Notes From the Patriarchy

Five years ago, the students in my sixth grade math class were placed with me because they struggled. I described my students as ‘reluctant mathematicians’ because I knew they were capable of thinking mathematically, but when they saw a new challenging problem many of them reacted by staring blankly, putting their heads down, or even saying, “nope.” 

During a unit on rates and percents, I saw them work hard and build up their fluency with processes, but as usual when it came time to correct their tests, I was disappointed. They had some skills for how to find percents, but when asked to apply it to a fake ‘real-life’ situation about basketball players, they froze up. Over and over throughout the year, they told me they could not figure out how to apply their skills in word problems or situations. 

In the meantime, Darren Wilson wasn’t indicted, and I cried. I thought about one of my students, Brandon, who had written a poem identifying with Mike Brown. My social studies teacher friends were posting on Facebook about the ways they planned to talk about it with their students the next day, and in that moment I couldn’t remember why I had decided to teach math. How could I just close my classroom door and talk about fractions? 

The next morning, I put some fractions up on the board for students to write about for their warm-up: 67/100 ,483/519,3/53. After giving them a few minutes to compare the fractions as ‘naked numbers,’ I added in the context of what the fractions represented out of their total groups in Ferguson: black people living there, arrests of black people, and the number of black cops. The students talked about what they noticed and I gave them the term ‘disproportionate,’ then we moved on to the more official plan of the day. As she was packing up for her next class Aisha asked me, “Why aren’t we talking about this more in social studies?” 

I asked myself, why aren’t we talking about this more in mathematics?

*****

A few years later, I went to a math conference session I expected to love. The presenter shared that math is a great tool for understanding the world (at this point, I was listening excitedly) because, unlike the social sciences, it is completely unbiased and objective. 

This was when I started questioning my decision to be in the room.

He then shared an example for us to analyze, the issue of excessive force by police. “Is this really a widespread problem?” he asked us. “Before we look at the numbers, what is your instinct?” 

An older white man in the front row said, “Well, I’ve never been mistreated by the police so I’d say, probably not.”

(Reader, this is the point when I involuntarily exclaimed “You’ve got to be kidding me” under my breath, to the surprise of the person sitting next to me. In retrospect, I wish I had said it louder.)

For the entire rest of the session, race was not named once. Not once! In a session on police violence! 

*****

With Brandon and Aisha’s class, we focused in on Oakland, where we live. I gave them the latest Census numbers of who lives in Oakland broken down by race, and the police department’s report of how many people of each race they stopped in the past year. We talked about some of the limits and fuzziness that come with categorizing people with social constructs.

As soon as I passed out the tables of numbers we would be working with, Brandon said “Whoa.” Brandon knew how to complete calculations, but he often struggled with noticing or understanding what numbers meant in context. He didn’t usually volunteer to share his thinking, and had reacted out loud without meaning to. With encouragement, he explained the number he had noticed right away. “The number of African Americans that got stopped by police,” he said. “It’s just so much higher than all the others.”

The kids went to work on connecting the numbers to find and compare rates and percents. They found that Black people were about four times more likely than White people to be stopped by police in Oakland. The word “disproportionate” came back into the conversation. When they looked at the reasons for the stops, they also found that Black people were more likely than people of other races to be stopped for probable cause or reasonable suspicion rather than a concrete traffic violation.

We talked about the difference between what we knew from the data and what we each might infer from the data, and what we could imagine other people might infer. Students wrote down new questions all of this mathematical analysis made them wonder about.

All of them worked out rates and percents to think about a situation. Some of them used those rates and percents to create protest signs.

*****

In the conference session we used math to examine the question, “Is excessive force by police really a problem?” Here were some questions we did not examine: Do these numbers change if we disaggregate by race? Do we agree with how police departments define what is excessive? What are the explicit and implicit goals of police chiefs? Do we agree that those goals are legitimate? How might studying this topic land differently for students whose families or friends or selves have been victims of police violence? How do we define what counts as a problem? Each of these questions might have changed how we wielded the mathematics and the conclusions we drew.

Math is an incredible tool for understanding and analyzing the world. It is of course completely subjective and biased by how humans choose to use it, just like every other tool humans create and apply. If we want to attend to precision, we have got to acknowledge the lenses and assumptions that guide the questions we ask and the answers we find.

By request. (a break from my regular programming brought to you by self-enforced ankle recovery day in bed.)

First, some almost pure twitter copy paste:

I believe learners need to construct their own understandings in order for that understanding to stick. So if we want conference insight and inspiration to transfer and endure, we need more structured space for trying out, processing, and reflection within sessions.

And we also need space that is more than 5 minutes at the end of a session. Like maybe a session that is no new ideas and is dedicated to processing and reflecting on some of what we've taken in.

I’m not sure about the goal of getting more people more access to the ideas in every session here? To me that sounds totally overwhelming  and distracting - I cannot take in 600 ideas! 

But back to my first thing - it's a bit mysterious to me why the norms of a good teacher conference session are so different from the norms of a good classroom lesson.

I’m remembering @mdrzavala's CMC call for us each locate our underlying purpose for attending the conference and then make our session decisions based on that purpose.

What might happen if the opening keynote included time/facilitation to decide on learning goals, and the closing included time/facilitation for synthesis of learning? (again, significant time, not 2 minutes because some of us can't think that quickly).

That synthesis would also include, thinking about all the different sessions I took part in, what tensions or questions am I leaving with? (I believe in the value of surfacing tensions, questions, and concurrent conflicting truths and not trying to immediately resolve them)

It was impactful and surprising when @Dr_TalithiaW drew on the crowd's funds of knowledge in the middle of her keynote. 

 What might it look like to have sessions that are explicitly linked and allow for going deeper? Like a cousin of TMC's morning sessions.

Once at a conference for Jewish learning there was an art room and I got so into my project I stayed there for 2 sessions in a row. The piece I made is still up on my wall. At teaching conferences I usually skip some sessions because I get overloaded.

At conferences for math teachers, how could we create formal space for reflection, processing, and creation? What could be our version of the art room?

(The obvious other question is, do we provide enough of this space for our students?)

My experience is that if I've made my own meaning, I am much more likely to apply it. Also if I've deliberately decided what my top-priority takeaways are from an experience, I'm more likely to hold on to them.

But I don't in any way disagree with you that one-off one-hour sessions (or even one-day sessions) are not the most effective vehicles for lasting learning and change.

What could happen at the conference to build the communities that will be following up together? What if each of the shadowcon presenters held a followup session on Saturday to launch what will be happening at home?

More ideas: a session where we discuss a book, advertised ahead of time, and you only come if you've read the book. Or a session where you launch a book reading and then discuss in follow-up.

I'm also interested in finding some way of borrowing the Jewish idea of chevrutah (study partner) throughout a conference/for follow-up, as well as importing the Jewish style of text-study.

A lot of my long-distance learning after or in lieu of gatherings has come through penpalships (back to my idea of study partners to process together and push forward each other's thinkings).

Before i come to the end of my roll, who wants to lead a session next year on "Is Our Education System So Fundamentally Racist On So Many Levels That Teaching Within It Is An Immoral Act? Resolving Becky's Weekly Crisis For Her"

Next, some surprises from my first time at NCTM compared to other teacher gatherings:

Paying a “discounted” $341 for the privilege of presenting

The expensive NCTM branded signage everywhere. In general, the level of corporate professionalism.

The size of the conference rooms and entire conference center. As a person with limited mobility, this was an unpleasant surprise. I’ve been thinking about what could have helped. At CMC-North they provide golf cart rides if needed (which helped a lot - even though the golf cart driver made me cry we became BFF on subsequent rides). Perhaps indoor corollary would be offering use of motorized scooters? Or maybe more advance info on distances within the center, between the two conference sites, between rooms, within rooms, so I could plan on bringing a mobility device with me?

