More Math for More People
CPM Educational Program is a non-profit publisher of math textbooks for grades 6-12. As part of its mission, CPM provides a multitude of professional learning opportunities for math educators. The More Math for More People podcast is part of that outreach and mission. Published biweekly, the hosts, Joel Miller and Misty Nikula, discuss the CPM curriculum, trends in math education and share strategies to shift instructional practices to create a more inclusive and student-centered classroom. They also highlight upcoming CPM professional learning opportunities and have conversations with math educators about how they do what they do. We hope that you find the podcast informative, engaging and fun. Intro music credit: JuliusH from pixabay.com.
More Math for More People
Episode 4.24: Part 2 with Dr Nicole Joseph and National Rubber Eraser Day
First, it's National Rubber Eraser Day! So get your Pink Pearls out and celebrate!!
Then, we continue our conversation with Dr. Nicole Joseph of Vanderbilt University about the mathematical experiences of Black girls, revealing how they navigate spaces where they face unique challenges at the intersection of race and gender. Her research shows that Black girls are disproportionately affected by school disciplinary policies while simultaneously battling stereotypes about who belongs in mathematics.
Joseph's Black Feminist Math Pedagogies framework offers a revolutionary approach to mathematics education that honors both academic rigor and social connection. She challenges traditional notions of what "serious" math learning looks like, showing how Black girls thrive in environments that allow for laughter, collaboration, and relationship-building alongside challenging problem-solving. This transformative approach requires teachers to create classroom communities where critical conversations about justice and equity can flourish.
One message resonates clearly: curriculum alone cannot address educational inequities. Creating truly inclusive mathematics classrooms requires teachers who understand the complexities of students' identities and design learning environments where all students feel they belong.
Academy of Best Practices is happening in San Diego, CA on Aug 4-8! Find applications for the Academy for New Teachers and Veteran CPM Teachers HERE! Deadline is May 10.
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Speaker 2:Boom Once again. I am very, very excited to know Yep April 15th, which has a lot of significant meaning for some people.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Have you filed your taxes yet?
Speaker 1:Well, is that really the tax day now? Didn't they extend it a couple of days?
Speaker 2:Or is it still the 15th? No, it's the 15th, unless the 15th happens on a weekend.
Speaker 1:Oh gotcha.
Speaker 2:No, but this year it's on a Tuesday.
Speaker 1:They should make the 15th as tax day be a national holiday. That you don't work so that you can get your taxes done.
Speaker 2:And I already filed mine, like two months ago, Anyway. So I still wouldn't appreciate. I'd appreciate a day off.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's not what we're here to talk about.
Speaker 1:No, I don't want to celebrate that day today.
Speaker 2:It's April 15th.
Speaker 1:So what is the national day that we're celebrating today? It is an appreciation of a weird national holiday, which is National Rubber Eraser Day.
Speaker 2:National Rubber Eraser Day. Yes, wow, okay, you know.
Speaker 1:We celebrated on this day, giving us a blank canvas and a do-over on stationery. That is nothing short of revolutionary.
Speaker 2:What A do-over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we get a do-over because you get to erase it. Oh, you erase something.
Speaker 2:I have a pink pearl eraser right here.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it even says pink pearl.
Speaker 1:When's the last time you used it?
Speaker 2:I had to find it in my drawer. So not very often. I mean, I don't write with pencil very often anymore and I certainly don't erase much. In fact it's kind of gotten hard. It's probably not a very good eraser anymore, it's a smearer instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what could you do with a hard expired rubber eraser?
Speaker 2:I don't know If I get it down to the parts that haven't been oxidized, maybe it works better. Yeah, get that outside layer yeah get the outside layer off does seem to be getting down to something. I when I was a well, when I was a kid, but I would say even still today, like erasers were one of my. I loved all the school supplies, yes, and, but erasers were one of the coolest things, like oh and I I don't.
