Nana Wisdom
Nana don't play. One time, when I was young I told my grandmother, Nana, I loved her. I used to say it often, but one time she cracked back.
She’d say it with a straight face. I fall out everytime I think of that quote. But like all Nana wisdom, it carried hard truth.
Nana wisdom was seldom wrong. Always pointing me to engage in the authentic, hard work that could sustain our collective.
Lately, through our continual professional learning series with networks of practicing math, science, and STEM teachers, I’ve started hearing Nana’s voice again.
In our second session with teachers, we asked teachers to engage in some hope work.
Hope Work in Math
What happened in our following coaching sessions reflected the real hard and necessary work teachers must engage in - work that isn't covered in district PD learning sessions or university certification training.
The room went quiet. We found themselves asking different questions and facing harder truths than they were used to.
The room went quiet. We found themselves asking different questions and facing harder truths than they were used to.
Because the longer I work with STEM educators, the clearer it becomes.
And yet… teachers still choose our sessions. They still choose to do hope work in math. But like we are finding in our gatherings, it's hard and often messy. Here are some hard truths aka 'nana wisdoms' we uncovered
Knowledge is Power
One teacher described a lesson around exploring angles and parallel lines and planned application in having students look at maps and not seeing the kind of response imagined. No big deal, but it was what she mentioned next left our circle in a kind of quiet shock.
Her students were not living tidy, predictable stories. They were working after school, caring for siblings, catching buses across three neighborhoods, and carrying weights that challenged how this hope-ish lesson landed. “They have full lives after 3:30,” she said. “And the math I’m bringing doesn’t touch any of it.”
That moment stayed with me. Not because she lacked effort or intention.
Math is Felt in the Body
At another session, we debriefed about a planned lesson in a financial literacy class on credit cards. We ended up talking about choices made in early adulthood.
About survival. About financial wounds that follow us into middle age.
About the ways money shapes our sense of worth.
About the lives we hope our students will not have to repair.
It's why teachers in financial literacy are so passionate about this topic. It's personal. I shared a piece of my own story—the risks and realities of building an organization financially. I talked about the tremendous pressure. I paused.
For a moment, math lived in the body. Not in the text, nor some disconnected example. We held that moment in the same bodies where pain, love, anxiety and joy compete everyday. We spend so much time, money and effort promoting math in the mind that we don't realize that we are also pushing disconnect. Math happens in the body.
Vulnerability is a Precondition for Good Math Experiences
One of the things we hope to get to in our session was the practice of amplifying student voice. But we were detoured, when we realized an important precondition. During one of our Hope sessions, a teacher admitted he couldn’t design a community project his students would care about.
He was sincere. He kept saying he was stuck. I asked him if he had ever done any community work. He nodded and began to describe a volunteer effort he had been involved with for years. I asked him, gently, “Why not bring that to your students?” The room shifted. It brought forward a truth we don’t name often enough:
They have lives and commitments that belong in the room too. Not in competition or privilege, but alongside students and their communities. In solidarity. This requires vulnerability. It asks you to be a person in the space, not just the person in charge of the space. That is where the greatest opportunities for engaging math experiences are.
Hope work makes this possible.
If this work speaks to you, join us at the Inspire Institute for Math & Science. On January 15, we're inviting a new national cohort of Teaching Math for Impact and Hope.
