I am loving getting to read everyone's stories... keep them coming.

 This Math Memoir was submitted by @golda.abs on instagram.

I will be starting a series of Math Memoirs from people who have submitted them to me via Social Media, email, and students, former and current, who have given me permission. I have students write their math memoir in my classes to start school so I can get a feel for a student's math identity. Write about your math experience. Start with your first memory learning math (my mom used to play card games like Crazy 8's, Memory, and Rummy with my brother and I) and continue up through today. How did your experiences with math mold how you feel about math and your math abilities to this day?  Here is my math memoir. Stay tuned for others from around the world!

What started on my personal FB to teach my friends about mathematicians as a distraction from the unknown of COVID school 2.0, a.k.a. 2020-2021 School Year, has turned ONE! In that year, I have been able to not only teach my friends about mathematicians but to help inspire teachers around the world think about how mathematics is represented to all students so they can see themselves as "Math People." I have also got to talk to many cool folks on IG from around the world who just LOVE math like I do. People who are inspired to see mathematicians aren't all young savants from wealthy European families during the Enlightenment... they are old, young, gay, straight, black, brown, good at school, the bad kid in school... they are just people. We have grown to be 1000 followers strong (ok, 999 as I type but still give me this). There have been 357 posts celebrating mathematicians throughout history, as well as honoring #pride, #aapiheritagemonth, #blackhistorymonth, #womenhisto...

Mathematicians are often touted as the smartest people on the planet but then you hear about the best and brightest winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Medicine, Economics... Peace... but not MATHEMATICS. I haven't really thought too much about it until I started to research for this post. I knew Mathematicians had their own awards and just left it at that. Well, let's take a look at what was up with Alfred Nobel and then talk about the biggest math prizes. Source: Wikipedia Alfred Nobel Born Alfred Bernhard Nobel 21 October 1833 Stockholm , Sweden Died 10 December 1896 (aged 63) Sanremo , Italy Nobel was a Swedish chemist and inventor. He holds 355 patents with dynamite being the most well known. After being criticized for making a fortune off of the production of armaments, he decided to leave his fortune to the Nobel Prize Institute to change his legacy. His last will and testament set aside monies to establish the Nobel Prizes. These prizes were to b...

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...