Every Single Meeting

One of the reasons I was most excited to get the job I have now was the research project we're working on. It's focused on building teacher capacity and increasing the number of underrepresented students in upper level mathematics. [Fun fact, it's funded by Biogen. Yea, that Biogen. No one on my team was at that conference so I wasn't exposed to the virus due to that event, and they have been generous in broadening our funding as we scrambled to support teachers in the transition to emergency remote teaching.]

When I started my new job last September I didn't know how to describe my role. Sometimes I'd lead professional development. Other times I'd coach teachers. Still other times I'd work on a grant with an ed tech company. At first it felt like I was a lot of different people doing very different things, but as the year went on, and most especially as I transitioned to working from home and switched hats from hour to hour rather than from day to day, I realized that I'm the same person doing largely the same thing in all those spaces. I'm a coach. And I'm living the dream where the values I hold close are also the ones that I'm supposed to focus the majority of my effort on at work!

Whether I'm working through the research project or not, I'm always focused on equity and building up teachers. Even though this is my personal passion project as well as a stated focus of both the center and the university at large, it's still an anxious moment as I start to broach the subject of equity with new people. Where is this teacher/administrator in their equity journey? Sometimes districts call me because they want to eliminate tracking, other times that's not what they were looking for but I'm going to bring it up anyway. Sometimes I'm in a room full of teachers I would have described as traditional and it turns out they're eager to adopt new practices to better engage all learners. Other times I'm at a school that prides itself on its up to date technology, but they're referring to students as high kids and low kids. But here's the thing, the whole reason why I gave you nearly 1500 words of context in the previous post: I strive to bring up equity in every single meeting.

We cannot solve a problem like racism by retweeting the pretty quote in an image on MLK day and saying "I can't believe it." when another police shooting occurs. Inequity is a systemic and cultural problem that requires large scale efforts to counter. I'm lucky to be in a position where I can do system level thinking (whether that be department, school, or district), but system level change only happens if all the stakeholders buy in. Which means talking about it at every single meeting.

 

Being the lone person bringing up equity is hard, and if you're in a position like a classroom teacher it can get you into the kind of trouble I found in both schools I taught at. When I enter a new school I'm looking for the people who are already doing this work, and then I work with them. It's so much less exhausting when you can tag team or even just catch someone's eye to know we're on the same page and will debrief that moment later. In other cases I've read and discussed Catalyzing Change with people. Thank you NCTM for creating this resource so we can develop shared language and I can point to an external authority. Find your community wherever you can, hopefully someday it will be within your school, but while you wait for more people to step forward know that there's a long list of authors to keep you company, and a lot more people on Twitter ready to collaborate. Because here's the thing, if you can find the energy and support you need to do this enough times, things happen. When people meet with me they know that I'll push back if a proposal isn't going to support students adequately. Eventually that gets internalized and they push back on their own ideas before I get a chance. 

I've evolved from the new teacher who wants to change everything yesterday. And I'm continuing to grow. There are still books to read, conversations to have, and things to do. The more I learn the more I realize my (largely fantastic fancy suburban public school) education was filled with glaring holes. But I know enough to ask questions and invite people to consider alternatives. I know enough to seek out experts because I don't have to have all the answers.

The only way to see systemic change is ongoing effort. It cannot just be people of color putting in this effort, systems are made of many parts and all of them have to be working in sync. It is hard (I do this all the time and it's still nerve wracking). It is a risk (administrations at both my schools didn't appreciate my methods of advocacy). It feels small (I'm literally just bringing up ideas in meetings). It is essential. I know you can do it.

Choose Your Own Adventure

I opened this blog post more than 12 hours ago. I had a thought this morning I wanted to share, but it requires context. Luckily I just remembered that I had a whole document of pre-written context! We were supposed to do a panel at NCTM in Chicago. Hema Khodai, Marian Dingle, Julie Wright and I. It was titled Choose Your Own Adventure: Equity-Minded Teacher Edition. We were going to share some of our stories, the choices we made, what it's like trying to be an equity minded teacher. To prepare for that I sat down and wrote out my whole story. I'm pasting it here, lightly edited. This isn't the format we'd intended to share, but maybe you'll learn something?