Speaker 2:I hated it when I don't know if, like they would cut them in half, right, they would take them and cut them in half so that, like, more people could have erasers. Oh, I didn't run into that. It was not as fun when there was like maybe it was only my mom, I don't know. Yeah, but like to save money or something, but like get a half eraser. It's not as fun as a nice ink pearl eraser.
Speaker 1:I would always get like a new packet each year of the erasers that you put on top of the pencil. Oh, they go on your pencils, yeah.
Speaker 2:I always wanted those, because of course we didn't have them, so then I wanted them.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But then when I did have them, I found they were not as great Again. They didn't always erase very well. Eventually they get down to the place where the pencil metal part was poking through them and then they were just scratching your paper. I feel like this is something that kids of today probably can't appreciate.
Speaker 1:How much?
Speaker 2:do they spend times writing things and erasing things?
Speaker 1:It's called a delete button.
Speaker 2:And then you can always undo, that's right, yeah, it's just I mean. I don't even write with pencil very often. I do have some pebbles when I do math. I do like to write with pencils, but I like them to be really sharp and not so. I use mechanical pencils a lot, otherwise I have to sharpen my pencil almost continuously Because a dull pencil is yeah.
Speaker 1:Pencil sharpeners Interesting. I still have one off the desk.
Speaker 2:I don't know why I don't actually have any pencil sharpeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I gave mine away.
Speaker 2:I'm like there's no pencil in here that I could sharpen, but I have a pencil sharpener. It's no pencil in here that I could sharpen, but I have a pencil sharpener.
Speaker 1:It's one of those auto-stop ones.
Speaker 2:That works really nice.
Speaker 1:Does it have the different sizes? Like you can spin the wheel?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, it's an electric one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotcha gotcha. My students would oftentimes with my electric pencil sharpener, even though I set up class agreements and routines and such that routine always fell to. The next person who needed to sharpen their pencil was the empty the sharpener bin. Yeah, and it would overflow and it was not a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I was definitely empty the sharpener. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I was definitely empty. Yeah, it was always the kids who couldn't get it to like quite sharpen exactly when they wanted and they were like sharpen, sharpen, sharpen. Yeah, or or the students who thought it was funny to interrupt class. They didn't. They didn't usually interrupt me oh, really definitely they were like definitely it was the kids who, like pencil totally broke. They can't write whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm like, go ahead sharpen I would have to say that and this might even be pre-cpm stuff that my class would be interrupted by a pencil sharpener because I was up at the board mimicking, wanting some mimicking to be happening. But once I adopted cpm, then it did not become an interruption anymore because we were all just so busy. That's right, did you know pre-1770, that crustless bread used to be used to erase charcoal markings?
Speaker 2:Yes, Crustless bread would erase circle markings, that's right. Circle markings on what?
Speaker 1:Well, pre-1770, I don't think we had number two pencils.
Speaker 2:Well, they didn't have paper either.
Speaker 1:really, Well, so you'd mark on the rocks Paper was hard to come by, right?
Speaker 2:And you'd use crustless bread.
Speaker 1:Crustless bread Interesting.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Well, that's an interesting fact, that will be I like celebrating an eraser, but I also like the fact of not erasing something, like crossing out and continuing or something like that sounds good to me too right.
Speaker 2:I don't really like erasable pen because really it means that the pen doesn't write very well yeah, I wasn't all right. How are you going to celebrate rubber eraser day?
Speaker 1:well, I'm going to. I'm going to celebrate by getting some charcoal writing on a rock and I'm going to take some crustless bread and I'm going to test out this theory all right, and you're going to learn that you appreciate erasers. Yes.
Speaker 2:If you want it to erase. So I've already found my pink pearl eraser.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to erase some things with it. No, I don't, there's nothing written on pencil in my desk. But Excellent, there you go. Well, find your own way to accelerate rubber erasing, that's right.
