Originally posted on November 11, 2017 on Connect
To summarize, Culturally Responsive Mathematics Education should be mindful of
- Place. Ground the learning in the land where students are from.
- Storytelling.
- Forming relationships.
- Inquiry learning.
- Social consciousness. (Nicol, Archibald, & Baker, 2012)
In this week’s reading, I was very pleased to see that one of the subjects in the study was a high school math teacher. I was curious to read about her take on math-based CRE. I was hoping to read about her process that allowed both CRE and academic mathematical rigor into her practice. Unfortunately, that did not come to fruition for me. Kit’s issue is also mine: how do you prepare future engineers, doctors, scientists, and mathematicians in a CRE? There simply is not enough time to address both.
Or is there? I still don’t know and remain open to people’s ideas.
By the time I get a student in Foundations/Pre-Calculus Math 10, for most students, there are significant deficits in their mathematical comprehension. Our society does not value early numeracy as it does early literacy. It is socially acceptable to “be bad at math”. For the entire five months that I have my students, we are learning a new process, and filling in holes from yesteryears. If I take one day to fold paper into boxes, then that is one less review day for the final and I only slot 5 classes for review of the course. Wherever possible, I will do “quick” activities, do collaborative learning techniques and counsel my students through their math anxieties, but there is not time to finish what they require for the next year AND do hands-on or inquiry learning.
I am at a loss.
What I do think, is that there needs to be a new course developed for Math graduation requirements, as there is for English. We have First Peoples English, so why don’t we have First Peoples Mathematics? At present, we offer Trades Math in BC. This is a course that could be tailored into First Peoples Math, with a bit of effort. Non-Indigenous students would greatly benefit from a course like this, as well. It could be hands-on, land-based and situated in storywork. Community members would be vital to making a course like this takeoff. I would LOVE to be part of something like this.
In the meantime, I have decided that I am going to request that I step away from Physics next year, in my teaching load. In an effort to bring Indigenous knowledge into the Math classroom, I do see that there is room and there is a great need, in Math 9. All students come to high school and take Math 9 (apart from students learning below Middle School level; these kids take Adapted Math 9). It is in Grade 9 that classrooms are filled with students of all cultures and ability levels, in that the kids are Grade 9 age, but may be at a Grade 7, 8 or 9 Math level. My thinking is that I could bring in CRE at the Grade 9 level, as it has one-third of the learning outcomes as academic math 10.
To be continued…
Nicol, C., Archibald, J., Baker, J. (2013), Designing a Model of Culturally Responsive Mathematics Education: Place, Relationships and Storywork. Mathematics Education Research Journal. 25(1), 73-89