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When am I ever going to use this in the real world?
Why am I learning this?

Four years ago, I was interviewing for a new school and was asked how I respond when students present me with the above questions. Like all math teachers, I get these types of questions from students a lot. (Now, in Zoomland, I don’t get many questions at all — but that’s another story.) But up to that point in my career I hadn’t thought enough about how I respond to students when they ask them. Put on the spot, the interview provided me a space to process my thoughts in the moment, which I really appreciated. The answer I gave during the interview even turned into a blog post. (Interestingly, it was my current colleague Stephanie Murdock who was interviewing me.)

Back then, I viewed the very presence of such questions as indicators that my teaching lacked engagement. Students wouldn’t be asking me about the usefulness of math if my pedagogy and curriculum already established that, right? In other words, I didn’t seek out to answer these questions for students as much as I used them to reflect on my practice. The existence of the questions themselves was enough.

While this is still true, and the emergence of such questions still says a lot about the state of my teaching and how my instruction renders mathematics, I’m thinking differently about them nowadays. I think if a kid were to ask me tomorrow why they’re learning whatever it is they’re learning, first I would be thrilled that they decided to unmute themselves and say anything at all. That’s a huge win. But after my excitement dampened, I would probably respond with something like, I don’t know. Why do you think we are? Let’s find out.

This precarious response is the result of a conversation I had with my close friend and colleague Shane Coleman this summer. He mentioned that, for him, being vulnerable with students was key to addressing their need to know why they’re learning something. The genius of it, I think, was how it uses students’ uncertainty and frustration with the system (and me) as a vehicle for empowerment. Instead of rushing to silence my students with a math elevator pitch that “answers” their questions and allows me to move on with my lesson, it’s a stance that invites my students to question everything and find meaning for themselves. Whatever meaning they discover may be rooted in the value of our Algebra 2 curriculum, yes, but it may also be rooted in purposelessness of it all.

To be sure, this makes a mess of things. By encouraging students to question the purpose of the Common Core — about the unit circle, about rewriting exponential functions, about factoring trinomials — it gives them permission to question everything and it’s source. Who “discovered” the roots of polynomials? Who wrote this curriculum? Do they look like me? What are the alternatives?

What I’m learning is that encouraging these types of questions and perspectives from students helps to normalize criticality in my classroom. Criticality was not a idea I knew about before I recently read Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad. She defines it as “the capacity to read, write, and think in ways of understanding power, privilege, social justice, and oppression, particularly for populations who have been historically marginalized in the world.” In her book, Muhammad does a great job outlining the role criticality can play in the classroom and its value for teachers, especially when they teach Black and Brown students. She states:

In short, teaching criticality helps students assume responsibility for the ways in which they process information — to avoid being passive consumers of knowledge and information. Criticality helps students read the world with a critical eye, refusing to accept unexamined information as factual or true….Criticality pushes questioning of information and the source of information — and this source may include the teachers. Therefore, criticality (like culturally relevant/responsive pedagogies) does not believe in hierarchies in teaching and learning. Instead, the knowledge and perspectives students bring is honored and valued, and the classroom becomes a community of teachers and learners. (p. 122)

While responding with “I don’t know, let’s find out” is but one relatively small instance of nurturing criticality in my math class, I think it’s an important one. Maybe my response will trigger something more substantial from my students and I. Maybe my students will help me learn a little something about why I’m teaching what I am. Or maybe nothing will come from it. Maybe it’ll be one of those many moments in class that come and go which never get remembered. Either way, at it’s best it’s a move that cedes authority and asks my students to be critical of the system — a burdensome system that feeds us all. At it’s worst, I hope that it can be a model for vulnerability.

Now, if only I could get them to unmute themselves.



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In the spring, it was different. I knew those kids. We had spent six months building something before having our school year hijacked. What we knew about each other carried us through those cold, desolate, scary spring months in New York City. It was a dark time. I felt alone and my students felt alone, but at least we had each other. We had a shared history. This history helped us make something out of nothing.

Now, with the hustle of the first week of school well underway, the cold realities of this strange year are slowly sinking in. I’m sitting in my empty classroom teaching students who are represented by icons on a screen. These icons occasionally sound like humans, but are mostly silent. They don’t smile or smirk. They don’t fidget. They don’t laugh. They don’t walk in tired or frustrated. I see names, but they are faceless. We have no history, no memories, nothing to fall back on. It all feels so empty, so fabricated.

I’m worried. I’m misgendering students and forgetting who is even in my class. I’m trying desperately to hang onto details that emerge about who these young people are, but it all seems so rushed and frenzied. Outside of a name and student ID, I have no idea who they are. I’m not sure I ever will.

And, I’m sorry, but teaching math doesn’t make any of this any easier. As someone who places a heavy emphasis on relationships and human connection, the Common Core is incredibly divisive. It lacks humanity and only furthers the distance between my students and I at a time like this. How the hell is the distributive property and right triangle trig going to help me reach my kids?

Maybe there are math teachers out there who can press on with content no matter who or what or when or how. Maybe these teachers can have no semblance of knowledge of who is on their rosters and still be effective. Maybe knowing who their students are beyond a name and an icon is a curse for these teachers. Maybe knowing their students gets in the way. At the same time, maybe my students need a teacher like that. Maybe they would prefer a teacher like that. Why complicate things?

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In thinking about my curriculum this year, I’m trying to find ways to make it more socially conscious. To make a long story short: I’m struggling. Well, if I’m honest with myself, I haven’t tried that hard. I bought a book and have been skimming it for ideas. Benjamin Dickman kickstarted an Algebra 2/Social Justice collaborative that I’ve tapped into. He’s also been tweeting a lot of useful ideas that I’ve been trying to digest, and of which I’m thankful. But because I’m chained to the Common Core’s version of Algebra 2, I am having a hard time busting out of the standardized box that it has me in. I also don’t think it helps that I’ve designed my course around non-thematic units.

Sigh.

But there is hope! I’m notorious for building the plane while I fly it, so I might be able to inject some level of consciousness into the curriculum as I go throughout the year. I’m thinking that a starting point could be the themes I used last spring. But an issue I have with those themes is that they weren’t married to any of the standards for the course (at least I didn’t attempt to do this) and they definitely weren’t Algebra 2-specific. And in thinking about the Common Core standards for the course, those related to statistics naturally lend themselves to exploring social justice. That’s promising. I also think all graph analysis we do could be an avenue. And exponentials too.

Despite my optimism, I find that much of what is packed into the course is abstract and hard to conceptualize through a social justice lens. There is lots of factoring and rewriting expressions into equivalent forms. Then there’s systems of (nonlinear) equations. And sequences. And rational exponents. And graphing trigonometric functions. Surely, my inability to draw immediate connections from these concepts to issues of social justice falls on me and lack of ingenuity and practicality with mathematics (that’s another issue altogether). But this curriculum — and most math that is learned in schools, in my humble opinion — wasn’t constructed to speak to the social conscience of students. This is disappointing. That said, I am feeling rather down about the Algebra 2 curriculum this year and how detached it is from my students’ realities.

Sigh.

But, again, there is hope! After reading For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed this summer, I began to reimagine my pedagogy and the role it plays in empowering my students. Despite having a hard time squeezing social awareness out of the math, I began to wonder how my methods themselves could be a model for social justice. How can I use them to meet my students on their cultural and emotional turfs? How can I be critical of the inherent power structure that exists within the classroom while meeting the needs of my students? How can I privilege their voice and perspective by including them in the ongoing decisions that are made in the classroom?

These are the types of questions that I started asking myself as I read. They aren’t directly tied to my curriculum and they don’t require any immediate change in content. What they do is deepen my impressions of how content is experienced and received by my students — and what those things should look like. They focus me on method; on the structure of the classroom and what that structure communicates to students about what matters. In Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Postman and Weingartner underscore this by saying “the medium is the message” and that “the invention of a dichotomy between content and method is both naïve and dangerous…the critical content of any learning experience is the method or process through which the learning occurs.” (p. 19) In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere declares that “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” (p. 72)

Viewed through this lens, content is rendered secondary and pedagogy is thrust to the fore. This idea runs contrary to the three things that high school teachers are made to believe that matter the most: content, more content, and even more content. It positions my students as knowers, as experts that should be relied upon heavily to make content come alive. I think this goes beyond me merely using students’ “prior knowledge” to inform instruction. I must do that, yes, but I must also invite students to teach me how to teach them. Their lives should be reflected in what happens in the classroom, not just their “prior knowledge.” My students should have the agency to determine how the class functions and what aspects of math are explored. This is what Chris Emdin refers to in his “reality pedagogy” framework for teaching. He states that “the key to getting students to be academically successful, is not to teach directly to the assessment or to the curriculum, but to teach directly to the students…[to] teach from the standpoint of an ally who is working with them to reclaim their humanity.” (p. 40)

So while the oppressive weight of the curriculum lay on the weary backs of my students and I, there is hope. Through my struggle to introduce social justice to the Common Core, I must remember that my pedagogy can itself be liberatory and full of humanity. My pedagogy can be the model. I can do this by adopting routines that not only seek out and honor student voice, but those that use my students’ voices to shape and reshape the class in meaningful ways. This form of pedagogy posits that teaching math is a function of my students’ realities — not my curriculum. In this way, my methods can embody the social principles that I want the mathematics to eventually explore.

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This summer, out of nowhere, I started listening to podcasts. I’ve been down with writing as a means of expressing one’s experiences for a long time, but I’m now learning to appreciate how impactful the spoken word can be. I dabbled here and there with what I listened to, focusing mainly on podcasts related to education. Being a newbie, I tried to give whichever ones I started at least three or four episodes before I passed judgment. Thankfully, most were winners and held my attention.

