# Clothesline Math – Logarithm Style

I remember when I first heard about Clothesline Math, I was excited by all the possibilities. And in a few conference sessions with Chris Shore, I saw there was so much more than I had even imagined that one could do with it!

It’s basically a number line, that’s all. But it’s a nice public giant number line which can get kids talking. Today I came back from spring break and before break, students learned about logarithms. However I wanted to have them recall what precisely logarithms were… so I created a quick Clothesline Math activity.

I hung a string in the classroom. I highlighted it in yellow because you can’t really see it in the photo…

I then showed them this slide – explaining the string is a number line…

I then showed them this slide, which explains what they have to do if they get two of the same number. (I brought cute little clothespins, but mini binder clips or paperclips would have worked just as well):

And then I gave them the rules of play:

I handed out the cards and let kids go. It was nice to see they didn’t get tripped up as a class on too many of them, but I got to listen to debates over a few trickier ones, which we collectively resolved at the end.

Here are the cards I handed out: .DOC FORM: 2019-04-01 Clothesline Math – Logarithms

Here is a picture of some of the cards. The two on the left are average level of difficulty. The two in the middle caused my kids to pause… it took them time to think things through (they haven’t learned any log properties yet). The one on the right doesn’t belong on the number one (it is undefined) and the kid who got that card immediately knew that. Huzzah!

Here’s a picture of the numberline at the end.

And… that’s it!

I was excited to try it out as a quick review activity. And it worked perfectly for that!

(Other things of note: Mary Bourassa made a clothesline math for log properties and shares that here. The author of Give Me A Sine blog does something similar here, but has kids create the cards. I couldn’t find anything with basic log expressions — so I made ’em and am sharing them in this post. Chris Hunter has a nice tarsia puzzle that sticks with basic log expressions here, but I wanted to try out clothesline math so I didn’t use that!) But if anyone has others out there involving logs, I’d love to see them in the comments!)

# The challenge that “e” poses

The Launch

Last week I met up with my co-teacher in Algebra 2. We’re working on our unit of exponential functions and logarithms, and we were talking about spending a short amount of time introducing “e” to our kids. Personally, this question has haunted me because when I taught Algebra 2 at the start of my career, I couldn’t ever find a motivation for it — except for interest being compounded continuously. That never quite sat well with me because you have to assume that you have an interest rate of 100%.

Like $(1+\frac{100\%}{n})^n$ as $n$ gets larger and larger.

But where are you getting an interest rate of 100%?!? It isn’t a terrible way to introduce “e” (getting kids to understand the structure of that equation above, there’s a lot of deep thinking that goes on in there). There is also the idea that there is a limiting value for that expression above — instead of the value just going up infinitely — that can be exploited and discussed.

But I never thought “e” and “ln” really belonged in Algebra 2, precisely because I couldn’t motivate them in a way that was intellectually satisfactory. So I tweeted out:

Little did I know I was going to get so many responses! I wanted to archive them here, which is why I’m writing this post, but then share where I’m landing on this whole “e” thing right now.

Ways To Introduce “e”

1. @retaneri linked to this question from “Play With Your Math” I love that site, but hadn’t worked on this problem before.

Interestingly, @bowmanimal and @averypickford came up with the same problem to share with me! Apparently the answer is to break up the number into a bunch of es … I haven’t figured out why this works yet.  But for 25, if I understand this correctly, I think it means $25=e+e+e+e+e+e+e+e+e+e+0.196986e$ which has a product of $e^{9.196986}$. (Or to be super precise: $e^{25/e}$.)
2. @mikeandallie shared with me this approach by throwing darts. Which includes this gem:

and this instantiation:
3. @jensilvermath suggested just looking at $(1+1/n)^n$ for larger and larger $n$, without reference to a limit. Have kids make predictions about what is going to happen and why, and then let them explore it. At first, I was like “hmmm, would this work?” but I love the idea of kids stumbling upon and wrestling with (1+almost zero number)^(super huge number) might be tricky. Does it have to be a huge result? What data could they collect? What would they do with it?

