Monthly Archives: February 2021

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Math Department Meeting #3 20-21

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

In our third meeting of the year, the members of the math department reported out on their progress with the goals they had stated in meeting #2, and also offered a general check-in about new learnings recently. In particular, we discussed aspects of our classes that we felt more confident about in our second trimester of remote and concurrent/in-person learning.

In our previous meeting, several high school teachers had suggested they were thinking about introducing the Gini index in their upperclass courses, and with updates a collaboration was proposed between several junior and senior math classes at the end of T2. Also, “Data Talks” were discussed as a means to start classes in the middle school, so as a way of get students thinking about stats and their application to contemporary issues. Finally, several teachers talked about their work in emphasizing rich classroom discussions over Zoom, formative assessment, and methods for offering voice comments on student work.

Next, Lindsey Rosenblatt, a consultant working with the Lower School this year on differentiating the program and supporting teachers, presented some of the work she was doing with students, including some videos of Lower School students doing Number Talks to supplement their math work in the classroom.

Finally, we planned for a group share-out of takeaways from recent PDs and helpful tools. Also, in response to the needs stated by members of the department in meeting #2, the chair offered a variety of resources related to identity work in mathematics and data sets to help bring contemporary issues into our classrooms. See below for that list.

Next meeting will include the share out and triple-goal-setting for next year: first, personal goals for each member along both the dominant and critical axes of mathematical education (as discussed in meetings #1 and #2), and second, a department-wide goal relating to the equity considerations offered at the top of the year by the DEI coordinators.

Here are the resources for consideration.

  • Mathematicians from Marginalized Communities
        • The Mathematicians Project: Mathematicians are Not Just White Dudes. Crowdsourced research into nonwhite and nonmale mathematicians, with more resources. (link)
        • Black History Month and Mathematics. Projects and resources related to Benjamin Banneker and Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughn (link)
  • “Real World” Data Sets
        • Our World in Data — visualizations, newsletter (link)
        • The COVID Tracking Project (link)
  • Math and Social Justice/Anti-Racism
      • Mathematics and Social Justice Course at Swarthmore, reading list and syllabus (link)
      • AMS Blog: What does anti-racism in math look like? (link)
      • Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) article: Mathematics in Context: The Pedagogy of Liberation (link)
      • From the Packer blog: Building an Anti-Racist Math Curriculum (link)
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World Language Dept. mtg. 2/24/21

Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz

At this meeting we revisited the CRE documents shared at the beginning of the year and reaffirmed our commitment to revising some of our end of trimester projects to include more writers of colors along with texts and themes reflecting issues of equity and anti-bias.
Responding to the question of how we as teachers present our content to our students and more importantly do so without making assumptions about the students we are serving and how they internalize the implicit underpinnings of the material brought about some relevant discussion and ideas about the social emotional well being of our students of color:
      • how we can better support and reassure the students of color who are at home during the pandemic
       • how we can create an atmosphere of trust and a safe space for our kids of color
       • how we can teach our students about white privilege without instilling a feeling of guilt, but rather help them navigate with compassion and use their agency to effect change.
In an effort to include our students in their own learning process and at our next meeting we would like to create a document which prompts the students to identify areas they would like to explore, skills they would like to learn and topics they would like to study. This will vary across the three divisions.
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English Department Meeting 2/24/21

Submitted by: Jane Belton

We began the English Department meeting by examining several Black@LREI posts for recurring themes, then used this work to frame our reflection on individual classroom practices. In particular, we responded to the following prompts:

  • What are the practices in your classroom that might contribute to issues identified in the Black@LREI posts?
  • What practices might perpetuate racial inequities / elements of White Supremacy Culture and harmful power dynamics?
  •  What practices do you want to question, trouble, or stay curious about? 

Some areas we discussed:

  • Discussion practices
  • Group work – how to make individual work more visible
  • Writing Practices 
  • Teaching multiple writing conventions for different purposes
  • Intersection of race, class, and learning support needs
  • Feedback/assessment/grading and policies around late work
  • Teacher language/lexicon 

At the next meeting, we will share some of the classroom practices we feel disrupt harmful power dynamics and racial inequalities.