One of my favorites is 3 Educated Brothas. It is a podcast about all things education through the experiences of three Black men in the field. It has a fluid, conversational structure, which I really love. The guys — Marc, Edmund, and Pat — just sit down and talk. They haven’t stuffed it with bells and whistles — they fuel the show with authenticity and realness. They check-in with each other, banter, go on tangents, and push back on each other’s ideas. During their talks, somehow they have a way of making me feel as if I’m sitting at the table with them as they chat it up. Their style is warm and inviting. In some ways, it’s like I’m catching up with colleagues or even my own boys. They all have different roles in education (professor, consultant, and high school teacher) and they do a great job of leaning into these roles to bring different perspectives to the listener. Plus, given that they’re all Columbia grads and two of them work in NYC, the whole podcast feels local because, well, it is.

For me, their vulnerability is a cornerstone of the podcast and also why I love it so much. They don’t pretend to be something they’re not or know more than they do. This vulnerability shows up with how they question themselves and admit when they’re unsure. For example, when they discussed rape culture in episode 3 of season 1, the guys owned up to their inexperience with the issue. Because of my own ignorance of rape culture, there was a familiar sense of uncertainty and admitted complicity in their conversation. I think the guys may have decided to have the conversation because of their inexperience, which was refreshing. That said, because they didn’t have a woman present for the dialogue, they were presented with a healthy point of tension; they debated whether it was even worthwhile to dive into such a heavy topic. How might they implicate themselves? How might they do more harm than good? It is this sort of self-questioning and willingness to interrogate themselves that is present throughout the podcast and one of the big reasons why I’m so drawn to it. Through it all, it’s my impression that Marc, Edmund, and Pat use the podcast as a space of healing and engage in dialogue with the expectation that they might be changed as a result of it. That’s inspiring.

As a white man, I can’t go any further without acknowledging how invaluable it’s been for me that they’ve centered their Black male experience in the podcast. As Black men, they’re candid about how they see the world — and how they’re seen — and this backdrop of Blackness is something that I really appreciate. Given my own personal narrative and upbringing, this foundational aspect of the podcast is something that I gravitate towards and a huge reason why I’ve sponged up all of their episodes. As a teacher of Black children and a colleague to Black teachers, the three of them afford me much-needed perspective and insight into the experience of Black men in America today. In the process, they also explicitly and implicitly press me to further process and question my white racial identity, which I need. My racial ignorance is real.

Many of their themes stand out. Their heavy focus on self-care has been important for me to hear. Their early talks about black boy joy, the statement for the culture, tough love, and Ratchetdemic stand out as valuable listening experiences that I’ll no doubt be returning to and referencing in the future. And let me not forget about their guest speakers! Marc, Edmund, and Pat have done a really dope job of injecting fresh energy and vantage points when they’re needed all the while maintaining the message, as showcased in their chats with Mariel Buquè, Yolanda Sealey-Cruz, and Chris Emdin. I’m grateful.

In honor of their most recent episode, which was an affirmation exercise in which they showered each other with love and admiration for the simple fact of showering each other with love and admiration, I want to publicly affirm each of them. As Pat said in the episode, “affirmations are accessible always” and it shouldn’t take someone we appreciate to achieve a goal for us to call them out on how amazing they are in their own right. I don’t know Marc, Edmund, or Pat personally, but listening to them has been an uplifting and compelling experience and one that’s well worth me shouting them out. They each bring something valuable to the podcast and, in this vein, here are my personal affirmations for each of them:

Marc 
Being the only K-12 teacher, he exudes practicality and craftiness. Many times during the podcast, just when I think my mind might be straying, Marc finds a way to pull me back in and ground the conversation in the present moment and work that’s done in the classroom. Being a teacher, this speaks to me. I also find that he leads with his vulnerability on the show, which I can’t respect enough. He likes to trouble issues with his nuanced perspective; I have tried mimic this with colleagues this summer. His belief that teaching is his form activism is powerful and wish more of us teachers explored.

Edmund
I’ve found Edmund to be a stabilizing force throughout the series. I find his perspective calming, consistent, and pointed — all at the same time. Given his academic and scholarly success, I have come to appreciate Edmund’s willingness to continually grow and talk about his growth throughout the podcast; this is humility at it’s finest. I’ve been loosely studying hip hop culture recently and hearing some of his expertise on it has been interesting.

Pat
Of the three brothas, Pat is definitely the philosopher. He has a keen way of drilling down into an idea to reveal not only its inner workings and his thoughts on the matter, but also mine. His monologues provide me with both a literary and psychological workout. Every time he jumps into the conversation, I mentally ready myself for something deep…and he never disappoints. Because he works in the NYCDOE as a diversity and inclusion trainer, I can only hope that one day I’ll land in one of his workshops. He’s seeded many ideas in me that I’d love to hash out with him.

What’s really cool is how their work on the podcast has motivated me in ways that go far beyond my ears, my thoughts, and my teaching. The takeaways I’ve had from the guys and the show have moved me to begin a similar podcasting initiative at my school with colleagues. I’m eager to see how it’ll pan out. Stay tuned.

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