And @LukeSelfwalker shared this simple but stunning Desmos activity which gets kids to see how polynomials can start approximating exponential functions — a beautiful visual connection to all of this.

4. Of course @dandersod showed me a connection between Pascal’s Triangle and e, which I didn’t know about (or if I did, I totally forgot). He sent me this link:

Whaaaa?! But okay! WHOA?!
5. @roughlynormal suggests:

I have to think about this… Basically the differences relate to the derivative… But I did a quick 5 minute look with a google spreadsheet and I couldn’t make this work. I think for it to work, you need to divide the first differences by the change in x, and also divide the second differences by the change in x, and look for them to be equal. In other words, the derivative…
6. @jdyer gave this gem which I’ve never heard of before:
“You have a full glass with 1 liter of water. You take gulps from the glass; each gulp is a random real number of liters from 0 to 1. On average, how many gulps do you expect it to take before the glass is empty?”

And his discrete version is you start with 100 and kids take away a random number (generated from 0 to 100) per step.

Whoa! TOTALLY new to me. Since we can’t put up e fingers, we could play the game where we each pick a number (doesn’t have to be an integer) from 0 to 5. I had to see this for myself!
The red line is always greater than the blue line (I think… I want to prove it algebraically!). [Note: related, this set of tweets on $x^y=y^x$ which @BenjaminASmith alerted me to]. And @mathillustrated shared this amazing presentation (read it!) on scaffolding and formalizing this game with kids.
8. @CmonMattTHINK shared this fact which I LUUURVE but forgot about:
The probability of a random permutation of n objects being a derangement (no object remaining in its original position) approaches 1/e as n->oo.And @DavidKButlerUoA shared a wonderful presentation he made on where the derangement formula comes from.
9. @bobloch also shared with me a fact I don’t remember ever learning! e shows up in the harmonic series.$sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n} = 1+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{3}+\frac{1}{4}+\frac{1}{5}+...$Apparently, if we look at which n values bring this series to an additional integer, we get:

And if you go further and further, and take ratios of these n values, you get a better and better approximation for e. I calculated 227/83 and got about 2.735.

10. @mathgeek76 reminded me of the chapter in Steve Strogatz’s excellent book The Joy of X which talks about how you find the right partner, mathematically.

The answer involves $1/e$. (Spoiler here.)

And then a wonderful conversation about where “e” belongs in a high school curriculum popped up on my feed, launched off by this tweet:

I should say this was Steve’s launching tweet, but he was open to thoughts on both sides of the discussion that ensued. My favorite part of the conversation was when someone (I can’t remember who) brought up $\pi$ and when that should be introduced and why.

My conclusions

First and foremost, I knew there was a lot to $e$ — it bridges continuous and discontinuous phenomena. It is important in calculus and (to some degree) combinatorics. There’s a lot I don’t fully understand yet about what people shared with me in their tweets — and I have to work through them to see their connections. I do see lots of connections but I haven’t worked through the math of any of these things to draw them in fully.

Second, in my musings on this, I think I’ve come to recognize that why I have always found $e$ so fascinating is that is keeps on popping up in unexpected places. In my mathematical career, my jaw has hit the floor a number of times when I see it suddenly emerge when I never thought there would be a connection. I mean, think of the first time you saw $e^{i\theta}=\cos(\theta)+i\sin(\theta)$. ‘Nuff said.

So if I want my kids to see what I see when I encounter $e$, that’s what I want them to encounter. A surprise. That it can pop up in totally unexpected places, and you  might not initially know why, but it eventually can become clear.

I don’t think I have time to pull this together for this year, but here’s what I’ve decided I want to do in some future year… I want to have a period of time where kids are told “this is a problem solving day” (or set of days). And I give the class different problems that will result in them approximating $e$… but they don’t know it. Like Pascal’s triangle… they can just do the calculations and see $e$ pop out. Or the chess board experiment. Or taking random numbers away from 100. Or the harmonic series. Or the product challenge. Or the $x^y$ vs $y^x$ game.  Or the compound interest problem. And have them work on them. They all seem unrelated. Yes, this is contrived. Yes, I’m telling them what to do in many of them.

But BOOM. Soon this $e$ number that keeps popping up in all these unrelated problems.

For each of these, they are going to get numbers close to $e$. And for me, I can say

This, my friends, this is what is so beautiful about this number for me. It is a universal constant. It is like $\pi$. It pops up in so many unexpected places. There is an underlying structure to why this is all happening, why it pops up everywhere. That is going to start to be revealed in calculus, but that’s only the bare beginnings… It goes much deeper. But I wanted you to get the experience of wonderment and have something that’s you know is true that begs the question why… WHY? WHAAAA? WHYYYYYYY! Because this desire to know, to figure out why something is true when you know it must be and it feels too unbelievable to be true, that’s a feeling mathematicians get that drive them forward in their work. And making those connections, and we know they must exist, it’s awesome when it happens. So yeah… I wanted to introduce you to this important number $e$ which we’ll just take as that… an important number that we’ll get to play around with like we do $\pi$… but know it’s more than just a number. For you, now, it’s a question that’s begging an answer.

A realistic ending to an idealist exhortation from me to my students

Okay, I don’t know if I could really pull this off. But I’d love to.

# Digits

I’m about to start a unit on logarithms. Kids don’t technically know that yet. To prime them, today I gave both my Algebra 2 classes a warm up. I was super nervous about this, because I haven’t seen a crazy amount of endurance from many of my kids when they get stuck on something. And I was going to give them something totally open-ended! And without a calculator allowed! Gasp!

I asked them to do the following. Think about $2^{60}$. It’s going to be a long number when it is all written out. I wanted them to come up with a guesstimate about how many digits there are in the expansion. To scaffold, I asked them for three things:

a) What’s a guess (for the number of digits) that is too low? How do you know? (Can you come up with a larger low estimate?)

b) What’s a guess (for the number of digits) that is too high? How do you know? (Can you come up with a smaller higher estimate?)

c) Based on your work and your intuition, if you had to make a guess, how many digits are in the expansion of $2^{60}$?

Honestly, it was one of the best things I’ve done recently. Kids were showing grit and so much flexibility in their thinking! I had to correct a few misconceptions and nudge a little here and there, but it was all on them how they wanted to go about this. It was beautiful. (At one point, a kid said they wanted to give up, but I came back around a few minutes later and they were rapidly making progress and hadn’t given up.)

At first, kids didn’t know where to start. I told them they were going to get time to work on this, so they could take on strategies that might take a while. (Normally, we start class with something short and quick. I wanted to indicate this wasn’t that.) Initially, I gave 7 minutes, but since so many kids were on a roll, I expanded it to 14 or 20 minutes. I honestly don’t remember how long.

What I adored is that this problem was definitely in their wheelhouse. Most groups were gung ho, and just started writing stuff down — and eventually (sometimes with a little encouragement/prompting from me), they came up with SUPER awesome solutions. Seriously, things I had never thought of.

The main two approaches I saw were:

1. Kids noticing that $2^{10}=1024$. Which is close to $10^3$. So $2^{60}=(2^{10})^6 \approx (10^3)^6=(10^{18})$. So that puts us at around 19 digits.
2. Kids noticing this pattern:

So after going up about every 3 exponents, we add an additional digit to the number. (I say about 3 because all groups who did this method saw that a few times, you’d get 4 exponents in a row which keep the same number of digits instead of 3. But it was usually 3.)Assuming the number of digits increases after going up every 3 exponents, that means that exponent 12 has 4 digits, exponent 15 has 5 digits, exponent 18 has 6 digits, exponent 21 has 7 digits… etc. So exponent 60 has 20 digits.

