Tips for Teaching Socially Relevant Math

Whether we like it or not, talking about important issues often involves talking about math. During the COVID pandemic, we saw doctors use statistics to advocate for national mask mandates, while governors used the same data to argue that individual liberty outweighed the risk. As protests occurred across the country, we heard colleagues use data as evidence to support Black Lives Matter or as a way to shift the focus to black-on-black crime. At home, we’ve heard argument after argument end with the question: “Well, where’s the data on that?”

Our world is flooded with data, statistics, and numbers. We have more information at our disposal than ever before. Yet, our discourse often devolves due to bad mathematical reasoning: biased samples, correlation/causation fallacies, misleading denominators, and flimsy quantitative arguments appear almost everywhere we turn. To heighten public discourse, we need to prepare our future citizens to use rigorous quantitative thinking - to discern the well-evidenced claims from a sea of misguided conclusions.

When students bring real-world issues into their math class, we often tell them to leave it at the door. Socially relevant math takes the opposite approach. Instead of keeping real-world conversations out, we invite them in. Then, we ground the discussion in the scrupulous and common language of math. This orientation towards math instruction doesn’t mean teaching with a political bias. In fact, it’s the opposite: it prepares students to think critically, evaluate contrasting claims, and identify bias through mathematical reasoning. The only “political agenda” is to heighten political discourse. Importantly, we’ve found that this way of teaching authentically engages students, which also helps them understand the math itself at a deeper level.

We acknowledge that teaching socially relevant math can feel daunting. To tackle these challenges effectively and responsibly, we recommend the following practices:

1. Form strong relationships with students

• Strong class culture beats strong teacher moves – every time. Creating a positive classroom culture starts by forming positive relationships with students.

2. Take precautions to avoid resurfacing trauma

• Before covering a lesson that you believe may resurface trauma for students, use a safe and confidential method for asking students their comfort level with covering the topic in question.

• If you know there is at least one student who has trauma related to the topic in question, don’t cover that topic. The risk of activating trauma outweighs the effort of coming up with a new lesson on the same learning objective.

3. Set and maintain strong discussion norms

• Strong discussion norms are critical for creating a classroom environment in which students trust one another to agree, respectfully disagree, and move conversations/learning forward.

• View our recommended discussion norms. We also recommend having students contribute further discussion norms to this list, to build investment and to make your class more student-centered.

• Maintaining discussion norms is as important as setting discussion norms. Appoint student leaders to hold their peers accountable to these norms.

4. Share your non-partisan intentions

• During curriculum planning meetings, in your course syllabi, and on parent-teacher night, make your intentions clear: although we may analyze data on sociopolitical topics, our goal is to have fair, balanced, and data-informed discussions. There is no political agenda, other than heightening students’ political discourse through data analysis and critical thinking.

• Make a copy of our letter to parents, which describes Skew The Script’s lessons and non-partisan curriculum approach. We recommend editing the letter to make it your own, then sending it out to parents at the beginning of the school year.

5. Come to conversations prepared

• Because you will discuss topics that are passionate for students, they will have many questions about the context of the data, the math involved, and the types of conclusions that can be drawn. Come prepared to answer these questions or to position students to answer these questions themselves.

6. Position student voice at the center of your classroom

• Classrooms are about student learning and student voice; yet, too often, teachers make room for only their own voice to be heard. Allowing student voices to lead the classroom creates a more trusting, open, and impactful learning environment.

• There are many structures teachers can use to leverage student voice. At the outset of the year, have students generate discussion norms. During the year, ask students for topics of discussion, around which you can plan lessons. By the end of the year (oftentimes after standardized testing), have students collaborate to lead lessons on topics of their choosing.

7. Value personal experience alongside data

• Data often provides good evidence for making inferences about social issues. We also know that data can be used to mislead and, if not used cautiously, can lead us to incorrect conclusions. Make sure you know and that students know these simultaneous truths.

• Data can never invalidate personal experiences. All trends have variability and, in most cases, data has nothing to say about the truth of an individual experience.

Like all teachers, we are also continually learning how to make our classrooms better for students. Please reach out with questions, comments, concerns, ideas, or to talk further.

Let’s skew it,

China and Dash