I am going to type a super quick post, because I need a break from thinking about school and classes, and I decided that this will be it. I realize that some of you might be celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month in your schools, and wonder how you can bring that into your math classrooms. I’m sure there are lots of ways. But I wanted to share — or remind some of you, if you forgot — of this amazing website called Lathisms.org.

It has profiles and posters of Latinx and Hispanic Mathematicians! And so many interview podcasts, where kids can hear what mathematicians do, but also hear stories that either might resonate with them because they’ve experienced similar things as the interviewee, or inform them of something they might not have experienced or even knew was an experience.

At our school, another teacher and I created a “Math Space” outside of our math office. (Read more about that here.) Since we’re now in COVID-times, we don’t have the table and stools there for students. But we still have the bulletin board. So I printed out two of the posters from the Lathisms site, and created my own poster of a passage from Evelyn Lamb about why we should care about these stories.

It’s a little barren, but this is what it looks like:

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do in my classes yet… But I am thinking of having them leave class 7 minutes early to come to the hallway, and have different students read different paragraphs aloud for the poster I made and also for one of the mathematicians. (And of course share the Lathisms site with them, and encourage them to listen to a podcast or read more.)

Wait, maybe the reading aloud in the hallway thing isn’t a good idea because with the masks it’s just hard to hear things… I might need to re-think! But now, I have to go back to planning for classes and looking at nightly work. Adios!

I was so excited with the Museum of Mathematics opened in NYC. I attended a zillion lectures they had with math teacher friends before they had the space ready and a zillion lectures after they had their space ready. I even convinced some of my students to attend with me and another teacher, and we got to bond over math.

I encouraged some of my students to enter the contest for the Strogatz Prize for Math Communication at the end of last year. Even recently, I went to a wonderful virtual event they held called Bending the Arc, which featured a panel of Black mathematicians and scientists and allowed participants to talk with them more intimately in smaller groups in breakout rooms. The name for the session came from Martin Luther King Jr.’s quotation which I sincerely hope is true: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

(The reason I mention that is because previously the museum had planned an event in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day which somehow connected his “Letter from a Birminham Jail” to a session devoted to the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem. For so many reasons, this was a poor decision that I was surprised no one caught when setting it up.)

Also, over the years, I had heard grumblings about the museum from people who worked there or volunteered there as interns. Recently someone shared with me a letter that was sent to the Museum of Math’s Board of Directors that was concerning.

Letter to MoMath Board

My understanding was it was written a while ago, but only recently shared with the Board. I’ve been told that it is now officially okay to make this letter public. It’s short, but packs a punch. Here is the top-line conclusion, written in a signed letter by two former “Chiefs of Mathematics” at the Museum along with others who work/ed there. 

“With respect to our educational mission, race and class discrimination are embedded in the Museum’s practices.”

To me, knowing that there are multiple people — including people who were high up in the organization — who felt the need to write an open letter to describe some of their concerns speaks volumes to me. They didn’t have to. It is easier not to. It puts them at some risk, publicly speaking out. 

To me, one of the most problematic charges in the letter is that students from Title 1 schools who visit MoMATH often get lessons that end up being 20-25 minutes instead of the normal 45 minute sessions. The letter states “We cannot remain silent while the Museum chooses to offer sub par services forthe least fortunate students who are vastly more likely to be people of color.” I hope that with this letter, those at the Museum take a close look at their practices to ensure there is equity for all the students visiting the Museum. To me, more than anything else, this is of paramount importance before the museum opens its doors again. 

Also damning is this paragraph:

Unfortunately, the Museum actively discourages any form of negative feedback, and the staff has virtually no autonomy. This repressive culture has been described on social media and in the many letters you have received from former employees about mismanagement, abuse of hours, and general lack of respect for staff. In fact, the Museum’s formal Employee Policies Document warns staff members against contacting the Board. Staff members who have advocated for improvements in the Museum’s operations have seen obstacles set up in their paths and have been pressured out or fired. The rapid turnover of MoMath staff, which has an average tenure of less than a year and a half, is evidence of this. Joe Quinn, former Chief of Mathematics for MoMath, was fired shortly after expressing his opposition to the discriminatory provision of education services to Title 1 schools. We believe this to be unlawful retaliation against him

It is important for an organization which promotes diversity and inclusion to make sure that concerns can be heard safely, that feedback can be given. To these letter writers, it sounds like that hasn’t been the case and there is a culture at the museum which sounds, frankly, oppressive.

