 In the spirit of my ancestors, I greet you in the tradition of call and response through a single, yet powerful word that means to be at peace. Please repeat after me. Ho-tep. Ho-tep. Ho-tep. Ho-tep. Ho-tep. We have just wished each other to be at peace. Yet we cannot attain that peace while we struggle with the question, is ours, is your mathematics, obfuscating or liberating the minds of young learners? In 1947, my Morehouse College and Alpha Phi Alpha brother, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated, "'It seems to me that education serves a two-fold function to perform in the lives of people and in society. One is utility, the other is culture." He went on to say, "'At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose.'" Now, we ask this question all the time. Raise your hand, at least for me. I know I've asked this question a lot. Raise your hand if you've ever asked this question. Now, people online, feel free to tap in the chat, yes, or a hands up emoji or whatever the case may be. But I imagine many of us have asked this question or I've heard this question as educators. Why do we have to do this? Why? That's a very good question. We're gonna look at talking about using applications. Utility and culture to help better explain why we teach the things we teach and what kind of revolution we want in the classroom. Using the students previous experience and their cultural expertise. Here's some responses that I've heard as well. Because I said so. It'll help you later in life. You'll need to know it for the next class. And then a pretty gruesome one, I think. Stop asking questions and just do it. Can you imagine someone saying that to you while you're curious about this topic that you're covering? I can understand that feeling as well. So, how do we inspire a revolution and mathematics education? Well, we're gonna look at the building blocks that Brother King shared with us. Utility and culture. So, we see that for utility, one of the things that we can look at is exposing students to the applications of mathematics. In front of you, you see the work of Sir D.R.C. Thompson, a mathematical biologist that used transformations to help explain differences between similar species. Imagine our students describing, explaining evolutionary jumps or determining a pattern when a species reacts to stimuli and then passes that reaction down to the next generation. Sounds pretty amazing to me. These fish, I don't know what's going on with these fish, but here they are. So, real quick, we see someone on the left using mathematics in the field, well, in the water. And then on the right, we have some peculiar math teacher. I don't know who it is, but some peculiar math teacher trying to sail a ship that's already been wrecked. I don't know who is who between the two, but I imagine you can determine who that is. Definitely the one on the right is not me, though. Just saying. So now we look at culture and how it fits with education. Right, we think about how culture fits with education by saying culture is developed and perpetuated through people that share their experiences, their stories, their wisdom, their food, music, religion, and any new artifacts that are added to the culture as time progresses. Utility and culture add that. They give you that opportunity. Specifically with culture, giving students the chance to be the expert when viewing the work is one way we look at sparking a revolution. Culture is also a lens that students can use when they are spreading their culture's viewpoint to others and an attempt for them to comprehend the student's perspective. It's not always going to work, but students being the cultural experts gives other students and the teacher an opportunity to learn. So here we see the co-creators of the self-determination theory talk about autonomy and how it's perhaps the most essential of intrinsic motivators. So I bring that up because we want to be able to share with our students that what you have to say is important. Your viewpoint is important. We must have it. We know, like our youth and ourselves, we have this background expertise. We have this background perspective. We have these memories. We have these skills and we should be able to bring that into the classroom. It's not always going to be the case where we can use it every single time, but giving students confidence and pride in their culture, their identities, alongside allowing them to spread their culture's viewpoint as stated before is a building block that we must use. So with culture, we're gonna switch to teacher mode here. Don't worry, lock the doors. Don't let them out. Don't worry, don't worry, it's okay. So this is from one of my geometry activities. We were using transformations. You know, good old transformations. We talk about reflection, rotation, dilation and translations. But I did it in a different perspective. So I talked about how we wear a mask in the pandemic and we wear it so we are protecting ourselves and others. But let me introduce you to a different type of mask that is also used for protection. In 1895, the African-American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote the poem, We Wear the Mask. Now, you can see part of it is up here already and we see that it says we wear the mask that grins and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes. This debt we pay to human guile with torn and bleeding hearts we smile and mouth with myriad of subtleties. Why should the world be over wise and counting all our tears in size? Nay, let them only see us while we wear the mask. Now, many of you may understand the metaphor behind wearing the mask as uncovering our feelings, our emotions and hiding from the world what you're actually feeling with a facade, with a mask that says, I'm okay, think about that. Raise your hand if you've ever done that. I'm doing it right now actually. So, but one of the questions that comes up with this activity is how do students choose to bring to life the mask that they've been metaphorically wearing? Another question is, where in school do they feel safe in taking that mask off? So, we know this feeling, we relate to it. But maybe not everyone relates to it or perfectly understands it. So, this artifact from 1895 and now we're looking at almost 130 years later, not everyone might not understand that. So, here's a contemporary artifact that may be more helpful in comprehending this poem. This is a meme, if you've never heard of a meme, memes convey so many perspectives, ideas, thoughts. Yes, we know that the phrase, there's a thousand words in the picture. But look at this picture, look at this person. Usually it's meant for fun, for laughter, I get that. I use it all the time too when people talk about my team, the Dallas Mavericks, I understand. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's, I turn off the internet, okay? But this person, look at their eyes, look at the tears, potentially the rage, the pain that they are feeling, that they're covering up with this smiley face. Think about how our students do that. Think about how we do that. Do you have a safe space to take the mask off? Do you have someone you feel safe with to take that mask off? That's important for us to think about. Okay, we're still in class. Don't try to get up, don't worry, it's all right. Security, get that one, I see you. So, here are the four transformations we talked about briefly. The first one, we can see that's a reflection. The second one, we can see that's a translation. The third one, we can see a dilation. And then of course, the last one is a rotation, all right? So, these are all transformations. And when I think about these, of course, the geek in me, I see some geeks out here as well, this is what pops in my head. I couldn't help it, sorry. Just to make sure if you didn't hear that, yeah, that's the transformers, that's right. Shout out to the 80s transformers. So, here are some artifacts that my students made in some previous geometry classes. And this is how they brought their metaphorical masks to life. Along with the poem, the full poem is there as well. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to read it. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, we wear the mask. So, as a teacher, I can understand the feeling of a class slipping away, letting students lead with their ideas, with their thoughts, with their experiences. Some of us as teachers, oh my God, they're going wild. No, that's okay. It's normal for students to be very active. It's not chaos. I think some people label it as chaos. I don't think it's chaos. I think it's the universe finding form. And with that, we know that some things are going to work and some things, not so much. But it's important for us to remember that we must disrupt the mathematics classroom. And one way to do that is to disrupt teachers being at the centerpiece. We must step aside and we must allow students to be the expert. We must allow them to lead with their ideas, with their perspectives. And we also must recognize that teachers don't have all the answers. We can't. There's no way teachers can have all the answers. But if we allow students and their colleagues to join in, they're more likely to develop solutions, potential solutions with collaboration and with a multitude of expertise coming in with those students' backgrounds. So remember, disrupt what we normally do in the mathematics classroom by having teachers at the centerpiece. They can't be that always. It's just not right. That's not how we should be able to educate our students. Allow students at the forefront. Give them opportunities for leadership. Give them opportunities to be the expert using their cultural backgrounds, using their cultural lenses. Imagine the confidence and pride they have when they explain, this is what I understood from that, based on this, this, and this in my background. And finally, we're here to inspire a revolution with utility and culture. We're also here to let our students know that we believe in them, that we love them. And for them, they need to learn about their background and about who they are. And with that, the revolution can begin. It starts at the beginning with know thyself. If you know thyself, you know what you want. You know what you believe, you know what you can attain. And we remind them not to let anyone take that from them. So, I'd like to close the way we opened. Please repeat after me. Hold tip. Hold tip. Hold tip. Hold tip. Hold tip. Hold tip. Hold tip. Thank you.