So that puts us around 20 digits (or maybe a little lower because of those occasional 4 exponents in a row).

That’s about all I wanted to share. I was a little out of my comfort zone because I didn’t know if they would all just throw their hands up and give up. But they didn’t, and instead did some phenomenal thinking.

I just realized… you might want to see how this relates to logarithms. It turns out that the number of digits is equal to doing the following: take the log of the number, and then take the floor function of that result, and then you add one. I won’t spoil it by explaining why, though. See if you can figure it out!

# Going off the beaten path…

I find myself always pressed for time in class. Doing inquiry-based work, and going at the pace of the kids’ understanding, means that inevitably there are stretches of time when I’m feeling like “ARGH! We need to go faster! We have to be further along to cover the content!” Every teacher I know feels this, and in my office we talk about this, so that makes me feel better. I’m not alone. I also know in the back of my mind that somehow, each year, we manage to get things done. That helps.

That being said, this past week I had one of the very few times that one class was about half a day in front of the other and I didn’t feel the need to forge forward as acutely as I usually do. And in that short exciting window, I saw a student’s shirt which I thought was mathematically beautiful…

… which of course I told to the student. “Math?” He didn’t see it, nor did others in the class. It was an 90 minute class, and when having kids work on some problems together, my mind started thinking… I want to show kids how I see this shirt. The glasses I use to see the world are different from theirs. We take a break in the middle of class for kids to get water or quickly grab a snack, and so 5 minutes before the break I stop everyone. I have them look up. And I say something like: “I know many of you don’t see math in [Stu]’s shirt, but I think if you start looking at the world with math in mind, something like that shirt will pop out as beautiful mathematics. So grant me 5 minutes where I’m on stage, you’re the audience, and I live give you my thought process for creating a version of that shirt on desmos. It may not work, but I think it will be neat to try.”

So they are sitting watching me sit at a laptop. I start by graphing $f(x)=e^{-x^2}$. They ooh. Maybe they don’t. But in my mind’s recreation of the event, I hear them ooh. I explain that this isn’t a random thing I created. I ask who is taking statistics. I mention the “normal distribution.” A few nod knowingly, and for those who don’t, I say “this isn’t genius, this is me seeing [Stu]’s shirt and recognizing one of the most famous equation shapes in the world.” Then I graph the reflection over the x-axis. They understood that. But then I said I need more lines.

So I say: “I am now going to try to make the same curve with a higher peak. I think I should do a slight vertical stretch.”

But then I note that it isn’t just that each curve gets slightly stretched, but also the width of the bump gets slightly widened too. I go to the board and explain how I’m going to do a horizontal stretch too, and write up how I’m going to alter the x-variable in the equation to do that.

I flipped that over the x-axis and then manually entered a bunch more equations that did the same thing — slightly higher peaks, slightly wider bumps. Kids asked me to add in the two circles in the middle, so I did. It looked meh because I only had 6 or 8 curves. I sent them on break and promised them I’d get it to look a bit better when they returned. And that I would do this with just one equation.

During break, I whipped this up using lists.

When they returned, I explained how the list worked in Desmos — so one equation actually plotted a bunch of equations.

I didn’t know what to make of doing this. I wanted them to see how I saw things, how I thought about things. That math is in lots of places if you just look for it. That playing with math can be fun and what they already know mathematically are quite powerful tools. If for just a second one of the kids was like “Oh, yeah, wait, math is pretty neat,” I’d be happy. It might have happened because the next day I was talking with a science teacher who was telling me that my kids who she also taught were talking about it in her class.

Also, you know, I always find that when I deviate from my plans for something I’m excited about, I always feel so good about doing what I’m doing with my life. I have to keep this in mind and try to go off the beaten path more…

PS. Of course when I saw the shirt, I didn’t initially “see” the normal distribution. I saw fluid flow around a cylinder:

But I forgot everything mathematical I know about that. :) So normal distribution it is!

