I have seen a lot of great stuff on twitter lately, and I’ve missed a lot too, I’m sure. I wanted to just archive some of the things that I’ve saved so they don’t disappear! I also think it might be a benefit for someone who reads this who isn’t on twitter or missed some of these tweets. But that’s just a side benefit. I’m writing this for me!!!

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Desmos writes interesting job descriptions when they have openings. When someone pointed that out to them, they mentioned that this article on reducing unconscious bias helped informed how they write their job descriptions. It’s pretty great and I highly recommend it if you’re hiring. I have thought a lot about “fit” in the past few years when doing hiring, but it’s tricky to think about it well. I have come to recognize that someone entering our department needs to be open and willing to collaborate and compromise, but also have sympathetic pedagogical beliefs with what our department values (and can’t compromise on those). One way I have tried to avoid it is thinking about these things:

But also I have found it harder to balance these thoughts, which I admittedly have a lot:

Not quite those things, but similar thoughts that get at my own personal views on the what persona/personality traits make an effective teacher. Which I tend to think mirror my own traits. But that’s only because I have these traits because I think they make an effective teacher. But I have worked with enough amazing teachers to know that amazing teachers come in all personas! Just like amazing students don’t all have to have the same personas. But this type of bias is something I am trying to be super cognizant about when on hiring committees.

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I saved this just because I like the question and wanted to work on it. And I can see all kinds of extensions. A formula for n circles? What about spheres? I’m guessing (without working on this problem yet) that this is a classic “low entry point, high ceiling” type problem.

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I just really liked this quotation, and I need to think about the ways that students can see themselves in the mathematics they do. It is part of a larger thing I want to do which is “humanize math” — but I’m not very good at making it a core part of what I do in the classroom. Small bits here and there humanize and expand what kids think about math, but I’m not there yet. I want to one year leave the classroom and know that kids have looked in the mirror and saw something. (It kind of reminds me in a super literal way of how Elissa Miller put a mirror in her classroom, and I think on the bottom she wrote “mathematician.”)

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Okay, I love this so much. If you’ve never seen it before, it a great trick. You have someone pick any number between 1 and 63 secretly. They just point to the cards that number is on. In about three seconds, I can tell you your number.

I actually made a set of these cards where the numbers are more jumbled up, so kids don’t see a pattern to it. I do put the powers of 2 in one of the four corners though to make things easier for me. Oh wait, have I said too much?

If you don’t know this trick, or how or why it works, I’m sure you can google it. But I’m going to recommend the awesome book “Math Girls Talk About Integers” (there are a lot of great “Math Girls” books out there, so make sure you get the Integer one.

Not only is the book awesome (and great for kids to read), but it breaks down this trick so well. *Shivers with joy*

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I was excited with Karen Uhlenbeck won this year’s Abel Prize, the first woman to win it ever! I had my kids read this article in the NYTimes about it, and write down three notes about the article. We started the next class with a “popcorn sharing” of what people wrote down. (I also said that although I liked the article, it was a bit dense and thought it could have been written more lucidly.) One thing that came up in both classes I did this in was what a “minimal surface” was — so I told kids it is a surface with minimal area.

I then showed my kids this short youtube video:

And explained that bubbles, though not “central” to all higher level mathematics, do come up. And then I gave them a question. I’m too lazy to type it out, but watch the first 1 minute and 45 seconds of this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAyDi1aa40E) and you’ll see it. Then we talked about some basic solutions. And THEN I revealed the best answer was the answer shown in the video we all watched together.

Of course @toddf9 (Todd Feitelson) used this as inspiration to create his own bubble thingies:

but he also explained how he made them…

and then he EVEN created an awesome desmos activity on this very problem, which I want to archive here for use later: https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5cb50bed4dcd045435210d29

(Oh! And Mike Lawler (@mikeandallie) made a mobius strip bubble!)

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Dylan Kane wrote a nice blogpost about calling on students (and the “popsicle sticks of destiny” — though he doesn’t call them that). My favorite line is this simple question that isn’t about right or wrong:

• After students attempt a problem in groups, or reflect on an idea and share with partners, I call on students asking, “How did your group approach the problem?” or “What is something useful that you or your partner shared?”

It’s so obvious, but even after so many years of teaching, I forget to ask things like this. Or my curriculum isn’t group problem solving based enough for things like this to make sense asking. Or whatever.

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There’s nothing special about this one… I’ve read it a few places before and it always makes me laugh.

Questions are good. I might have a kid read this at the start of the year and then have a short conversation about why we’re reading it.

It will get at the problematic idea of “obvious,” and when and how learning happens and more importantly when and how learning doesn’t happen.

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In case you didn’t know, Desmos has a list of all their mathematicians they use when they anonymize in Activity Builder.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OY-8dk6vYW1Cags8E6_v3I8YZ-RYROzgsCauW5CZt9w/edit

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I can imagine putting this picture on a geometry test as a bonus question and asking them why it makes math teachers all angsty… Plus it made me chuckle!

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I’m so not here yet. Anyone who knows me as a teacher will probably know I’ll probably never get here. I’m such a stickler for making the use of every second of classtime.

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Crystal Lancour (@lancour28) tweeted out a slide from a session led by Robert Berry (NCTM president) which had this very powerful slide:

Four rights of the learner in the mathematics classroom

1. The right to be confused and to share their confusions with each other and the teacher
2. The right to claim a mistake
3. The right to speak, listen, and be heard
4. The right to write, do, and represent only what makes sense to you

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Love the idea of using marbles/paint to draw parabolas (click here to go to the original tweet and watch the video — it’s not a static picture).

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Bree Pickford-Murray (@btwnthenumbers) gave a talk at NCTM about a team-taught math and humanities course called “Math and Democracy.” Not only did she share her slides (like *right after* the talk) but also she links to her entire curriculum in a google folder. SUPERSTAR!!!

I’ve gone to a few talks about math and gerrymandering (both at MoMATH and NYU) and listened to a number of supreme court oral arguments on these cases. It’s fascinating!

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I just finished teaching “shape of a graph” in calculus. But I wish I had developed some activities like this, to make it interactive:

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I’ve literally been preparing to give a talk next month for… months now. And this one stupid tweet summarized the talk. Thanks.

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I have so many more things I can post, but I’m now tired. So this will be the end.