David Stocker's Maththatmatters

Maththatmatters, indeed, recalls my past math textbooks containing pizza, price discount, or circle problems. At that time, my teacher seemed just busy introducing all the topics in math. I only cared about good grades. Later in my real-world, I started to realize that the math problems, which I had learned in my class, were not really meaningful/beneficial. I did not have the opportunity to think about the world while solving math problems, since those problems were hardly designed around real-life application.

However, Maththatmatters introduces interesting activities/problems related to social justice issues aimed at “global awareness and optimism” (p.14). I believe that such method is an effective and creative approach to teaching students, because connecting to math in real life would motivate students not only to learn math skills but also to be aware of social justice issues. Math is not just about getting numerical answers anymore. Math problems should require students to apply their math skills to real-life situations. Eventually, this will lead students to question themselves about the world around them and find math problems very useful in their lives.

I definitely think that these ideas from middle school math can also inspire teaching ideas for my secondary math classes, because they help me think about how I should design/introduce math problems based on real-life. Indeed, students with math anxiety can be motivated to solve math problems related to the social issue of their interest. Nevertheless, it is not easy for me to link some social justice issues and math to deepen students’ understanding of the real world. Yet, I know that the efforts I put into integrating social justice to my math class will pay off someday when students start to wonder about the world to build a better society.