Dear heroes of adult numeracy,
Pam Meader, veteran teacher and founding member of ANN, has written a blog post describing her current thinking on how, and why, it is important for us as teachers to develop a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our math classrooms.
Pam brings together ideas from so many books and webinars she's been learning from and settles on two main things we can all be doing as teachers:
"First, we all need to become informed of black, brown and indigenous histories — histories that were truncated, inaccurate, or altogether missing in the textbooks most of us read as children." Pam also suggests resources and ways for teachers to learn these histories together.
The second thing Pam writes about are the small changes we can make in our daily practice as teachers. Inspired by a the work of Faith Moynihan (Desmos) on what students need to be successful, Pam describes 4 concepts teachers can focus on: (1) students feeling safe, valued, and accepted, (2) using tasks that are worthy of students' time, (3) creating opportunities for students to share their thinking in different ways, (4) students feeling like their ideas are valued.
Using her 25+ years of teaching wisdom, Pam offers small steps to bring these elements of student success into our classes. Her piece has left me with many questions about my own practice.
- How does my instruction help my students learn about themselves and about other people who are different from them
- How do I make students feel safe, valued, and accepted?
- What makes a task worthy of students' time?
- What opportunities do I give for students to share their thinking? What other opportunities can I create?
- How do I value student thinking? How do I show students that their thinking is valuable?
What questions or ideas does Pam's piece inspire in you?
Read Pam's post here:
yours in productive struggle,
Mark