Speaker 3:Enjoy your day. Hey, my name is Tony Jammerndt and I'm a former middle school educator who has transitioned to working full-time with CPM in the Curriculum and Assessment Department. My current position is Writer-Editor and I'm currently the Managing Editor for the third edition of Core Connections, which I love. I wanted to take some time out to talk to you about the Academy of Best Practices, or ABP as we affectionately call it. I was involved as a participant back in 2018 with the Veteran Teacher Cohort and in the past few years, I've been able to help facilitate the week with the Veteran Cohort.
Speaker 3:Abp is one of the most, if not the most, impactful learning experiences I've had in my 20 years as an educator Gathering with 32 educators from across the country for a week of diving into the best and most effective ways to engage students and help students learn and achieve at high levels just an incredible experience. So you will engage with renowned authors and speakers. You will collaborate with colleagues. You'll be challenged to think outside the box and more during this week. That's so incredibly uplifting and encouraging for educators. With colleagues, you'll be challenged to think outside the box and more during this week. That's so incredibly uplifting and encouraging for educators. It made me look at my own teaching in ways I had never really previously thought about. It's a week of learning, but provides ample time to think, reflect and apply in what you are learning. The takeaways are amazing and they certainly changed my outlook and my practice when I went back to my classroom. However, just as impactful is the connection that I made with so many different educators from across the country.
Speaker 3:These are educators I still keep in touch with and share things with seven years after ABP, and that includes every time zone of the continent. In the United States, people from California to Massachusetts and many places in between. We still regularly check in with each other, share ideas, talk about what works, what doesn't work, something new we tried and gather ideas from each other. So this year we want to accommodate 64 more educators from all walks of life and from all over the country. This includes a new teacher cohort having taught in the classroom for five years or less and a veteran teacher cohort having taught CPM for five years or more.
Speaker 3:And here's the beauty of it all it's fully funded by CPM. The cost of travel, lodging and meals is all provided with no cost to you other than your own spending money on the social events you may fill your evenings with. I know I did quite a bit of that. So this year we will be spending a week together in beautiful San Diego, california, and you can be a part of it. We want you to be a part of it. Applications are open now. So apply today and be prepared to spend a week being blown away by an incredible, rich and rewarding experience like no other. We hope to see you there.
Speaker 1:Thanks, tony. Applications for the Academy of Best Practice can be found at cpmorg backslash, abp, and those applications are open until May 10th, so please go check it out.
Speaker 2:So next up we have part two of our conversation with Dr Nicole Joseph. If you missed part one, you're going to want to go back to the April 1st podcast and give that a listen and then come back here, and listen to part two of our conversation with Dr Nicole Joseph of Vanderbilt University.
Speaker 1:And then, looking at that, your study, and wondering about referrals and things like that, is there not a solution, but something that you see that might be counteracting that?
Speaker 4:I mean. So are you asking me like, what should we do?
Speaker 1:Or are you kind of like, well, should we do? I don't think there's like a solution necessarily, should we do? Or are you kind of like, well, should we do. I don't think there's like a solution necessarily.
Speaker 4:I mean, I think part of it is like we have to train.
Speaker 4:we have to deeply train teachers, educators about Black girlhood and I talked about this I think in my talk, and the best way is to really just have conversations with Black girls, right, like in your purview, in your school. But teachers need to be trained on these things, they need to understand the data that Black girls are the leading group of students of all races and gender, of kids that are being suspended from school. And you know, like going a little bit deeper about like why that is and understanding some of the complexities. Right, schools are just not a very good place for Black girls because they're just being hit left and right, not physically hit, but hit left and right with issues. Right, they can't do this or they're wearing the wrong thing, their hair is too big, or it's just always something. They talk too much, it's just always something that seems to get in the way of people, teachers and educators seeing them.
Speaker 4:As you know, strong learners and our system of tracking, our system, like all of those things are negative experiences for, I think, really all kids, but Black girls, I think in particular, and I say that because Black girls are sitting at the intersection of two marginalized identities. So, girls, it doesn't matter what race you are. In our country, we don't think girls can do math and science. They don't belong in math and science, right, but we also think that Black people can't do math and science or not smart in math and science, and I'm just going to say it. We heard it on the news when the plane crashed that it was because of diversity, essentially. So like we have a world that, where people are thinking that that's a problem because we haven't looked beneath the surface to really understand what have been the factors historically, politically, economically, all of those things that have contributed to, you know, marginalized people in this country's experience, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's such a huge underlying piece, that sort of that intersection piece, right, that sort of cultural expectation of how girls and women are to behave, right, and that normification which is unreasonable and the pieces around who gets to do math, who gets to, who is like in such a double hit is like in such a double, double hit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is a double hit and I will tell you that a paper that I have my students read this. These are my phd students at vanderbilt. They there's a class that I teach called politics, learning and identity in math curricula and essentially I take them all the way back to Mesopotamia, greeks way back then, to see how math was engaged with. And that is the start of the abstract and applied fight. And I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but even today you will go into certain institutions. There will be an applied math department and there will be a math department.
Speaker 4:So generally that's like the abstract stuff. And then applied math. You have data science, you know, like all of the things, technology, things that we know. And even back then the Greeks were saying y'all ain't doing math. Telling the people from Mesopotamia y'all ain't doing real math. They were using math to create calendars and to help them with harvesting and farming and things like that Very important right. But the Greeks were like that ain't math, we're doing abstract Pythagorean theorem, and they had access to the world in terms of, like, putting publishing in quotes, but you know what I'm saying to be able to really spread that globally, which is why the West really took up their math scope and sequence. And you know, everything pretty much comes from the Greeks, sure?
Speaker 1:Sure, I remember in my college experience it was because I was in the education department I had to take certain math classes that math majors didn't have to take Our discipline is we really need to come?
Speaker 4:together and that you know. I'm not sure what that's about, except for status and I don't know. Like people who consider themselves abstract mathematicians, for some reason, they just feel more privileged and, like they know more, they're smarter, feel more privileged and like they know more, they're smarter.
Speaker 3:Not everybody, but that is like the sense that we get, especially when you have to have two different departments yeah so.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit about I don't know if you call it a framework or a rubric a rubric, but you're, you're black, feminist math pedagogies. Can you tell us a little bit about?
Speaker 4:that. So what I tried to do over several years is to take what.
Speaker 4:I was learning from Black girls to try to put together what would it look like, through Black girls or through a Black girl's specificity lens, to engage in math learning. That would be transformative. So the pieces that are a part of it, the ambitious instruction, critical consciousness, robust math identities and transformative and radical academic social integration. So I always tell people, if you were to just take ambitious instruction, I think that there would be some. That's good teaching. That's good math teaching for everybody, right? Because ambitious instruction as you guys know we're we're talking about kids get to you manipulatives, technology. They are problem posing. They are using discourse and math talk and modeling mathematics. They're using the eight mathematical practices, like that's what we see and that is beautiful. That's often not what I have learned over these several years from Black girls. That's not the type of math experiences that they are having. They're not in classes where they're getting that type of exposure. They are getting worksheets or very more procedure oriented type of learning. So you could just do that and you would be. I think there would be some improvements. But if you want to get to like what I call it's the transformative piece.
Speaker 4:The transformative piece is trying to bring in what I've learned about, like Black girlhood. So, for example, this idea of humanizing the math teaching and learning space by integrating social and academic social and academic. So Black girls have said to me over and over, and I've read in other people's studies, that they want a relaxed and fun and rigorous environment In their heads. That's the experience, so to be able to laugh and joke and be more relaxed while they're also working on important mathematics. That's what they want. But that's in direct opposition to what we view as like a serious math student. Right, you ain't laughing and talking and all that kind of stuff. You're definitely focused on solving the problem, usually by yourself, and so that's a really that's transformative. If we could get teachers to create a learning environment, design a learning environment where we get to allow a more social environment, a social experience that I think Black girls would probably engage more. The other thing that I learned is that Black girls want to have a connection with their math teachers.
