Another wonderful Joint Math Meetings has passed and I was quite busy at this one. I was able to see my friends and colleagues because I helped organize the special session on arithmetic dynamics. I also got to spend some time with new friends from Project NExT by running a special session on Social Justice in the mathematics classroom.

Lily Khadjavi, Karl-Dieter Crisman, and Aditya Adiredja made our session a success. I think one of the big things I learned is that I can work in small ways to start incorporating social justice and service learning in my classroom. For example, Calculus students can tutor at the local high schools in algebra, or I can carefully choose which examples my students can look at in class. As Lily Khadjavi said, the data speaks for itself.

I also learned that I’ve done service learning already in my classroom. Partnering my math for elementary school teachers students with a Hawai’i elementary students as penpals was a service learning project. I learned about the value of student reflection as well as making sure my students met with the community partner.

I still want to create something big in partnership with the community I live in, but for now I can help incorporate social justice into my classroom by choosing good examples.

Some resources I heard about in the panel and Moon Duchin’s talk:

• tinyurl.com/teachgerry
• https://he.kendallhunt.com/product/just-math
• Forthcoming: Lily Khadjavi and and Gizem Karaali are working on a “volume of classroom modules”— Mathematics and Social Justice: Perspectives and Resources for the College Classroom. I think that is what this one is called, but I didn’t get a chance to write the name, so I had to use googlefu to find it.
• There should be a social justice issue of PRIMUS soon.
• Link to slides and other resources from our session: JMM session