Even if you are not a teacher you probably know that the fundamentals for a good classroom are to develop relationships and to build a safe environment for students to take risks. In the math classroom, students are coming in with loads of math baggage that are both traumas and successes. Getting a student to trust you to take care of them as they try hard and new things and to support them through mistakes is a daunting task. Here are some of the things that I do that help students see themselves as mathematicians in my room (and hopefully out in the real world) as well as trust me to take care of them as they grow as mathematicians. Set your intentions in your introduction and classroom décor. Student Created Einstein Bio Student Created Mary Jackson Poster I want the students to see mathematicians on the walls that are both famous but also diverse so that they can make connections with the people who created the math they will be learning. Often Math is presented as this magical thi...

The news of Wally Fell being chosen by Jeff Bezos last week had me wanting to learn a little bit more about the ladies of NASA who trained to be astronauts but never went. When the US government first started their race to space they believed that men were most physically suited to what they anticipated would be necessary in space. In addition to that, Dwight Eisenhower thought that military pilots would also have "the right stuff" due to the training they had already went through. The initial narrowing of the potential applicants came out of the desire to keep costs down because testing and preparing a lot of candidates would be very expensive. William Lovelace was a flight surgeon and  chairman of the NASA Special Advisory Committee on Life Science who developed the testing standards for NASA's male candidates. He was also curious how women would do on the same tests. In 1960 he brought in Jerrie Cobb, an accomplished pilot, to be the first woman...