# On stepping aside.

Note: I debated whether to #pushend or not. Hopefully this helps anyone curious about why I’m stepping aside from TMC.

I posted this tweet yesterday:

I’ve been on the organizing committee for Twitter Math Camp for the last three TMCs and also for this upcoming one in Berkeley, CA. It was initially a surprise — and also upon reflection not as much of a surprise — to me that board member Marian D. stepped down from the board of TMC a few days ago. When I called Tina C., also a board member, to talk about possible next steps, she told me she was ready to step down also.

I will let Marian and Tina talk about their reasons themselves if they wish. But without much information out there, I figure people in the TMC community are confused and filling in the empty space with their own conclusions. I mean three people leaving organizing TMC in the span of a few days? That is a message encoded in an action, right?

Here’s what I want to share about that, from my perspective. I love TMC. I love the people who put on TMC. If I had to point to one thing in my teaching career that has grown me the most as an educator, it would be MTBoS generally and TMC specifically. I don’t have adequate words for my love and appreciation for it.

And mostly, I worry that because of these departures, people are going to vilify TMC. I don’t want TMC to be vilified. And in my opinion, it doesn’t deserve to be vilified.

It was born out of desire and necessity, to have math teachers who knew each other on twitter to meet in person. It provided a space for teacher voice to have value, and a place of emotional support for many who didn’t have any locally. It created one pathway for classroom teachers to become teacher leaders. I can’t say it enough. I love TMC, I love TMC, I love TMC, I love TMC, I love TMC, I love TMC. And for many, many, many people who have attended and have had amazing experiences, they too have a special place in their hearts for TMC.

So know that although I am not going to be a committee member, I am not anti-TMC.

So why, then, would I leave? Before that, I need to say it was a terrifying decision to make. I had committed to helping out, and shirking on something I committed to is a huge sin in my book. The good news is that the work that I commit to doing every year is quite simple logistically and not a huge time suck (organize a new-attendee/supporter mentorship, plan a new-attendee dinner, design some buttons, organize a homespun photobooth). And we’re five months before the conference and I told the committee that I’d work with someone on helping them learn to do these things with all my documentation. I wanted to leave as responsibly as I could.

But yes, why did I leave? As much as I love TMC, I didn’t enjoy the process of planning TMC. I’ve been in so many awesome collaborations where we have the opportunity to plan something awesome (whether it be a lesson or a workshop or whatever). And TMC is one of those. I mean, imagine you got a bunch of dedicated, passionate, awesome, thoughtful math teacher friends together (the committee/board is full of people I call friends!) and you get to put on this awesome event. I mean can you even imagine how fun and exciting that would be? Brainstorming, debating, revising, throwing things out, having a genius moment, outlining, revising? Simultaneously intellectually draining and intellectually invigorating. All the good! But the reality is that the process of planning TMC was broken, and over the years, it has remained so. It shouldn’t be so, and I tried to help change things, but without going into specifics, it never became unbroken. TMC, for me, was amazing. But planning TMC is a different story.

I was on the phone talking with Tina about Marian’s sudden departure, and Tina told me she was thinking of stepping down too. For the past few years, but more so in the last year, I’ve been working alongside Tina on a number of projects. We worked on creating a TMC mission statement with core values (engaging with the community in multiple ways to do this), we worked on improving communication and defining roles in the TMC leadership (beforehand, everything was haphazard and no one knew what everyone else was doing), we worked on figuring out where TMC needed to improve (diversity) and putting together a plan to address that, we worked on spearheading the first TMC fundraiser, and we were working on implementing ideas from the diversity proposal that the TMC committee and board had approved. My earlier work — things like calling a few restaurants and sending out emails pairing up new attendees and supporters — started to feel less important to me. I was excited about working alongside Tina with professionalizing TMC and addressing our deficits. That was the work that felt difficult and juicy but so much more important. Working with Tina on all this was that exhilarating collaboration that I had talked about above. So when Tina told me she was leaving, I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote nonstop 40 minutes just trying to figure where my head was at with all of this.

What I realized I was losing my mentor-leader who brought meaning to my work. And she was my rock when trying to navigate our dysfunctional planning process. I tried to imagine doing our work without her and thinking about the frustration level of planning with the committee. I couldn’t imagine it. And that’s when I realized I had to leave with her. I thought: better all at once, a little less than half a year before the conference, so the committee/board can regroup.

I was excited about the directions we were taking this year in terms of diversity and equity. Marian reached out to educators of color to present and attend. In the program, a strand of sessions throughout the conference was focused on equity. Affinity spaces for educators of color and LGBTQ+ folk were built into the schedule. Marian kept the idea of “safety” for educators of color on our minds and we were explicitly thinking about people with mobility problems, deafness, etc. In other words, we as a conference knew we were generally inviting, but we were working on being specifically inviting.

The people organizing TMC are friends. They might not create a synergistic working group, but they are doing selfless work which has helped so many. There are still people organizing TMC who are hoping to try to make these things listed above a reality. Any one of these things — well-crafted affinity spaces, a strand of strong equity sessions, thinking deeply on small and big ways to put on a conference where marginalized groups are valued and welcome and feel safe — would have pushed TMC forward leaps and bounds. It is a fair statement to say the committee is not strong at thinking about equity and diversity as a whole yet (I’m honestly very far below where I know I need to be at this point, but I’m learning from every conversation I have and pushback I am given). There is a steep learning curve and it’s not always easy to see through these lenses. Mistakes are par for the course. (We’re math teachers, we know this!) But there are those who are invested in this work and they are going to continue pushing TMC forward. They deserve all our gratitude and thanks. And support. If they ask for help, I hope many of you who want to see TMC do better on these fronts charge in and give them an assist. Help make TMC the place you want it to be. This is what TMC has always been to me: a space for passionate people to do good things together.

# A simple question

I know I haven’t posted a lot this year. I actually have tons to post on because I’m writing a lot of Algebra 2 material, but because I’m doing that work, I haven’t been able to carve out the time to post about it. Blerg.

But today I wanted to write a short but sweet post. Every so often, I ask for feedback from my classes. I’ll create a google form and ask how things are going, if kids’ pronouns have changed, how long their nightly work takes, and other thing I’m curious about. Sometimes I have kids reflect about their own work or their groupwork.

But last year, I started occasionally including this question:

I love that it gives kids a chance to think about who has helped them out. I don’t make it a required question. Only about 1/2 or 1/3 of my kids filled that question out this time. But I really loved the short bits I did get to see. I learned who might have been studying together for tests, or who worked super patiently with another person who might have been struggling, or whatever. And kids got to have a moment where they got to be grateful for someone else.

What was nice is that I actually asked for this survey a week before parent-teacher conferences, so I was able to share with parents who came some shoutouts about their kids (if they got any). Parents really appreciated hearing that their kid received praise from another kid (and why).

And today, I sent short emails to any kid who got a shoutout…

Hi Stu,

In our last check-in survey, I asked students to give a shoutout to someone who was an important part of their learning experience. I wanted to privately share these with students…

Stu2 wrote:

Stu! We work great together because we have different strengths and weaknesses, so when we do a problem together I’m able to understand the whole problem, not just the aspects I’m especially strong at.
Stu3 wrote:
Stu! He is always great at explaining things to me!
Always,
Mr. Shah

And… that’s it! A little sweet thing that I came up with that I really like. Short, simple, but for the right kid at the right time, it can be meaningful. (A few kids emailed me back saying that reading the email did make them smile or brought some light in a dark day…)

PS. Once, I had a bulletin board in my room that I had reserved for “shoutouts” or “notices of gratitude.” Where kids could post index cards with shoutouts for other students. I wanted it to be public and for it to “grow.” I would occasionally build in time for students to reflect and add to the bulletin board. That was years ago. It didn’t really take off, which means I didn’t roll it out and implement it well. But what I’m doing with this google form is really nice because it isn’t intensive or involve much planning!

