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Educational equity in our mathematics classrooms. That is the goal we’re working towards here at Math Medic Foundation. As a reminder, we’re using the National Equity Project’s1 definition of educational equity: when each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential. We’ve written previously2 about the importance of establishing an equitable classroom…

If your experience is anything like mine, you hear it all the time. “I’ve never been good at math,” “Math makes me nervous,” “I’ve never been a ‘numbers’ person.” These kinds of feelings about mathematics seem to permeate throughout society, and you don’t need to search for very long to find data that tells the…

We’ve discussed in recent blog posts (here and here) that our students’ sense of belonging should be a major consideration for us as educators when working to create equitable classrooms. This idea is so foundational, in particular for our at-risk students, that it is worth discussing further. As a reminder, belonging is “a student’s perception that the people…

We are thrilled to showcase our 2023 scholarship and grant awardees! Please read out these deserving students and teachers below. Student descriptions are in order cooresponding with the collage above, moving left to right starting at the top left. Kent County Fund Your Future Scholarship – $2,000 each Deacon Mansfield, Kentwood Public Schools, will attend…

In a recent blog post, we mentioned that when our students feel a low sense of belonging in our classrooms they are far more likely to attribute positive feedback to external causes and critique to internal causes, engaging in self-blame. In the same blog post, we wrote that giving encouraging written feedback is one way to…

When considering classroom equity, we’re using the National Equity Project’s1 definition of educational equity: when each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential. But how can we tell how well we’re fulfilling this mission? What evidence can we point to? One option is to take stock of how often our students…

In a recent blog post, we discussed ways we may combat our implicit biases to help make our classrooms more equitable. We’re working from the National Equity Project’s1 definition of educational equity: when each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential. Over the next several newsletters, we’re going to discuss teacher…

Creating equitable classrooms starts with us, the educators. One of the best ways to begin is to combat our own implicit biases. This is a challenge, because implicit biases are… well… implicit. By definition we aren’t aware of them. If you’re unsure about your own implicit biases, consider taking one of many Implicit Association Tests1. There…

By the time students get to high school, they have pretty solidified ideas about who is smart, who is not, and what it means to be smart. These judgments are based on previous achievement as well as stereotypes related to race, class, popularity, and gender. If you observe almost any math classroom, you will notice…

It seems that Peter Liljedahl’s “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics” ideas are taking the mathematics community by storm. If you aren’t already familiar with Liljedahl’s work, you can read a nice summary written by Liljedahl himself in the footnotes below1. I recently had the good fortune of being in the audience during one of Liljedahl’s…