1. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK7tq7L0N8E

2. Math is ______________
Josh Wilkerson, Ph.D.
Regents School of Austin
Mathematics Appreciation Teacher
2017 RSA Classical Christian Development / Austin, TX
Welcome! I have been invited to spend the next 45 minutes talking to you about math! I’m just going to let that phrase hand there for a moment so I can soak in all the different reactions.
Everybody has a reaction. Nobody is stoic to that phrase “let’s talk about math.” I would content that 100% (and remember I teach statistics so I don’t throw that number around lightly to just mean “a lot”) of people have a visceral, memorable experience of math class. The shame to me, being a math teacher, is that I would venture the vast majority of those experiences are negative.

3. Let’s talk about Math!
I would contend that 100%* of people have a visceral, memorable experience of math class.
The shame to me, being a math teacher, is that I would venture the vast majority of those experiences are negative.
* Note that I teach statistics so I don’t throw that number around lightly to just mean “a lot”

4. Regents Mission Statement:
The mission of Regents School is to provide a classical and Christian education, founded upon and informed by a Christian worldview, that equips students to know, love and practice that which is true, good and beautiful, and challenges them to strive for excellence as they live purposefully and intelligently in the service of God and man.

5. Math is ______________
TRUE
I mean, = 4 every time (amirite?)
“To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.”
Hilda Phoebe Hudson
Does God use mathematics because He is a God of order or does math have order because God uses it?
Order is not a characteristic God displays but a quality that He defines by His nature and math gives us a glimpse into that nature.

6. Math is ______________
BEAUTIFUL
Video link:
Needs to be contemplated – can’t simply move on to the next youtube video

7. Math is ______________
BEAUTIFUL
“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
“The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.”
Aristotle

8. Math is ______________
NOT APPLICABLE FOR ME
THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY
TOO ABSTRACT
STRESSFUL
CONFUSING
GOOD?
Side note on gibberish of math confusion images – the first line isn’t even accurate

9. What Students Seek “When am I ever going to use this?” “Why should I
The Primary Question:
“When am I ever
going to use this?”
“Why should I
value this?”
Augustine – our hearts our restless until they rest in you. That restlessness is what is walking into your math class. They want to find value (curriculum) and be valued (our pedagogy)

10. What Students Seek “Our hearts our restless until they rest in you.”
Augustine, Confessions
That restlessness is what is walking into your math class.
Students want to find value (our curriculum)
Students want to be valued (our pedagogy)

11. What Teachers Seek

12. Affirmation in Research
When teachers talk about their mathematics classes, they seem just as likely to mention their students’ enthusiasm or hostility toward mathematics as to report their cognitive achievements.
Similarly, inquiries of students are just as likely to produce affective as cognitive responses, comments about liking (or hating) mathematics are as common as reports of instructional activities.
Affective issues play a central role in mathematics learning and instruction.
Douglas McLeod in Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (1992)

13. Affirmation in Policy
“Being mathematically literate includes having an appreciation of the value and beauty of mathematics as well as being able and inclined to appraise and use quantitative information.”
NCTM Standards for Teaching Mathematics
“Mathematical proficiency has five strands: conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and productive disposition. Productive disposition is the habitual inclination to see mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile.”
Adding it Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics (National Research Council)

14. As it stands…
As it stands our current methods of teaching mathematics are producing untold numbers of students who see mathematics more about natural ability rather than effort, who are willing to accept poor performance in mathematics, who often openly proclaim their ignorance of math without embarrassment, and who treat their lack of accomplishment in mathematics as permanent state over which they have little control.
McLeod (1992)
Joke about math and priests – gossiping about math

15. Mr. Williams is driving down the road at 70 MPH when he happens upon a tipped cow. Unable to swerve it is fortunate that the prostrate bovine is angled at a perfect 30 degrees from the horizontal. Assuming no wind resistance how long will Mr. Williams be airborne before he hits the ground? Explain your reasoning.
we are answering the application question with “relevance” rather than digging deeper to the affective level

16. 70 MPH
30o

17. Different at Regents So does 2 + 2 = Jesus now?
This is a cheap understanding
Math is more than calculations
Christianity is more than thinking

18. Different at Regents
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

19. Cultivating Affections (part 1)
Education is not primarily a heady project concerned with providing information; rather, education is most fundamentally a matter of formation, a task of shaping and creating a certain kind of people.
What makes them a distinctive kind of people is what they love or desire or value.
An education, then, is a constellation of practices, rituals, and routines that inculcates a particular vision of the good life by inscribing or infusing that vision into the heart (the gut) by means of material, embodied practices.
There is no neutral, nonformative education
James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (2009)

20. Cultivating Affections (part 2)
Mathematics educators who set out to modify existing, strongly-held belief structures of their students are not likely to be successful addressing only the content of their students’ beliefs…it will be important to provide experiences that are sufficiently rich, varied, and powerful in their emotional content.
G.A. Goldin in Beliefs: A hidden variable in mathematics education? (2002)
Whether Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, Jamie Smith or Gerald Goldin and Douglas McLeod – saying same thing.

21. Cultivating Mathematical Affections
Students want to know your story…
What are the touchstone moments you can recall from a math classroom?
What would you say are the “thick” practices/routines/liturgies of a math classroom?
How has your experience of those practices shaped your perspective of mathematics?
In light of our own experience of mathematics how do we work to shape our students’ experience of mathematics? How do we cultivate their mathematical affections?
The gap to me is make rubber meet the road – have an action item – where SL comes in
It is about redeeming the story of mathematics for students

22. Math is ______________
INVITING

23. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSQyctFGMxc

24. Math is ______________
INVITING
Often our invitation into mathematics is already excluding some students
This example is teaching binary numbers but that term is never used
Would rather students understand the underlying concepts and connections than parrot terminology without understanding

25. The Global Math Project
Weaving a cohesive narrative of mathematics – a shared experience
linK:

26. Math is ______________
ANALOGY
FLATLAND: A parable in many dimensions
Edwin Abbot 1884

27. Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) – Salvador Dali

28. Math is ______________
SERVING

29. Service-Learning

30. Service-Learning

31. Service-Learning

32. Service-Learning

33. Service-Learning Affective learning objective is primary
Cognitive learning objective is still present and operating at a high level
Opportunity to communicate the value of affective learning outcomes through assessment
“It is through our assessment that we communicate most clearly to students which activities and learning outcomes we value.”
David J. Clarke, NCTM Assessment Standards for School Mathematics
Reflection is key
Moves toward inculcating a servant’s heart

34. WHY Consider Service-Learning?
“Yeah, definitely, much more positive. It was hard, don't get me wrong and I'm not saying the ‘I'm no good at math thing’ didn't change, but I do think ... I am sure that I can learn it, because I am sure I can learn it. It just will take longer and when you don't feel so completely discouraged about it ... When you do feel that you do have shot to understand it and learn it, for me at least it really raises my attitude towards it. It doesn't feel like it's this hopeless thing that I just have to suffer through. It is kind-of just a hill you climb, right?”

35. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6bfw622fo

36. Math is ______________
UPLIFTING

37. Regents Mission Statement:
The mission of Regents School is to provide a classical and Christian education, founded upon and informed by a Christian worldview, that equips students to know, love and practice that which is true, good and beautiful, and challenges them to strive for excellence (inviting) as they live purposefully and intelligently in the service of God and man.
Maybe look for math after the comma
True good and beautiful can still seem ideals that are out there
Look at the experience of math – the math story

38. Action Items Everyone: Math teachers K-12:
Stop gossiping about math and go talk face to face
G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician’s Lament
Francis Su, “The Lesson of Grace in Teaching” and “Math for Human Flourishing”
Math teachers K-12:
Join in the Global Math Project
Share your math story and invite students to share theirs – a math autobiography assignment
Ask them to draw a mathematician and have a conversation about the results
Offer reflective questions in class and on exams
(4th – 8th) let me come talk to your class about math and service!
Links:
Lockhart:
Su grace in teaching:
Su math for flourishing: