e. kinetic energy in the Black Panther suit), and science (i.e. force, motion) along with mathematics will be central in this presentation. The goal of this presentation is to connect a recently popular movie as a context for exploring what math classrooms might look like in Wakanda. This “pedagogical imagining” of a non-colonized classroom provides space for participants to “see” beyond incremental changes to consider how math classrooms can be re-designed to empower students. Namely, teaching practices that value and include students’ cultural identities and those promoting equity and justice seem central in Wakandan classrooms.

We were called to action by the NCSM/TODOs statement that asked us to examine “Math Education Through the Lens of Social Justice: Acknowledgment, Actions, and Accountability”. As educator leaders and coaches , in the midst of civil unrest and a global pandemic, we are seeing more and more stakeholders acknowledging the racism and marginalization of BIPOC students, especially in mathematics. Join this session to listen about, share, and explore actions that encourage educators, sites, and systems beyond acknowledgement. We will use structures and guidance from Courageous Conversations, Learning for Justice, and “A Pathway for Equitable Math Instruction” to model ways to continue these equity-conversations through your leadership and offer concrete actions that dismantle inequitable systems in classrooms, at sites, and in districts. As we move towards collective actions, we will reimagine and actualize math experiences that are rooted in “wonder, beauty, and joy” for all students.

Chat with these amazing speakers at the CMC-South Hub inside the Exhibit Hall!
Friday, 3:00 - 3:30 pm: Christina Lincoln-Moore, Kyndall Brown, Grace Kelemanik, Amy Lucenta, and Martin Flashman
Saturday, 10:00 - 10:30 am: Berkeley Everett, Annie Fetter, Kevin Dykema, and Susan Kunze
Saturday, 12:10 - 12:40 pm: Sunil Singh, Nolan Fossum, and Chris Luzniak
Saturday, 12:40 - 1:10 pm: Brad Fulton, Peter Liljedahl, Caline Khavarani-Smith

This session will engage participants in unpacking mathematics teaching and learning focused on racial equity and social justice. Specifically, the session will explore the intersection of mathematics teaching and learning with racial equity and social justice across four critical reasons: 1) building an informed society; 2) connecting mathematics to cultural and community histories as valuable resources; 3) confronting and solve real-world mathematics as a tool to confront inequitable and unjust contexts, and 4) use mathematics as a tool for democracy and creating a more just society.

This session focuses on unsettling long-held math practices that perpetuate inequities and on taking action to maximize educational advancement for all by exploring, “How can we adopt math practices that respect and honor students’ ways of knowing and being? Challenging narratives that justify the exclusion of students based on “learning loss” or “readiness”, we will identify barriers to math equity and offer guidance and resources for self-reflection and curriculum development. Session focus will be on sharing small yet powerful shifts in math practices around instruction, curriculum, assessment, and culture to create a classroom environment where all students, including students with disabilities, are leveraged as valuable members. Participants will have the opportunity to view, practice, and discuss concrete practices that they can bring back to their classrooms!

We all have egos. They are powerful and dangerous. As educators, failure to acknowledge that we have an ego can be our greatest shortcoming, but being aware of our ego can be our greatest strength. We’ll examine lessons learned from influential teachers and how setting aside our ego will create the necessary space for all of our students to cultivate a positive mathematical identity and sense of agency. We will look at math tasks and teaching practices from a different perspective so we can showcase our students’ worth and value to the math classroom.

How do our commitments to place the diversity and richness of children’s thinking, voices, and experiences at the heart of instruction change what and how we need to learn together? In this session, we will look at how a group of instructional leaders and teachers work together to learn from and with their students. We came together to better engage our students in mathematical argumentation. What did we try? What did we become curious about? What surprised us? Our goals take us into spaces to play, to imagine, to question, and to grow, continually seeking ways to elaborate and breathe life into our commitments.

Often mathematics classroom and school structures privilege particular ways of thinking and cultural norms, serving to reproduce society’s present inequities. As one example, much of schooling emphasizes literacy over orality, failing to draw on the rich and complex ways of knowing of children raised in strong oral traditions. In the mathematics classroom, teachers struggle to break out of narrow definitions present in the dominant culture for mathematics and what it means to be good at mathematics. Does our lens allow us to genuinely see each of our students as mathematically brilliant?

In this talk, I will share findings from two ongoing projects that put in place structures to amplify diverse voices, both of youth and teachers. One is an eight-year project in Southern California to restructure a district, schools, and classrooms based on the principle that all children have mathematical strengths. The second is a two-year effort of the Atlanta Algebra Project to establish voice, agency, and identity in youth least served in math classrooms. I will focus on creating vision to reimagine math instruction, challenging the audience to two shifts in their relationships with youth, and providing details to put both to practice.

How does our understanding of a “basic fact” like 6x7 affect the way we engage students? We’ll explore the nuance and beauty of a deceptively simple idea and consider how to invite and value a wider range of student ideas.

One of the most negligent things that we have done in mathematics is that its purposes have always been directed externally to supporting and providing for society. This focus has also taken a toll on our students and teachers who must engage with mathematics through a lens of compliance, performance, and competition. Our energies have been consumed in this toxic landscape. But, our failure has been that we have neglected ourselves. What purpose does mathematics have with our life's journey? To answer that question we must approach math in a completely new way. We must embrace confusion and uncertainty with excitement and not trepidation. We must do this because it has been the entire historical narrative of the history of mathematics. We must reclaim its human power and purpose.

Much of how classrooms look and much of what happens in them today is guided by institutional norms laid down at the inception of an industrial-age model of public education. These norms have enabled a culture of teaching and learning that is often devoid of student thinking. In this session I present some of the results of over 15 years of research into how teachers can transform their classrooms from a space where students mimic to where students think. The practices discussed will intertwine with, and make extensive references to, the recently published book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics (Grades K-12): 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning.

When the new mathematics framework is released across California in the fall of 2021, it will set out ways to create equitable mathematics classrooms with a focus on connections and investigations. This requires an approach to mathematics that focuses on big ideas, rather than isolated methods. In this session we will highlight the big ideas, ways to teach them, and the ways they contribute to equity focused classrooms. We will watch some videos of classrooms together, have great mathematical conversations, and consider a brighter, more equitable future for California.

This talk will explore what it means to teach mathematics when we frame classrooms as spaces of becoming. Drawing on mathematics classroom research, we will explore the importance of collaboration, discourse, and positioning in fostering mathematical identities. We will then consider instructional practices that support students being seen and heard as mathematical thinkers and learners.

In 2020-2021, I was a first-time principal during a pandemic! Come hear my candid reflections and learnings as I applied my skill of integrating mathematics and mindfulness to not only engender formidable mathematical learning but cultivating a cohesive school community over Zoom by being a mindful leader.

Students develop agency when they are allowed to own the mathematics they produce. One way to support student agency is through creating room in classrooms for students to contribute to math conversations and engage with students to build collective understanding. We will explore how we interchangeably use “explanations” and “convincing arguments” and expect students to know the difference. We are disappointed when student explanations are often a list of steps and at best communicate procedural fluency when we want students to produce convincing arguments that demonstrate their reasoning and conceptual understanding. Participants will experience how students can improve their communication, reasoning, and risk taking by participating in structured skeptic conversations through tasks that allow for rich discussion and are accessible to all students. Participants will also look at data collected on the changes that resulted in a middle school classroom over a year of action research.

This session addresses issues directly related to the use of data Beliefs and Structures, specifically around the data teachers use to inform teaching and learning. The following two questions are addressed specifically by having participants investigate their current data practices, which includes labeling i.e. students, student groups and then look at ways to expand the data they use to include students’ strengths and funds of knowledge as they address unfinished learning. What approaches help you and others interrogate and challenge deficit views about mathematics learning to support students’ agency and identity? What strategies help educators and school personnel eradicate harmful beliefs about students and disrupt behaviors that negatively position students?

This session will share one educator’s journey to find her voice and advocate for our EL/immigrant student and their families. Discover what’s at stake when we use a deficit model and become inspired by her story to frame instruction through the lens of an assets based approach. Learn how this can help transform the stories students write for themselves by revising the narrative of our classrooms. We discover that equity is a lens, not a curriculum, and it becomes the foundation to every practice in our classroom, providing students an opportunity to find their voice, identity, and agency. We will explore and share strategies that can help infuse this into every level of our practice, from academic to social-emotional. Explore and discuss strategies that can help ensure your students feel seen, heard, their voices lifted, and their stories shared.

How do we restore the power of students’ voices in our classrooms? How do we create experiences that uplift students’ voices? We start by eliminating the mute button. The ethos of our math classrooms should be an environment where students are encouraged to express their voices, ask questions, listen to different perspectives, and create counterarguments. In this session, we celebrate the power of students’ voices as the authority in our classrooms through stories and videos. We explore obstacles that suppress student voices, teacher moves that amplify all voices within a math lesson, and routines that allow all students’ voices to be heard. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in a simulated lesson and reflect on the session’s learning goals.