This is one of the only teacher gatherings I’ve been to that wasn’t at least partially held in classrooms (including another national conference, excluding CMC-South). I missed the whiteboards and spying on other teachers’ walls. The podiums added a lot of distance between presenters and participants.

So many university-based presenters!

The size of that exhibit hall! And certain booths within! Got asked while getting free coffee: “Are you familiar with our curriculum?” Out loud: “Yes, I have used it in the past.” Silently: “And I hated it so much I got my school to stop using it even though it was a recent adoption. Now about that coffee...”  Also silently: “You clearly paid a lot for this specially carpeted giant booth situation, why didn’t that bring down the price of my discounted presenter’s rate??”

Given the surprising size of the exhibit hall, I was secondarily surprised not to find good free snacks.

The number of sessions that hit on social justice and equity was a wonderful surprise. Even in sessions that weren’t explicitly themed so, recognition of issues around identity (both teacher and student) was popping up everywhere.

People in the workshop I co-facilitated really wanted the link to our ugly-ass slides. Must remember to post it.

The AV staff was notably great!

Questions:

I’ve noticed that I refer to ‘sessions’ or ‘workshops’ while some others refer to ‘talks.’ Is there meaning in that difference?

If the primary goal is that everyone can access every idea, what other goals does that undercut?

My personal goal, if I continue to present, is to talk less each time. Is that at odds with work to share presentations beyond conference walls?

How could we draw on people’s existing communities for extended learning rather than or in addition to creating new pop-up communities?

What are the required attributes and inputs for a “learning community” to actually be a community?

Do we only value outcomes that can are measurable changes?

We do a lot of thinking at conferences, which I obviously love. What would it look like to make space for emotions and artistic expression and embodied experience? (Yes, I’ve been living in the East Bay for awhile, why do you ask?)

On Friday morning I started making coffee and then remembered we had used up the coffee the day before. I had been out sick and I took it as a sign that I should get a special treat to make it through the day. I rushed out of the house so I would have time to make a stop.

The coffee shop is on a busy street on my way to work. I like it because of the attached bakery that sells “Black Bean Egg Boats” for breakfast. I got lucky with a great parking spot right in front. I had cash in my pocket and grabbed my phone in case there was a long wait and I got bored. The wait was kind of long but I didn’t get bored. I started eating my egg boat before my cappuccino was ready.

When I came back out I saw that my window was smashed. Then I remembered I had left my backpack in the car. Then I said “fuck” out loud, just to myself. There were multiple people on the sidewalk. The driver’s seat was covered in glass. I couldn’t think through how to get to work on time. I called my housemate and, when she didn’t answer, I called my mom. 

I went back to the coffee shop to ask for a broom and a worker swept my seat for me, even though they were so busy in there. She said, “Sometimes in this kind of situation you just want someone to take care of you.” I’ve had glass stuck in me before and getting it out was not pleasant. I took my mom’s advice to sit on my jacket for extra protection. It was my grandpa’s jacket; I took it home after his funeral.

I cried on the drive and there was no window to give me that false sense of privacy cars usually provide.

At school I did the things one must do when one’s window is smashed and one’s wallet and work computer have been stolen. Also I taught the children. My colleagues were very nice to me. I found out that someone who witnessed the smash-and-grab posted a photo of the guy’s car driving away on NextDoor.

The witness said he had been across the street but there were three people within 10 feet of the guy who did it and they did nothing. He wished he had done more but he was with toddlers. He filed a police report. 

Other people commented that the same car had been seen at a variety of thefts and robberies in the neighborhood. I’ve been held up at gunpoint and I felt grateful that this time I was not present for the stealing. I myself had noticed the car parking before I walked into the coffee shop. It was distinctive.

After I used my lunch break to get a little bit pushy on the phone with an insurance rep, the glass guy showed up in the late afternoon and I felt much better once he did his thing and my car wasn’t showered in hazard.

I keep getting asked whether I’ve filed a police report. I have not. I have delivered a thank you note to the barista.

Questions:

* Why do I feel like I have to explain that I almost never leave my stuff out but I thought it would be okay this time because because because?

* Do I wish the witnesses had done something? Should I be mad that they didn’t?

* Should reading that the same guy committed armed robbery change that wish?

* Does knowing that other people already filed police reports change anything in my calculus of not filing?

* Why do we put up with a system where I know that not following up allows him to steal from more of my neighbors, but I know that if I do follow up and the police actually do too I can’t trust them not to commit racist violence along the way, which would be much worse than property theft?

* What other visions of “following up” could there be in this situation?

* Should I have just written this story about all the people who have helped me since 7:45 AM on Friday?

A couple weeks ago I watched a mom with three young children walk onto my plane. She sat with the two smallest kids (twins who would be turning three the following day) and the first grader sat in the row behind her, which turned out to be right next to me.

I was coming home from spending a week with my new best friend who happens to be a tiny baby, so this six-year-old seemed downright grown. I was happy to hang out with her during the flight. We talked about Princess Sophia, I reminded her to keep her headphones in while she watched Monster’s Inc, I paused my podcast to look at her virtual lego helicopter creations. I held back the mean look I usually give my students when she tapped me repeatedly. I walked her to the supposedly off limits first-class bathroom when the refreshment cart was behind us and she really had to go. I pulled out my notebook and we drew mermaids (her) and monsters (me). I made her a comic and she made me one, carefully copying what I had written to her. I’m obsessed that the unicorn is so kindly speaking out of its butt.

The flight attendants gave me a free drink and thanked me again when I exited the plane for being so helpful. It was all very nice.

Questions:

Why was giving a kid the attention she needed so notable? 

What would the situation have looked like in a society that saw all kids as all of our kids?

I was sitting with one kid but the mom was sitting with two - should she have gotten a free drink as well?

Who on the plane was going through something very hard and could have really used a free drink?

Whenever I talk to stranger children I quickly share that I’m a teacher to help their parents not be creeped out. Would I act differently if I didn’t have that tool?

What will it take to get to that society where we see all kids as all of our kids?

Inspired by The Millions Year in Reading series

I started off the year learning I needed surgery for my non-recovering injury, remembering while waiting alone for an MRI that an MRI for a non-recovering injury is how my dad learned he had cancer, wrapping my mind around taking a medical leave from my students, feeling sorry for myself and the constant pain… and reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was put in my hand by a bookseller friend and I was surprised by its loveliness. I’ve long loved the musical which is dark and foreboding, and the book is not like that at all. Instead it provides an optimistic vision of the transformative power of people choosing to be good to each other. Multiple people heal who didn’t expect to heal.

This held a through-line to the last book I read before my March surgery, The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It starts off so rough I expected a fully devastating read, but beauty slowly blooms over the lifetimes of the characters and the lifetime of the book. The characters do and experience terrible things and then they continue to grow and change. I finished it on a flight and I turned to my sister and said, “This was so intensely beautiful, I would be crying if we weren’t on a plane,” and she said, “...You are crying.” But I would have been crying more. Recently I’ve learned that Walker has dangerously hateful beliefs about my people. The Color Purple was one of the most lovingly human books I have ever read. I guess those have to both be true at once.

I began my surgery recovery at my Nana’s house and I brought a suitcase full of books with me. A month later, still mostly bedridden but homesick, I brought the suitcase full of books back with me, none of them read. I felt like my personality had been operated on too, my creativity and book-reading ability both gone. I lived on my mom’s back issues of O, The Oprah Magazine, and on filling in the skylines in 1000 Dot-to-Dot Cities by Thomas Pavitte, a perfect recovery gift that arrived in the mail and I would have never considered enjoying until I loved it. I became passionate about the issue of Bon Appetit featuring a bunch of photos of a chef and his friends in an expensive Italian villa.

In May, when the cast had come off but my foot still turned purple within 30 seconds of me being upright, my grandfather died and I traveled cross-country for the funeral and shivah. I crutched into the bedroom when everyone’s piteous looks at my lying down on the couch became too much, and I picked up an old Agatha Christie off my grandpa’s bookshelf. I finished The Clocks that night and while it was not the most satisfying conclusion (the clocks had nothing to do with it), it opened books back up to me. My grandma instructed me to take more home and I remembered my grandpa as I admired Hercule Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’. PLUS I was able to solve… half of one of the mysteries before Poirot’s explanatory monologue.

My beautiful purple foot required me to extend my medical leave through the end of the school year, so instead of my usual summer break the summer was just continuing recovery. A teacher friend asked me if I wanted to read Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children in School by Carla Shalaby and discuss it with him. Since I had nothing else to do but keep my toes above my nose and get upset about the horrible things our country was doing to children, I agreed.

I loved this book, which profiles four young “troublemakers” in and out of school and views them as the canaries in the coal mine of oppressive classroom practices. There were parts I strongly agreed with, parts that deeply challenged me, parts I wanted to deeply challenge… I can’t remember the last time I was moved to write so much marginalia. I didn’t realize how much guilt and shame I still hold from the ways I treated a class with a lot of “troublemakers” years ago until I had to take a break from this book just a few pages in. And of course I received a Facebook message that night from one of the students I wish I could have a do-over with and I was immediately filled with the feelings of that year. I wish I had read Troublemakers then and I’m glad I’ve read it now. I took a break to join a family separations border protest in my wheelchair but then I finished it and talked about it with as many people as I could. I want every teacher to read it and rethink how we think about children. I want our country to rethink how we treat children.

I slowly started making art again and I read two big novels about paintings, neither of which made me feel very good. Following in the tradition of Russian literature, The Tsar of Love and Techno is wonderfully written and holds a devastating view of the human condition. But I’m a sucker for a novel written in short stories as well as thoughtfully depressing intensity and I wondered how I could befriend local author Anthony Marra. On the other hand, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt was a very long anxiety bomb in a summer with a lot to be anxious about. It was probably the fastest I’ve ever read 771 pages, partially because it was great but mainly because I needed to get it over with to get Theo’s stress out of my life.

Some of the thoughts that run through my mind as the internet shows me, a person who does not celebrate Christmas, classroom Christmas activities:

Uggghhhh

How do the kids who don’t celebrate Christmas feel?

Maybe everyone in the class does celebrate Christmas.

I bet a lot of kids really liked this activity. Am I too sensitive? Am I a grinch?

It brings the home experience of many kids into the classroom.

It’s nice to see your culture and holidays represented where you spend your time. I used to teach at a Jewish school and I gave that up when I left.

I guess this professional newsletter that just sent a photo of a Christmas tree is not for me.

But when it addresses topics I don’t teach, I don’t have the same reaction.

Why does this still happen?

Why do I allow Christian hegemony to get under my skin every December?

Are there times in my classroom when I make some of my students feel actively unrepresented?

As a white teacher in a predominantly white institution, when do I unthinkingly celebrate white culture?

It must be worth protecting the minority even it makes things a little less fun for the majority.

Which is in and of itself a false set-up because there must be avenues for fun, meaning, and connection without explicit alienation.

Oakland on Christmas day feels like a ghost town. Walking down my usually packed street, I got a sense of how it would be if most everyone decided to never step out of the house again, or to just give up and leave.

I was driving home alone late from a lovely Shabbat dinner in Berkeley last night when I saw white cops jump out of their car and start talking to a black man on the corner. 

It should have been a busy intersection but it was dark and still Christmas. I tried to see what was happening but I had a green light and there was a bus behind me and an embarrassing fact about me is I'm a little afraid of busses. A few experiences with being nearly killed that I’ve perhaps unfairly pinned on the public bus system. One time a bus really almost ran me over and another time I was held up at gunpoint and it honestly had nothing to do with a bus but I took a break from public transportation because it gave me the illusion that I was doing something to control my safety. I knew it was an illusion but I did it anyway and the fake fear stuck. I do still take the bus sometimes but I’m always intently looking out the window, worried that I’ll miss my stop.