Job 1: I was one of 4 math teachers in my wing. Each wing of the 3,000 student school functioned as a separate school. It was an immigrant community, 90% of the students were latinx. I was a first year teacher, but I was also the only one in my department with a high school teaching certification. It was a very confusing place of high status (I’d taken a full licensure program, I’d student taught, I was involved in a group of teachers across campus who met with Al Cuoco of the EDC- I knew him as the Focus on Math guy, the rest of the math education world knows him as a Big Deal) and low status (young, female, brand new teacher). Sometimes admin wanted my opinion and other times they didn’t but I didn’t know (or care?) the difference. A friend and colleague once asked me if it was possible for me to sit quietly during a faculty meeting, not speak up about what I disagreed with, and then do whatever I wanted in my own classroom. I really appreciated her phrasing because it gave me space to reflect, but also to answer “no.” I was fresh out of an empowering women’s college experience, I was not going to sit quietly! It felt impossible to sit in a room where people were making decisions that didn’t make sense and could harm students without saying so. At the end of my third year my contract wasn’t renewed. They didn’t want to be stuck with an outspoken young female as part of the tenured faculty. 

I was also a privileged white person teaching kids from vastly different backgrounds than my own. While I was advocating for all gender bathrooms in 2009, I was also learning, clumsily, about cultural differences, the impacts of racism, trauma, and a host of other things I’d been largely sheltered from for my entire life.

Job 2: I lasted longer here! 8.5 years of growth as an individual and an educator. I still spoke up, but I was in a larger school and a larger department, so my voice didn’t stick out so much. A chorus of people questioning and pushing, taking turns, and speaking in unison is much different than a lone voice. I also learned to differentiate when my opinion was wanted, when I felt like it was needed, and when it would serve everyone best to bide my time and speak out in a different venue later. Despite these improvements, as years passed we could all see the school culture declining. In my first years here it would take just a few weeks to convince my students that my classroom was a place they could take risks, where I would support them, where mistakes were okay. In my final year my Algebra 2 classroom was just beginning to believe me that I really did want to help them reach my high expectations in January. (And then I left them.)

The decline was due to testing pressure, administration jumping on the next bandwagon every quarter without giving us time to settle into the previous initiative, and public doubt in the school due to a low state level assignment that led to further white flight. I had thoughts and ideas on how to counter these trends, but no power to implement them. The benefit of a larger school is I could blend in. The problem of a larger school is my voice didn’t carry enough weight to have an impact. I made suggestions, signed up for committees, offered to organize things, but it didn’t seem to matter. As my evaluation scores started reflecting my frustration with the system, I decided it was time to get out. I left midyear (at the end of the semester) which felt awful because I was abandoning my students, but also freeing because I was escaping a miserable school culture.

At first I was focused solely on math content with a sprinkling of pedagogy. I got my masters, attended summer programs like PROMYS, TMC and PCMI, joined the math teacher circle at school. But as time went on I expanded my equity work beyond the GSA to learning about all the parts of history and current events that my suburban white upbringing skipped right over. I acknowledged my white savior tendencies and opened my eyes to systemic racism. Now I get my professional development from #ClearTheAir and equity workshops. Twitter has continued to be a main source of community and growth, but who/what I’ve focused on has shifted.

Job 3: I left teaching to write curriculum. It was amazing! Of course I missed the interaction with students and the immediate field testing of all my ideas. But I had time and space and mental capacity to think deeply about all the aspects of teaching that could come from curriculum. I was working with people who also wanted to think deeply about all these same things. I received positive feedback on a regular basis! This was mind boggling. Feedback of any form is rare in teaching, but genuine appreciation of my work? So cool! We collaborated to learn about math, equity, typical schools, atypical students. Everyone was considered and the culture welcomed critical feedback. My voice didn’t stick out because everyone was critiquing, but my voice mattered. I was invited to organize discussion groups, develop features, and share all my ideas.

Unemployment: Sadly grant funded curriculum projects don’t last forever. I’d already quit the board of TMC a few months earlier so I spent the summer feeling extremely untethered. What was left of my identity? I even applied for jobs with the Elizabeth Warren campaign - far outside of my comfort zone as someone who has only ever worked in math education. I considered going back to school as a student (PhD) as well as going back to school as a teacher. I knew I couldn’t work in a school that wouldn’t listen to my concerns around equity, it was too frustrating and exhausting to be constantly fighting a brick wall. As I considered where I wanted to spend my time going forward I wondered how to choose among the best aspects of each job:

• Small company/school where I can be heard

• Working in community

• Both math and equity are centered

• My contributions would be valued

• I’d have a large impact

Currently: I am a math coach, professional development provider, and researcher at a university. I work at the Center for Math Achievement, which is made of me, the director, and the program manager - my voice is definitely heard! During the regular school year I got to visit one school on a weekly basis for coaching, which allowed me to build community there. My work is all about math equity, one of the grants we’re working on is researching how to get more underrepresented students into upper level STEM courses. The combination of small projects (a school with under 500 students) and large ones (2000 student schools, research) is meeting all of my requirements!

