Are there specific methods or classroom practices that motivate students to perform to their potential?

Henry M. Levin:
I am not sure that one can generalize about group size and pedagogy for black males since it depends upon the subject, teacher skills in different instructional modes, and the use of balancing different approaches rather than relying on a single one. However, any approach that more nearly personalizes instruction is helpful. Personalization can be based upon small group or even tutoring approaches. But, it can also draw upon guided independent study on topics of interest or of curiosity to the learner. My own experience suggests that personal mentoring has a very positive effect for the education of black males. If we can get members of the school staff or the larger community to take on mentoring tasks for individuals or small groups(advice, friendship, guidance, connections to employment and other opportunities, assistance with homework and assignments), we can get some very good results.
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...my strong sense-based on at least sixteen years of teaching mathematics in CUNY: this is the surface of the story. what is often missing in most classrooms, at the deepest level, is "a spirit of respect" on the part of those charged with teaching for those who are being taught. how do i quantify this? i am not sure but i know it when i see it and feel it and it is real. anyone who has had reason to go into a public school in nyc will understand what i am saying. the very first encounter with the "public safety officers" is rarely a pleasant one. imagine children being forced to deal with this for most of their formative years. what is the result? many, many exceedingly talented young folk who are conditioned to expect disrespect so their posture is one that puts them in opposition to the teaching and learning game, which requires at the very minimum a level of trust and openess on the part of all parties concerned. that trust has to be earned by the teacher and the institution. it is quite frequently the case that by the time folks are ready to open up the semester is over and the cycle has to start again. the point is that mentoring is not the thing in and of itself, mentoring is a function of that deep respect for the individual who has been put in your charge. folk who respect you will mentor you in a manner most useful to you for they will have taken the time to understand as best as they can what your needs are and how best the skills that they possess best addresses those needs. respect implies mentoring. they will earn your trust. mentoring does not imply respect. it is to this task that we focus our attention: at an individual level, at the level of family, at the level of institutions and at the level of the larger community. let me be clear: black teachers can disrespect black students and white teachers can respect black students. the argument that i am making is not located in skin color.

i am particularly interested in ways in which i might make concrete the "spirit of respect". more to come. thoughts? be well.

see: http://www.edweek.org/chat/transcript_05_17_2007.html

black history month and mathematics?

trust all is well. the last few days have been busy ones but i have wanted to share a bit on black folks and science and mathematics in the spirit of black history month. this got me to thinking about the role and function of history in the culture. the answers are many but at minimum, it seems to me, history is a mirror, a mirror in which is reflected, who we are, where we come from, and where we might be going thus the absence of history is a deep rift which has left many of us cut off from those sources of wisdom that can sustain us. on a personal note it always seems a painful to me when making family trees that so many branches end abruptly. no more questions to be asked or answered, nothing more to be said. how much science and mathematics lost never to be recovered? what the mathematicians who perished in the middle passage? who holds their banner aloft? on a more cynical note i wondered about black history month in europe, in south america, the caribbean and in africa itself. how early did africans come to london or mexico.. see the website on mathematics and the african diaspora it is perhaps the best attempt to deal with black folk and their involvement with mathematics throughout the ages. be well.

another stimulus package?

“I’m a high school math teacher who is trying to assemble an extra-credit reading list. I want to give my students (ages 16-18) the opportunity/motivation to learn about stimulating mathematical ideas that fall outside of the curriculum I’m bound to teach... I am looking for books that are well-written, engaging, and accessible to someone who doesn’t have a lot of college-level mathematical training...."

i have gathered below some of the responses. a suggestion: pick two titles that appeal to you. buy one for your self and the other for someone who you think might find it useful. ideas matter. thinking matters and given the nature of the challenge that we face we all ought to be involved in it.

“Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning” by Peter Ecceles.
“Intuitive Topology” by Prasolo
The Moscow Puzzles (Kordemsky) and Mathematical Circles: Russian Experience (Fomin).
Flatland by Edwin Abbott
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff & Irving Geis
The Code Book, by Simon Singh
George Polya’s “How to Solve It”
Imre Lakatos’s “Proofs and Refutations”
The Symmetry of Things, by John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss.
Famous Problems in Geometry and how to Solve them
Fermat’s Enigma, by Simon Singh
Fundamentals of Mathematics” by Moses Richardson
“Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea” by Charles Seife.
Forever Undecided: A Puzzle Guide to Godel”, by Ray Smullyan.
Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz.
“One, Two Three . . . Infinity” - by George Gamov was a fun general read.
Feynman’s Lectures
“Conceptual Mathematics”.
Courant & Robbins ‘What is Mathematics?’.
Weyl’s ‘Symmetry’.
The Art of Problem Solving - volumes 1 and 2 - by Richard Rusczyk and Sandor Lehoczky
Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach
J. Weeks, The Shape of Space
T. Needham, Visual Complex Analysis
one to infinity that is a collection of all the major papers of mathematicians throughout history.
From Here to Infinity by Ian Stewart.
The Knot Book by Colin C Adams.
“Number Theory in Science and Communication: With Applications to Cryptography,
Physics, Digital Information, Computing and Self-Similarity” by Manfred Schroeder.
Chaos by James Gleich.
Berlinghoff and Gouvêa, Math Through The Ages. Published by Mathematical Association of America.
Surreal Numbers, by Donald Knuth
The Book of Numbers, by John Conway and Richard Guy
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, by Richard Feynman
Chaos, by James Gleick
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, by Larry Gonick and Woollcott Smith
The Manga Guide to Statistics, by Shin Takahashi
Richard Courant’s What is Mathematics?.

more to come. be well.

math literacy and the stimulus: what's in it for you?

a thought on the reinvestment package: it will transform the american and the global economic game in a fundamental way. the era of carbon based energy is over. these are huge, and welcome, investments in science and technology directed to this end. it is important that we understand what is happening and take the steps necessary to ensure broad based african american participation in this reinvestment package. this requires that our communities and our local institutions-churches, schools, colleges, etc pay close attention to the forms, the applications, the questionnaires, timetables, catalogues, programs, diplomas, advertisements,...and so on. the ability of a community to effectively manage the bureaucracy is, i submit, a form of math literacy.

a sampling of the initiatives in the package:



Support for Science and Math Education

* $100 million to the National Science Foundation to improve instruction in science, math and engineering.

Total: $100 million

Energy Efficiency Weatherization

* $6.0 billion for increasing energy efficiency and conservation in federal buildings.

* $3.5 billion in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants to help state and local governments make investments that make them more energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions.

* $3.4 billion for State Energy Programs, to support residential, commercial, and governmental retrofits.

* $500 million in loan guarantees to help institutions implement sustainable energy infrastructure projects. It is estimated that this will support $5 billion in loans.

* $2.5 billion for a new program to upgrade HUD sponsored low-income housing to increase energy efficiency, including new insulation, windows, and furnaces.

* $1.5 billion for energy sustainability and efficiency grants and loans to help school districts, institutes of higher education, local governments, and municipal utilities implement projects that will make them more energy efficient.

* $5 billion to HUD for public housing building repair and modernization, including critical safety repairs.

* $1.5 billion to the HOME Program to help local communities build and rehabilitate low-income housing using green technologies.

* $500 million to rehabilitate and improve energy efficiency at some of the over 42,000 housing units maintained by Native American housing programs.

* $10 million for rural, high-need areas to undertake projects using sustainable and energy-efficient building and rehabilitation practices.

* $20 billion for 21st Century Green High-Performance school construction, renovation, and modernization including energy efficiency improvements.

* $4.5 billion for renovation and energy efficiency improvements in Department of Defense facilities.

* $1.5 billion for renovation of NIH university-based research centers, with priority for upgrades that improve energy efficiency.

* $950 million for renovation of Veterans Affairs facilities including energy efficiency upgrades.

Total: $51.36 billion

* $6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program to help low-income families reduce their energy costs by weatherizing their homes and make our country more energy efficient.

* $1 billion for LIHEAP to help low-income families pay for home heating and cooling at a time of rising energy costs.

* $300 million to provide consumers with rebates for buying energy efficient Energy Star products to replace old appliances.