I went to GlassDoor, to see reviews of the museum from people who work there.

Most museums I looked at had star ratings in the 3+. (I recognize that those who leave reviews on GlassDoor are likely to be those who have a lot to say in either direction.) It was disheartening to read through the reviews. 

I only hope that this letter prompts some sort of investigation into the working conditions at the museum. How long do people work there? Why do they leave? Are employees being taken advantage of in terms of their hours worked? At the very least, this letter suggests that the Board can and should look into this. 

This is going to be a really quick blogpost. On twitter, I was talking with someone about how to set up individual check in meetings with kids. I shared briefly how I had kids sign up to see me during office hours, and I thought I’d quickly write a blogpost about it to make it clearer. A lot of high school teachers at my school did this, and found it helpful. (I learned it from them.)

First, you need to install the Zoom Scheduler extension for chrome.

Then, all you do to set up appointment slots for kids is to go to the day you want to on your google calendar and create a new event. Now to make appointment slots for kids to use, it’s just this simple!

That’s literally it. You’ve done it! Once you’re done, your google calendar will look like this:

So how do students sign up for an appointment? You just send them a link to your appointment calendar, and they click on the appointment slot they want. To be clear, your appointment calendar is different from your regular calendar. The appointment calendar only lists the things that you have set up appointment slots for, not your entire calendar. (So you don’t have to worry that kids will see the happy hour that you included on your google calendar!)

To get the link to your appointment calendar to share with kids, just click the appointments you just created on your google calendar and you’ll see this:

Clicking “go to appointment page for this calendar” will lead you to a page with just appointments. The URL on that page is the link that you give to your kiddos. So they use that one link for the whole year! That’s it!!!

But if you’re like me, you want a bit more info… so…

This is what the appointment page looks like for your kiddos:

They click on the time slot they want, and it will reserve it in their name. This pops up when you click on it [note: it shows my name and not a student name because I signed up for an appointment with me! It will really show your student’s name.]

Now on the appointment page, that slot has been taken away so no other student can claim it:

When that happens, I as a teacher get an email that alerts me to the fact that a student has signed up. That email gives me the zoom link to the meeting — but I can get that zoom link when I go to my regular google calendar and click on the time slot that was taken. This is what my calendar looks like after someone signs up for a meeting:

Also, the student who signed up gets an email in their inbox with the information for the meeting (including the zoom link)… and the appointment automatically shows up on their own personal google calendar. AWESOMENESS!

Okay, that’s all!

In case this is helpful! It worked for a lot of us at my school.

PS. A couple pieces of advice…

I did this during my required “office hours” which were usually 3-4pm. I created 15 minute windows for them to meet with me. But I told kids they had to sign up before 2pm on the day of. That way I wasn’t just waiting around for them in case they signed up at 3:44pm.

Even though these were individual meetings, I figured sometimes kids might want to come in a pair or trio (if they were working on something together and got stuck). I told them one of them had to sign up but they could share the zoom link with others, so we could all meet at once! No one actually did that in the spring, but I suspect that that’s because I only mentioned it once or twice… I might make more of an effort to have kids to do that in the fall.

UPDATE: Recurring Office Hour Meetings

If you want to create Office Hours that kids can sign up for every Monday, you don’t have to do this every week. You can do this when setting up your office hours…

After entering the basic information, click “MORE OPTIONS”

You’ll “Make it a zoom meeting,” and then you’ll click on the “DOES NOT REPEAT” option to bring up the options to create a repeating meeting. I always choose Custom — because even if you want office hours weekly every Monday, if you click “Weekly on Monday,” they’re going to appear on your calendar every Monday until the end of time. :)

So then you just decide how you want the office hours to recur! (Yup, you could even say Monday, Wednesday, and Friday if you want! Or every other week!)

This screenshot above shows office hours being created every Monday but will stop showing up on the calendar on December 14th (so, for example, at the end of a semester or some reasonable date).

But WAIT Sam! What if there is a particular Monday you can’t have office hours?

Just click on the office hours on your google calendar and press the delete button (trash can). It’ll ask you if you want to delete ALL of the office hours, or just this one day of office hours. Just pick “This event”: