 tired of it. It's very draining. A lot of the work that I do, I'm very honest. As a scholar, I'm in the place of, and I have to piggyback on my homie Ronnie, where I said, I'm talking to the people that want to hear what I'm saying, right? Because that's where I am, even with my scholarship, right? Because now it's saying, hey, I need some other voices to make the superiority, and it shouldn't be the black professor, the black researcher always talking about the inequality that African American students are facing in mathematics. I'm tired. And there's a lineage of folk that are in front and behind me that are tired. And so as educators, how are you voicing this? Because we need allies. We need allies. And it takes people in those powerful positions and powerful structures to now say, now this is a priority for me, right? Because I see other folks suffering. And so this is a conversation that I have with a lot of colleagues. We're tired of talking about it. And so now we need other voices to come to the table and say this is a problem as well. I don't know if I want to take that. What do people in power do? What can they do? There's a great teacher in New York City that some folks probably know. Can we hear this? Yeah. There's a teacher in New York City that some of you may know, Jose Vilsen, who has a great saying about this that stuck with me for a while. He says, you know, in math we often tell our students to show your work. It's kind of our refrain. You do the problem, show your work, show me how you thought about it. He said, you know, as math educators, this is do the work. Like we need to think of that as a refrain in exactly the same way that we need to always be pushing ourselves to say, like, where does this fit? Like Kim, I was saying, like equity needs to be everywhere. It needs to be in spaces like this where we center equity, where we have a specific time set aside and it needs to be the lens through which we look at every other decision we make and every conversation we have and every time we talk about a student or talk about an initiative in the school. And I think for white folks, the work means that you're trying to make those changes, but you hold this tension in your head that you're like constantly approaching that with this enormous sense of humility, right? You're like, you're trying to make change. You're trying to do right by students and you're recognizing that like we don't know, right? And we still have to learn and we still have to be open to the idea that even though we're putting in the work, we're still coming up short, that if we just go about business the way we have and we, you know, teach and we see who learns, then we reproduce the exact systems that already exist. And if instead we take our job as to root around and find that brilliance in every student and we approach that with the humility that every student that we don't surface brilliance in in our class is something that we need to work on and we need to get better at the next class, the next week, the next year, that's the work. And I think that's a really hard tension to hold in your head and it's a really hard like humility to come to, especially with the way we've constructed mathematics that this is thing that you're just good at and we're privileged into and that's who we are and so we need to constantly be pushing ourselves to step back and have that. Sorry, I just love that song. I'd like to also say that having people with influence and they don't all end up being white because I've had to struggle with a lot of administrators who looked exactly like me but had a different agenda, but I'd have to say collaborating, have active curiosity, like seek out opportunities to go, am I walking with this concept as a strand through everything that I'm doing? Like you said, Kimon. It's essential that we practice it until our muscle memory is like this is natural for me. And yes, it's hard, anything you start is hard, but it's about time for the people with influence to recognize that it's time to change your own paradigm of comfortable. If you're still comfortable then you're not changing your environment. And that curiosity helps to inspire curiosity in others. I literally had to go have a meeting with the principal to change curriculum because I wasn't teaching from the textbook. At the beginning of every school year I teach a video from the BBC called The Story of One, which is the history of numbers. I had to prove that that was mathematically related. The history of numbers includes the whole globe. So every student in my classroom, the Muslims and the Egyptians and the Africans and the British, all of those students see themselves in that video, but I had to prove to an administrator that a video about ones and zeros was mathematically related. And I had to take two white female colleagues with me to advocate for me. Thank you. But I could teach from a textbook that was five years too old. Shay or Andrea, do you want to take this question? No? Okay. Before we jump to the next question, I just want to highlight one thing that you said, Dylan. Dylan shouted out to Jose Wilson. Some of you has read his amazing book. This is not a test. It's dope. It is a really good book. And talking about like what we can do, I think just the fact that you all are here in this room, I mean, give yourselves a round of applause for being here, right? Showing up, right? Just showing up is a big part of it, right? And being in those spaces. And for those of you who want to continue that conversation, Jose and the Edu Color Group, E-D-U-C-O-L-O-R does a monthly chat, and they do some amazing stuff just online so you can sort of get connected to that work, right? Okay. So here's another question from Julie Wright. Julie asks, my school's whole teaching staff is white and Asian American. 25% of our students are neither white nor Asian American. My district's math teachers are overwhelmingly white. We rarely acknowledge this directly to students. Should we? And if so, what's your guidance? Sorry, voice, right? Julie teaches in a school in which only a small fraction of her students, about a quarter of her students are white and Asian American, yet the majority of the teachers are white and Asian American. Is that right? 75% are white or Asian American. Okay. So I think what we're getting to is that there's just a disconnect. There's an unproportionality. Is that right? Okay. So should we talk about this? And what's your guidance? Is that right? Okay. I'm sorry, I'm not following the question. Again, what's the... Is Julie here? Julie, you want to read? Yeah. Did she clarify? Yeah, I'm just... Do you want me to clarify? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shout out. I know what that feels like, or what that felt like to me. I wish somebody acknowledged it, and I'm not acknowledging it to them. But I love your guidance on whether and how... So I'll just say this. I did an ethnographic study with African American high school boys. And the biggest thing that they talked about for me, and I'm gonna just say it like this, they said, black people don't do math because I don't see it. So I just let that sit with you right there. And so no matter how much we talk about it, where's the visual representation? Because that becomes critical for success. That becomes critical for me even thinking that that is attainable, right? It wasn't until one of my boys Carter, he said, I didn't know black people did math until they brought a black mathematician in as a guest speaker to my class. And he talked. And for the first time, he told me about the history of mathematics. He told me that African Americans had major contributions in mathematics. And he said it opened up a whole new world for me. But I'm pretty much out the math game now. He said, Kim, I'm not gonna I'm not doing well in it. But his speech was in powerful. And I wish I had that when I was in like, Kinder or first grade. And so now part of it, and his statement was wrapped into, I don't see folks that look like me that does math. And what happens is in his particular community, it played out because that was reinforced in his home life where his parents also said, Yeah, as long as you get a C in math, I'm good. Right. And so it was that in school, what happens when I come from school, didn't disrupt that any kind of way. And so part of it. And so if he's situated in your school, right, it's going to continue to foster the notion that we don't do this because I don't see any teachers that even represent that. Or you're not even bringing in a space for us to have conversations about that. Or you're not even showing me in your math lessons for that not only benefits the black student, but benefits all your students that there are black mathematicians. Right. And so how are you even having conversations with the students that you have, right, in terms of showing African American mathematicians, right, that becomes very important. So for me, visual representation is huge. And see, I would have I'm saying you said and going to see hidden figures is amazing. It's excellent. But have you had real tangible mathematicians in that school space would be my question. And so how are you providing access? Because we talk about access, right? I need somebody I can touch feel Oh, Teddy's a real statistician. Right. I have a friend that's an African American and he's a statistician for the NBA. Do you know how much impact that has on my black students when I bring them into a classroom space? So it's bigger than just having a conversation. What are you actually doing that's making it material for kids? The materiality piece of it? Well, what I want to address this question, Julie, he says it so well. We need to be conscious that we're functioning in the last 40, 50 years of just getting to equality. And so that was such a struggle and it still is it's ongoing. It has not ended. But equality is not equity. So equality was the power for us to even have the conversation. But equity is now just like King was that is now it's about doing what we said we were going to do. So it's actionizing the philosophy that they wouldn't let us talk about before. So equity and equality are not the same things. Equity is action. So Peg has a really good question. Peg Kegel, am I pronouncing that correctly? Yeah, where are you, Peg? Yeah, there you are. So you say you're grappling with walking in the line between being an ally and a co conspirator and not ending up unintentionally centering your whiteness. And you're asking for advice. Is that okay? Yeah, right? Mm hmm. So I yeah, I'm gonna front this by saying that I want to jump up and down that question. There's there's there are a lot of scholars who don't use the word ally anymore, just because it's the word that's been coopted. But but it also there's an aura of missionary sort of altruism associated with being an ally versus you see yourself in that walk together. You see the struggle is all of us together in this and not that you choose to help, right? I'll just put that out there. I think there's this fear that could be paralyzing where we there's there's this fear that can be paralyzing where we feel like we get this conceptually. But we're not sure what a first step is. And article that I think should be mandatory reading for educators right now is Rachelle Gutierrez again. It's called creative and subordination. I forget the subtitle. And I'm happy to share a link. But it's this really great piece that gets that like we work in these institutions where we can feel like we don't have any agency and actually making a change, right? And like navigating this line of how we support students within these structures that just recreate a lot of the inequities that we want to work against. And she has some really, really both harsh words for the way education is set up right now and some really great ways to think about steps that we can take, even in institutions that feel like they are unchangeable to do that advocacy for students and create situations where those students can shine and activities for folks in power to take on to practice that type of empathy and practice that type of thinking. So I would say check that out and think about what of the strategies that she offers there. Can we engage within schools to make small changes right away? I also just want to add and you make a brilliant point. I also want to say the way for me you can de-center your whiteness is co-constructing knowledge with your students. Because what happens when you do that is you're no longer, you're no longer the main act. You're no longer the feature attraction. It's not about you. You are actually empowering your students to create knowledge together in a space together, right? Because oftentimes we as educators and we as teachers go in and it's all us. I say if I go into a classroom and the teacher doing 90% of the talking, that's not a place where I want to be. Right? Because you are centered and if you happen to be white then your whiteness is being centered. Whoever it is, your nest is being centered when you are the one engaging in ideas, showing kids how to think, what to think, what to do, how to go about this, solving this formula instead of providing multiple ways of knowing. Right? And so you de-center whiteness when you really start co-constructing knowledge with your students. And that's a skill that takes years to learn. But it's something that I think is a beginning concept. So that's moving away from that teacher-centered classroom to more of that student-centered space. And then your whiteness becomes de-centered. Yeah, I just want to echo what you're saying, Kimai, is just like we know that in order to be a really good math teacher or to be a math teacher that your students empathize with is to show that you're learning to position yourself as a learner. Right? Position yourself as a learner also about these issues. Right? You know, many of us have no idea. We've never taught black history in school. And so you're learning along with them. Your students have stuff to teach you that you never learned. Right? I think for me, you know, being Chinese-American, I walk this fine line as well. You know, I am a person of color, but I'm extremely privileged in the math space. Right? And I've learned to navigate that and somehow sometimes takes advantage of my privilege, but also just be a learner. And it's always been a learning. Like, I'm just starting to learn about, like, LGBTQIA history in the United States. This is something I never learned, and I had to really immerse myself and get, connect with other community. And so that's the other part is none of us does this work alone. If you do it alone, it'll traumatize you and destroy you. Right? It's really isolating. So find compadres. Find a crew. Find your people. Right? Find what keep I'm going to steal your word. Find your cipher. Right? Anyone else want to take this question? So we're down to our last five minutes. And I wanted question three for us to think about action steps we can take as lovers of math to make math more equitable. And you have to say this in something that's tweetable, something short and sweet. So why don't we start? Andrea's got the mic. You want to start? Okay, something tweetable. I would say I want to teach mathematics and do mathematics in a way that's very personal. So I want my students to be empowered to do mathematics themselves. And I want to present myself as a real human being who does mathematics. So I don't want to strip away any part of me in order to fit in with some norm that might be might have been set for me. Can't tweet that. That was a lot of characters. Sorry. I don't use Twitter. Okay. I'm thinking. I don't tweet. I guess I'm still thinking. You were not supposed to hear those other comments. I guess to make math more equitable, what I would say is if if if you're the only one who gets it, you really don't get it. That's what I would say. My tweet has a citation to Danny Bernard Martin who is who I've been reading on this and is is my my recommended read to everyone in this room for your next steps in your education. But you know paraphrasing all of his work, do the work to question what mathematics is until you can surface brilliance in every student. Be conscious that the students who walk into your classroom are living in the path that was made for them and not one that they make. Let them lead because equality is not equity. I guess I'm ready. No, I'd say math equity means relinquishing control. I know we shouldn't drop them. I got to follow that. I think I think remember every kid we work with could be your kid. So I think we have we have one more question that's popped up on Twitter. Yeah. Oh, my apology. You are absolutely right. I'm getting a technological privilege. Does anybody here have a question? Anyone have a question? Please raise your hand. I'll come by when we voice the question. Yeah. Oh, we have one there. Yeah. 90% 5% of you kids are white and the boarding program we have a lot of Chinese students and Asian students and I had a BC Cal class this semester and almost everyone was Chinese or white man. So going forward when they get to the college and they have other people of color, how could I like what could I tell them so that they're welcome and prepare them so that when they see someone else, they don't just kind of disregard. I don't feel like I'm talking so much. That becomes a critical question because and I'll go back to the study I did with my brothers in the R one space in the STEM space. The problem became nobody want they were last to be picked when any time they were form formations of groups. So my African Americans talked about how Asian and white males did not want to work with them via vis-a-vis lab space lab projects. Anything just did not want to work with them because they feel that they didn't have enough intellectual prowess. Right. So that becomes a reality. If I were you man, I honestly, day one, start talking about and showing up the statistics of who does math in the United States and I'd have an honest conversation about that because what that's going to allow you to do is going to first of all allow you to have conversation of how are these people in that space even feeling about it because I never even want to make assumptions with students about thinking that they won't be welcoming. There may be brothers in your class that are extremely welcoming but you may not know that because you haven't facilitated a discussion to even find that out. Right. And so I think showing statistics, you know, I'm very forthright when my teachers come to my math methods class. I literally show them who's participating in STEM and it's broken down by race and miles like oh my God because the hard data hits home because we don't talk about it. Right. As a nation we say it but rarely do we put math and now we talk about math work. Right. I literally show the math associated with and people are astonished. We got to do something. So I would I would welcome you to even have that conversation and see where that leads you and see what the what the folks in your classroom space is actually thinking and then that sets you up to how to further engage them. I think that's our time. I apologize. Thank you very much. So before you roll just quick shout out to the math equity workshop group. Those of you who have deeper questions about this we're just a representation of some people but there's a lot of great teacher leaders here a lot of great math equity folk many of them are sitting right here in the front. You've got some questions to ask come on up. Cool. Have a great Friday y'all. Peace.