Speaker 4:Now, I don't mean just like oh, miss Misty, she's very nice. What I'm learning from them is that they want to be able to come to you, misty, for anything, talk to you about their problems. That may have nothing to do with math, but somehow that connection makes you someone who they can trust, which then allows them to take more risks in math, try more. You're the math teacher, but you're also this person who they are able to very much relate to, right? So those are some examples of the academic and social integration.
Speaker 4:And then the other piece about critical consciousness is like how do we teach math in ways and this really becomes where we're thinking about curriculum in a whole different way, which is where you know CPM might be able to like do some things, but you know, like how do we use math in a way that helps kids understand injustices? Like use the math? And I know I've read and analyzed lessons in y'all's curriculum where you try to do those things. But that's going to a whole other level where you're trying to do that. And Rico Gutstein, one of the earlier, earlier scholars at Illinois he wrote about this very a long time ago Like how do we use math to read and write the world. That's his language, but how do we use math? Teach kids to use math to basically think about solving problems that are important to them, that they care about in the world, that are generally related to issues of justice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you've seen some CPM problems that have tried to do that. Do you think that there's more that could be added or, like from what you've seen, some feedback maybe on like, what did you see missing versus what was there?
Speaker 4:I mean, first of all, just to even see some problems like that that are talking about different injustices, wages I can't remember exactly what the Like suspension rates and some other things like that. You know just the EBC, some problems like that was, I guess, encouraging. We've had Dr Berry who was the president of NCTM. Him and some colleagues have put together some like text on, like math for social justice and have used some of these very similar problems, but it but it was like a supplementary type of thing. It's not like an actual curriculum.
Speaker 4:Um, let me not say like it's not, a it's not like a standalone.
Speaker 2:It's not like a standalone curriculum right, you can use this to.
Speaker 4:You know what you are doing or whatever, but you guys, this is a standalone curriculum that is built into the, for example, seventh grade curriculum. So I think having those type of problems there are great. Here's the thing If you still have to train the teacher, like, you still have to train the teacher and you still have to, I think, create a learning environment where having these types of critical conversations or more courageous conversations are normalized and kids feel comfortable because you could try to use these types of math problems and they can, like go to the left and kids that might be a part of certain communities or even discover, like their discoveries of solving math problems, for example, that black women are like the lowest wage earning people. That might, if you haven't set the atmosphere, if you haven't set an environment where kids are engaging in these things like all the time and you've built a respectful and honest community, even having those types of problems could, they might not go well.
Speaker 4:So, I'm not saying that you can just do it and just, oh my God, pick up your book on Monday and go there. No, there's still a lot of work that has to be put into it, but at least the problems are there that are a part of the standalone curriculum.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can build that community around.
Speaker 4:I love it, that's right and build that community around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that we definitely realize at CPM is that the curriculum, the curriculum is not enough. Right by itself, the curriculum is not enough. The curriculum can do a lot and it can help and it can support, and if the teacher isn't working counter to the curriculum to try to do those things right, that it's supporting the teachers in those things. But the teachers are still the ones who make the differences. Who do it, how they implement what they implement, how they create, design their classroom and learning environment yeah, Makes the difference.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and I do wonder, like, in what ways do so?
Speaker 4:for example, I have a paper under review right now and I probably shouldn't say the title, because if somebody is the reviewer, but, anyway, what I learned is that there are particular instructional strategies in math that Black girls really enjoy, and one of those is group work. It's like small group work with other classmates as well as like with the teacher, and so when we try to probe about, like well, why, it goes back to that social and academic integration, being able to talk, being able to share the load of the cognitive thinking. That's not how they described it. That's how I'm describing it.
Speaker 4:No, because when they say things like well, if I don't understand, I can go to one of my group members and they can help me figure out what I missed or what I don't get, or whatever, and that's just really powerful, like it kept coming up over and over and over and over again that small group work was something, a particular strategy that they enjoyed and said that that particular strategy better helps them learn. Now I don't have any evidence or any data about, like, how their teachers said all that, but those are the types of things that they talked about and they actually looked at like cue cards. So it's not like I went in and observed these students. They were looking at cue cards that had different types of strategies and pictures of what was happening.
Speaker 4:So I think it's important to say that because I don't know how teachers, teachers set those things up for them to then articulate that that was something that they liked.
Speaker 2:Well, so what are some of your future things you're looking at? Where are you going from here?
Speaker 4:Well, I am working on writing up my paper that will talk about how I developed and validated my math identity measure measure out there. Well, there was like one measure out there that was pretty good. Things that shape someone's math identity are things like interest, your competence and recognition, and we know from some preliminary analysis that recognition is huge for Black girls. So if you want their identities to increase, having them feel recognized where they recognize themselves as a strong math student, are things that we can do to shape. So I co-designed that measure with adolescent Black girls ages 8 through 13.
Speaker 4:And when I say co-designed, basically I wrote up the statements and then did a bunch of cognitive interviews, sat side by side with them and they went through each and every question and gave me feedback Like what is this question asking?
Speaker 4:And so we had questions about math identity, but we also had questions about barriers, intersectionality barriers, and we had questions about intersectionality assets, which those assets were trying to get at. What are those things that are important for black girls? What are they bringing to the table that they can use as a resource that can help them learn math, and this idea of like collaboration and working with other kids, and that just that was really salient, and so one of the big pieces that came out was like this is how they feel a sense of belonging, and so we added, for example, the construct belonging to the prior measure to help us think through Black girls. So that's what I'm working on now is getting that measure published. It has been we presented, we're supposed to present it at AERA, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to make it. So that's the next thing, and hopefully, after we develop the scoring guides, we can partner with teachers, because I'm always getting people saying is your measure ready and we want to use it.
Speaker 4:But if we can, partner with schools to actually use it the way we designed it, any student can get and we branched inside of the algorithm. So, basically, if someone says if someone is like a Latina girl, they go down this path, Black girls, they go down this path, black girls, they go down this path and answer questions that are related to Black girls and they see the word Black girl, if you go down this path, it says someone that looks like me, so it's the same question, but it doesn't have Black girl in it. And I needed to do that so that I could walk in a district and say any of your kids can take this assessment for math identity. Yeah, so that's the goal. And then, of course, after that, trying to figure out how to develop professional development. What comes out of the scores. How do we then build professional development for the teachers, for the girls, for the administrators, to then actually address some of the things that come up out of the assessment?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Right, that's like two or three years of work.
Speaker 2:That sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. It has been so great talking with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me, y'all, of course. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I love your passion. I want to go teach Black girls now.
Speaker 4:Yay, you're going to have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 4:Well, I appreciate you guys inviting me to be on the podcast, because it's always exciting to share the work, but it's always extra exciting when you're sharing the work with people who you know are, like, committed to these ideas, and I've been in CPM's life now for about three years through. Laura, and just seeing the evolution of the work and what they've been able to do through partnering with me has been pretty amazing, and I'm just so hopeful for what CPM can do for Black girls. Thank you, thank you for that Awesome.
Speaker 2:So you have a great day you too. So that is all we have time for on this episode of the More Math for More People podcast. If you are interested in connecting with us on social media, find our links in the podcast description, and the music for the podcast was created by Julius H. It can be found on pixabaycom. So thank you very much, julius. Join us in two weeks for the next episode of More Math for More People. What day will that be, joel?
Speaker 1:It'll be April 29th, national Zipper Day, and we get to look about into the huge roles that zippers play into our daily lives. The zipper is such an interesting invention and I think about how useful it is, things like that. But often times when I think about a zipper I think about the snags or when it gets stuck or how do I fix that, those types of things. One thing I remember at the National Teacher Conference this year is the gift bag included a zipper and I thought that was really great. So I'm excited to look and visit on April 29th and talk about National Zipper Day. Thank you, bye, bye.