So I drove ahead and looked for a place to pull over but I felt confused and overwhelmed and kept driving and looking back over my shoulder. I was sleepy and cold and wanted my bed. I turned right and right and right until I saw that the police officers hadn’t even found a proper place to park; they just stopped driving and got out. And another police car was pulling up. One of the cops kept hitting his flashlight in his hand. I parked and got out of the car and saw that I had done a terrible parking job and got back in and pulled closer to the curb. The bus was gone. I had no idea what I was doing but I knew that someone needed to be watching. 

The three cops and the man they were detaining stood on one corner talking and I stood on the corner across the street watching, hoping that they saw me but too nervous to get any closer. My phone can’t record so I used it to call my cousin for advice instead. He had me write down license plate numbers and I watched them cursorily search the man. Other cars drove through the intersection. I tried to think about what I would do if they turned violent. Who would I call? I know many people have been asking this for a long time but I still don’t know: who do you call for help when the emergency responders are creating the emergency? I started thinking about who I knew who lived nearby. They were all on vacation. I was getting very cold. The cops let the man walk away, stopped him to make sure he didn’t walk into traffic. One of them looked at me and I looked back at her and she looked away. 

A few weeks ago, a black Muslim teenage boy got arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school under suspicion that it was a bomb. I don’t want to focus too much on his story because one of the many wrongs of the situation is the way that a child has been thrown into the public eye and turned into a symbol rather than being allowed to live out his youth. Many public figures spoke out on the boy’s behalf, and Mark Zuckerberg’s post ended with a message to the child: “If you ever want to come by Facebook, I would love to meet you.”

I appreciate that Zuckerberg wants to encourage an enthusiastic kid to pursue engineering, but it rings slightly hollow when black people only make up one percent of his current engineering staff.

A few of my friends got to talking about the Google Impact Awards the other night. They picked some awesome-looking organizations for their top ten. I appreciate that all of the finalists will be getting a significant grant and voters are encouraged to choose four favorites. By setting it up this way, it seems like a big purpose is sharing information about important work - by looking at the top ten, I learned about nonprofits I didn't know about before and perhaps will support myself. This seems much more valuable than many other 'vote for a charity' online campaigns where people just get sent to vote for the nonprofit they already support and probably don't look at the others.

The biggest problems with these contests are really just the biggest problems with American philanthropy culture in general - if these companies had more socially responsible business practices, they would have less money to give away and we would also need less charity in the first place. Of course the most obvious example is the Walton Family Foundation, which makes its money by exploiting Wal-Mart workers and paying them below a living wage – we all subsidize the Walton family through the food stamps and soup kitchens their employees rely on. For Google, there are issues around paying their contract employees (such as bus drivers) appropriately, creepy data collection, workforce diversity, etc. that I fear projects like this can obfuscate. It’s great that they are supporting a program to teach black boys engineering, but they also need to be doing a lot more to be hiring black people at their company right now.

I would also love to see them investing in the community in more integrated ways - such as supporting better direct public transit between Silicon Valley and Oakland/SF and then buying all their employees bus passes, or investing in quality nursery schools that their workers could send their children to for free but that other people in Mountain View (which is not a rich city (or at least didn't used to be)) could also send their children to, or challenging the ways they interact with police and prison systems and consciously hiring formerly incarcerated people... not to mention advocating for more progressive tax policies on corporations such as their own.

lost the phone number to sign up for the class

once i got the number again, called but forgot that i would need my insurance card then couldn't find it and narrated the process in the flustered message i was leaving

to get to the class, started driving away from my house and then remembered i didn't have my wallet so i had to run back upstairs.

started driving away again then remembered my glasses were not on my face and had to run upstairs again