My best classroom has a ton of communication is going on: peer-to-peer; student-to-teacher: teacher-to-student; and students-with-themselves. Learning math means learning language, that is, in order to really claim new ideas, learners need to voice them and represent them to themselves and to each other, over and over again. For the first time, I have been…
Math Zoom, Math Love
Just before Covid made my middle school teaching remote for the past year, I attended a workshop led by mathematician and Math for Love co-founder, Dan Finkel. Math for Love makes visual puzzles and supports parents and teachers with math teaching resources. Little did I know, Dan’s approach to providing intriguing visual puzzles would become…
So as Not to Outrun Trust
For a long time the words of activist and educator Myles Horton have hung on my wall: “We make the road by walking.” As I set out to teach 8th grade math in the fall of 2020, I can only see a few steps ahead of me. I teach public school in a small city…
Novices Together: First Steps in Middle School Distance Learning
Today I hold my second ever middle school Zoom learning session. I am still not sure to what extent we can really show up for each other remotely. This meeting comes twenty-four hours after the sting of knowing that I will never hold class again in-person with these students. It comes as a friend crawls…
It’s Gone Viral
Some journeys begin with just beginning. This week I will host my first ever remote math lesson with middle school students. I have no idea what I am doing and I am excited. Thank you, Covid-19. One hundred eighth graders have wormed their way into my heart and I can’t wait to see them. As…
Sometimes my math thinking is bigger than paper
As the paint dried and the press board curled up in the sun, I wondered if the homemade white boards were a mistake. It turns out that for under a hundred dollars, these budget white boards have solved more problems than I thought possible. A few months into the school year, I am sold. The…
Math for the Joy of It
At two years past eighty, mathematician Martin Kindt doesn’t have […]
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The Art of Being Certain
The word for mathematics in Dutch is wiskunde, which means […]
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Dortmund (and academic research) isn’t so far away after all.
About halfway through my time in the Netherlands, I spent […]
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Thinking for themselves
Eindhoven is about an hour by train from where I […]
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