Total: $7.5 billion

Green-Collar Job Training


* $500 million for WIA training programs in renewable energy and energy efficiency defined in Green Jobs Act.

* $300 million to upgrade Job Corps training facilities serving at-risk youth to improve energy efficiency and provide career training.

* $100 million for worker training as part of the Smart Grid investment program.

Total: $900 million




brooklyn and the stimulus package? more to come soon. be well.

a rough sketch

found my self watching tv this evening. lot's of talk about unemployment and subprime mortgages. see "Is there a solution to the foreclosure mess that's destroying communities"? it is well done and it details the consequences of madoff type operators working in an environment lacking in mathematical literacy. take a good look at the new york city sub prime maps. pay close attention to the demographics of the communities with the highest concentration of sub prime mortgages.

this situation is in play across the country. neighbors in distress abandoning homes, leading to lower property values, crime, dwindling community resources, and ultimately to neighborhoods being destroyed. what's at issue?

A = P(1+i)^n + race + incompetence

i.e., the compound interest formula compounded by racism in the hands of incompetents. there are four thing here: A the amount you must repay, P the down payment, i the interest rate, and n the number of payment periods. there is no magic, the piper always gets paid. i digress, my initial impulse this evening was to draw your attention to the data from the labor statistics office on unemployment. two points:

1. the unemployment rate for african american folk, nationally, is already above 10%. this is no surprise to anyone who has happened to be on franklin & eastern parkway on a monday at 11am.
2. the unemployment rate of folks with bachelor's degrees or higher is the lowest. education and employment are inextricably linked. see tables from the bureau of labor statistics.

what discipline is most important in college completion?

of all pre-college curricula, the highest level of mathematics one studies in secondary school has the strongest continuing influence on bachelor’s degree completion. finishing a course beyond the level of algebra 2, for example trigonometry or pre-calculus, more than doubles the odds that a student who enters a post-secondary institution will complete a bachelor’s degree! it's time for the algebra revolution. smile. more to come.

what is math literacy?

trust all is well. i am very heartened by the response to my first few posts on this matter. i will endeavor to answer the questions as best as i can. here is a sampling:

• We gotta answer the question of WHY? Why do you need to know Math..well? What does that mean to our future earnings, our quality of life, the life of our children...damm! I could go on and on...
• How does math literacy hold the key to the enfranchisement of communities?
• The state of affairs in the African American community in regards to higher education is in shambles... there needs to be grand sweeping changes in the ways in which we teach our children, so they can teach future generations to no longer be serfs in the digital age. How do we do this?
• How do we integrate our culture and our diversity into the middle grades curriculum in content areas such as: science, technology, and math.
  
• How do we develop effective teachers who are able to deal with students who have learning styles and experiences that are outside of the "mainstream." ?
  
• How do we gather folk with more than content expertise: i.e., folk with personal and intimate experience of "difference" and put this into the service of effective pedagogy?
• How do we get to our boys who are stuck on C?
  

as i read these responses i realized that in order to answer the question as to why math literacy is important we needed to first establish: what is literacy? and in particular, what is math literacy?

"Mathematical literacy is an individual’s capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world, to make well-founded judgements and to use and engage with mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that individual’s life as a constructive, concerned and reflective citizen."

what does this mean on flatbush & nostrand avenues?

before we answer this question. let's take a look at the talk by "Ethno-mathematician" Ron Eglash. it's about fifteen minutes. it is the deep history which i hope will guide the unfolding of this discussion. in it are already the answers to a number of the questions posed. Eglash is the author of African Fractals, a book that examines the fractal patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa. by looking at aerial-view photos -- and then following up with detailed research on the ground -- Eglash discovered that many african villages are purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in mathematically predictable patterns.

at root: "Being literate in math is vital to participating in life. It's hugely the gatekeeper to many careers. If you can't do well in an algebra class in the ninth grade, you're shut out of college." - Deborah Lowenberg Ball, dean of the University of Michigan's School of Education. we will explore what this literacy consists of in a more detailed manner in our next installment. enjoy the talk and also check out the algebra project site.