PPS. If you’re at my school and want advice on how to do something like this, feel free to ask. I’m happy to brainstorm with you. I just don’t want everyone doing this which then will take away the “specialness” of when I do it!

# End of Year Donations

Throughout the year, I tend to donate to causes that my good friends are spearheading. If they’re going to take the time to spearhead a cause, the least I can do is show my support by throwing a few bucks here and there.

However at the end of each year, around November and December, I think about what I truly value and I find an organization or two that fit a good number of things that I care about. This year, I have two organizations that I am donating to. I’m writing this short post in case any of y’all out there are thinking about places to make end-of-year donations to, and these organizations speak to you in some way.

This is an organization that I started volunteering for last year. It was created by a friend of mine. The idea is that there are a lot of underserved kids in New York City who like and can do mathematical thinking, but aren’t getting what they need to excel. BEAM is a summer mathcamp for underserved middle school kids. The organization goes out and finds these kids, and then creates a summer program that’s free for them.

The reason the organization focuses on middle school kids is that’s where the most good can happen from an intervention. And these kids who go through the program get support for many years afterwards. It isn’t a “one and done” experience. Often times, kid return to the camp a second year. But more importantly, the organization helps kids navigate the high school admissions process (which is super complicated in NYC), helps them succeed with open office hours where kids can drop by to ask for help with any subject (this is how I help out… I staff the office hours!), and helps to with the college application and financial aid process. It’s a long-term program that has a huge impact on kids.  (If you want to learn more about it, this New York Times profile is amazing.)

So yeah. A thoughtful, wonderful, amazing program. I’ve worked with these kids and they rock. Right now donating $1 will bring in$3.14 dollars through a matching campaign. If this organization sounds like it fits your values, and you have some bucks to spare at the end of the year, consider donating!

So as an organization, financially, it’s pretty efficient. We only charge a $20 registration fee because we want to keep costs low. But there are costs associated with the conference (e.g. buses from the hotel to the school/university where the conference is held, custodial charges from the school/university, renting a conference room in the hotel for registration and game night, providing supplies for speakers, etc.). Amazingly, with the few thousand we get from the registration fee, we’ve been able to pay for everything. But for the first time ever, TMC is hosting its first fundraiser (read more about it here) and is asking for donations. And like with BEAM, TMC has a matching donors program, so every$1 donated will actually be worth $2! Now here’s the thing. When deciding to donate my own money to TMC, I had to take a beat. I thought: “Wait, I’m giving my money to a conference. Which I go to and pay hotel fees and transportation fees for. And I’m asking my friends to give money to a conference. A conference they likely are not even going attend. Does this make sense?” But here’s what I realized… The conference encapsulates things I value. It gives classroom teachers a voice. It creates a space for teachers to share their thoughts, and maybe realize for the first time that their thoughts are useful to others. By having a powerful conference experience (which often lasts far beyond the conference itself through the relationships forged and communication that happens on social media), TMC is having a positive impact on math education for so many students. My donation is going to go to help increase access to educators of colors and seed a scholarship fund to help provide access to the conference for teachers whose schools might not be able to afford it. I want to help the conference become financially stable and not have to rely on only the the small$20 registration fees it collects. I want to help increase access to the conference for teachers of color and teachers who can’t pay out of pocket and whose schools won’t help them out financially. It isn’t about me and the conference. I’m giving because I want to make sure that this conference can exist for others, and provide for them the same sort of experiences that helped shaped me as a teacher. [1]