I keep expressing surprise that people in schools listen to me. Not many people understand why that’s surprising to me. They see me with my large twitter following and status as an author, but they don’t see how I was ignored as a classroom teacher in my own districts. Not just ignored, but pushed out. It’s frustrating that the only way for me to get a school to listen to me was by leaving the classroom. But a large part of my role is now revoicing all the things teachers say. And giving them the power to decide how to spend their PLC time. It shouldn’t be novel that teachers have important ideas, but for as long as it is, I’ll be using whatever status I have to amplify them. And the same goes for students, but that's another post.

How to Lead Conversations on Equity

I started my last post talking about #ClearTheAir and I'm going to do the same thing again. That community has had a huge impact on me. Thank you Val! In the fall we read White Fragility and it was eye opening. Everything in that book seemed so obvious, yet I'd never really paid attention before. Once I had that experience I wanted everyone to join me in my new enlightened state!

My current work is all remote so it wasn't quite as simple as hanging out in the staff room and raving about the book until I found people who would discuss it with me. But, we'd had a book discussion at work before (Radical Candor) so when my colleague spoke up about our lack of action steps toward a new organization goal (Attract, retain, and support a diverse community.) this seemed like a good opportunity to find a partner in this effort. We decided that our co-workers were in a variety of different places and maybe starting right in with White Fragility would be too much. We needed an entry text.

But it might be, for those folks, a useful gateway text to texts from wider perspectives (i.e., BIPOC), and that is intriguing to me #cleartheair (2/2)

— Kirstin Milks (@DrMilks) April 9, 2019

Point #1: Know your audience. The goal is to move forward in the work, but if you jump straight to the finish line you'll be the only one there.

So we read The Loudest Duck with anyone who wanted to join us (15 people out of under 50 full time employees). The very first thing we asked people to do was to state why they were joining. It was great to read different reasons and see a few perspectives, but also to hear a reverberating commitment to learn about diversity and equity. For the book discussion we alternated between asking people to post things on slack and having video conference calls in small groups. I liked being able to read everyone's thoughts when they posted, but we got feedback that people were more comfortable discussing where they could see each other, hear tone and get immediate feedback.

Point #2: Push people a little outside their comfort zone. You have to push, otherwise you'll never get any closer to that finish line. But not too far, or you'll be alone again.

After we finished the book we wanted to continue the conversation, but with a less work intensive method than a book discussion. We moved to discussing articles, podcasts, tweets, and other questions that arose. To honor the request for discussing in person rather than via text, we set up this awesome slack app called Donut. The app randomly pairs people who signed up every 2 weeks so they can go out for donuts! (Or in our case as a remote organization, conference calls. But once I ate a bagel while I was on the call...) It's been great because we're building connections across the organization, which is a great way to increase the all important sense of belonging, while continuing to have conversations about equity, so we can find other ways support everyone in the organization.

Point #3: Keep going! You don't finish equity work in a day, week, month, or semester. Find ways to follow up and sustain conversations. That finish line we're aiming for? It's really far away.

More than half the employees participate in the donut chats every 2 weeks. There have been 62 pair or trio discussions so far in just a few months of running this. Two new employees are leading a discussion on the book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. A few of us also read Dare to Lead. We're still working on figuring out what our next steps are, but in reading the book we realized we'd like to move from grassroots (anyone who wants to can opt in) to structural change (moving this conversation to formal meeting times).

Next fall at the Boston NCTM regional conference my original partner in this work and I will be presenting on equity in the IM curriculum. There was certainly attention paid to equity before we started these conversations, but the sustained conversation has kept equity at the forefront and improved the whole company's understanding of how our design principles align with equity and access.

Now it's your turn to try. I'm happy to share more about our process or prompts but I think the 3 step guidelines I made up in the last half hour summarize it well.

1. Know your audience.
2. Push people a little outside their comfort zone.
3. Keep going!

Language to Describe Families #MTBoS #Demographics

We recently had some great conversations on twitter about the lack of racial diversity in the #MTBoS and the fact that this partially stems from the fact that people who tweet with the #MTBoS talk almost entirely about math without addressing equity. Quite a few people said, “But I can’t talk about equity on twitter, it’s too public!” I have a few thoughts on that, but I’m going to focus on just one today. Part of addressing equity is realizing that everyone’s teaching situation is different. So I’m inviting people to blog and tweet using both #MTBoS and #Demographics. Share something about your context. Then share something you do that might be different from someone teaching at a school with a different population.

I taught for 10 years at two schools. Both in Massachusetts. Both small cities. Both with large immigrant populations. One was 90% Latinx, the other one 50% Latinx with more racial diversity in the remaining 50%. Both had lots of kids in poverty. Both had lots of kids living with single parents or otherwise non-traditional households. This last detail is the focus of today’s post.

Early on in teaching I realized that lots of my students lived with just their mom. So instead of saying, “Can you ask your parents?” I changed my default to, “Can you ask your mom?” In my head this made sense because kids who live with both parents could ask their mom, as could kids who lived with just their mom. Looking back I think about how this reinforces women as the primary parent responsible for the kids. Not cool! I also knew some kids didn’t live with their mom, and while I generally my kids well enough that I would adjust, still not cool as a default. Especially when I accidentally asked a kid who didn’t live with his mom to have his mom do something and he got really upset. That made me stop and think about the language I was using. I hope this post catches you before you encounter a kid who will get really upset, and make you think about the kids who might be kinda upset when you talk about mom, dad, or parents.

So what’s a better alternative? “An adult you live with” is a solid choice when you’re addressing the whole class. Knowing each of your students well enough to know who they live with is ideal. I’ve taught kids who lived with one parent, two parents (which might mean two moms or two dads), an aunt or uncle, a grandparent, an older sibling, a foster family, and lots of combinations of these options. When you’re addressing letters home, “parent/guardian” is a good standby. To make that work all the way through the letter (and avoiding gendered language as a bonus), calling the kids “your student” is a good alternative to “your child” or “your son/daughter.”

I’m so excited to be working somewhere that has already thought about these things! One item on the list of ways we avoid bias in the IM curriculum is by explicitly not assuming kids live with their parents. So we estimate audience members in the auditorium, not parents. The family support materials also reference “your student,” not to mention they’re called family support materials, with no limitation on who can be defined as family!

What are some of the demographics of your classroom? What choices have you made to adjust for your unique population? Share them with #MTBoS #Demographics.

Discussing Diversity

Before TMC I invited people to have conversations about diversity before, during, and after the conference. While at TMC I attended the morning session with Marian Dingle and Wendy Menard titled Taking the Knee. It was powerful and important. I valued the designated time and space for conversations as well as activities that pushed my thinking about equity. I want to have more of these discussions throughout the year but I’m not sure how to. Even within the normed space we had built over 6 hours of in person discussion, it was challenging to be brave enough to push back against each other’s ideas and language. How do we build a supportive space for teachers to examine their own identity and how identity, equity and social justice impact education?

To have these conversations all year, here are some things I think I’d need:
- A safe, private space
- Norms that are clearly, regularly stated
- A moderator who enforces norms
- A small community where I get to know people
- A leader (the moderator?) who provides topics for discussion (articles or questions)

I have been reading articles, engaging in twitter conversations and writing blog posts about these topics. I plan to continue doing those things, and I think that my private and public work would both benefit from this in between space.

I think we could do this on myNCTM or on slack. It needs to be a private space where we can control who can join and I really appreciate threaded messages for asynchronous conversation.

Who is this “we?” That’s where I’m hoping you come in. I don’t have the time to run this conversation, but I do have time to help get it started and to engage. I want to be careful that we do not ask a person of color to do all the work of educating white people who are interested in learning more. A side bonus of having this conversation in a private space rather than on twitter is that people of color won’t accidentally come across conversations where we are trying to figure out how to avoid microagressions, for example, which I imagine would be an unwelcome reminder of past experiences.

I could imagine starting with a group of anyone interested in any conversations about identity, diversity and equity. Then if we got enough people we could split which will allow us to keep small groups and potentially separate into affinity groups. I’ve heard that MfA has started affinity groups and I’d love to hear more about how that is working!

Diversity at TMC

It's a conversation that comes up every year. And this year I want to push up the timeline.

We want our community to be welcoming. TMC organizers have been intentional about that goal every year. We expand our efforts with each conference, but there is still more to do. We've considered whether everyone who finds us online feels invited to speak up. We've considered how to include math teachers from different regions. We've considered how to support introverts and people who are shy. We've considered how to incorporate various grade bands and roles in education. Now it's time to consider race.

Last year Grace Chen, Brette Garner, and Sammie Marshall ran a morning session titled "What is the relationship between the Standards for Mathematical Practice & equity?" and Grace gave a powerful keynote titled "The Politics(?) of Mathematics Teaching." Both sparked conversations that started at TMC and continued into the rest of the summer and well into the following year. You can follow parts of that conversation on twitter using #TMCequity and in the blog post archive. As part of the conversation, they discussed the whiteness of TMC. That conversation inspired a flex session on the last day of the conference to look at the statistics of who is at TMC.

But also: math is a p “white” space. Math Ts are whiter than all Ts, and (I predict) MTBoS Ts are whiter than Math Ts #TMCEquity #TMCsowhite

— Brette (@brettegarner) July 29, 2017

We engaged and recorded the flex session conversation in a google doc.

Out of that discussion we decided that TMC needed a mission statement to help us make decisions about which approaches would best align with TMC's values. While some people worked on that, many other people worked on writing their thoughts out in blog form (see below). As things do, this conversation fell out of focus as the school year demanded more and more of people's attention. I would love for you to bring your attention back to thoughts on diversity at TMC. I invite you to have conversations on twitter (feel free to use #TMCequity), but even better, to have conversations in person. If you'll be attending TMC this month take some time to look around the room. Who is represented? Who is welcomed? Who is missing? And why does that matter?

Jenise Sexton
https://jenisesexton.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/being-black-at-tmc/

Marian Dingle
http://www.mariandingle.com/blog/still-thinking-about-twitter-math-camp-tmc

Grace Chen
http://blog.graceachen.com/2017/07/tmc17-reflection.html
http://blog.graceachen.com/2017/08/why-strive-for-diversity.html

James Noonan
https://scholar.harvard.edu/jmnoonan/blog/why-should-we-be-more-diverse

John Burk
https://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/2017/07/30/why-is-tmc-so-white-one-idea-for-change-lets-invite-the-neighbors/

Chris Nho
https://nhoskee.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/reletsretirethemtbos/

Michael Pershan and Marian Dingle
https://problemproblems.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/talking-about-diversity-in-education-with-marian-dingle/

Dr. Danny Martin

Marian Dingle is an amazing presence in this community. Everyone please take a moment and thank her for being an incredibly patient and persistent voice for marginalized communities. Every time she reaches out to me I am so appreciative that she thinks of me as someone worth having conversations with, and worth continually prodding to use my privilege in positive ways.

Tina, you titled this post Dr. Danny Martin, why are you talking about Marian Dingle? Because, dear reader, the most recent message I got from Marian was about Dr. Martin's NCTM talk.

I had the privilege of attending NCTM annual last month, and took a break from my #MTBoS cheerleading at the booth to attend the Iris M. Carl Equity Address. Here are a few things I tweeted while there:

I said these things, I posed that huge question that really made me think (Why does reform self correct in ways that sustain black oppression and dehumanization?), and then I jumped on to the next thing. I listened, but did I really hear? I certainly didn't spend the time to do a deep reflection of my role in this message. Marian popped up in my messages to ask the question, why aren't people talking about this? And I decided that we could and should fix that.

So, I'm inviting anyone who wants to join the conversation to read Dr. Martin's book The Brilliance of Black Children with us. I don't have a plan, but Annie Perkins (@anniek_p) has made the generous offer to get us organized. For now, I'm going to continue adding people who express interest to this post and update it as we make more plans. Please comment or tweet to let me know you'd like to join in so we can keep you in the loop!

Those possibly interested (people who replied or retweeted a tweet about the book chat). You might want to follow these people:
@dingleteach, @korytellers, @wmukluk, @anniek_p, @lybryakebreab, @gwaddellnvhs, @heidifessenden, @mrkitmath, @maxrayriek, @bridgetdunbar, @mrsg2nd, @reilly1041, @mathhombre, @mathteachscholl, @riphyskin, @nomad_penguin, @wwndtd, @k_hitchcock, @occam98