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Episode Summary:

Are you ready to transform your math classroom into a space where students see the beauty and relevance of mathematics in their everyday lives?

In this episode, we speak with long time friend of the show Sunil Singh who is here to give you a snapshot of his upcoming Make Math Moments Summit session around the Language of Mathematics. Sunil is an author, educator, and advocate for the teaching and learning of the beauty of mathematics! Stick with us and you’ll hear how viewing mathematics as a language to be fluently learned can revolutionize your teaching. You’ll uncover why contemporary mathematics has been excluded from K-12 math classrooms; how teachers are acting as translators in the language of mathematics and how we can help students become more fluent; and how we can create a community of scavengers in a world of mathematics. 

Resources:

• Sunil Singh on Twitter (X)

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Episode Summary:

 Quick recap

The participants discussed the importance of approaching mathematics as a language to be learned fluently, emphasizing the need for understanding its cultural and historical context. They also explored the concept of contemporary fluency in mathematics, the role of teachers as subject specialists, and the challenges of making mathematics more accessible and engaging for students. The conversation concluded with the importance of inspiring teachers to create “math epiphanies” for their students and the need for lifelong learning to ensure they can continue to inspire. 

Learning Mathematics as a Language

Kyle, Jon, and Sunil discussed the importance of approaching mathematics as a language to be learned fluently. Sunil, with his experience in the Making Math Moments events, emphasized the significance of understanding the cultural and historical nuances of mathematics. He also shared his plans to share his experiences from recent summits and his ideas for the next one. Jon reflected on his own language experiences and agreed with Sunil on the parallels between learning a new language and mathematics. The discussion concluded with Jon seeking to understand how to incorporate these ideas into his classroom practice.

Contemporary Fluency and Accessible Mathematics

Sunil proposed that contemporary fluency should include not only factual and procedural knowledge, but also conceptual and contemporary aspects. He suggested that teachers should strive to keep up with current developments in their respective fields, citing examples of updated curriculums in literature and science. Jon raised concerns about the accessibility of higher-level mathematics and whether technology could aid in making it more accessible. Sunil responded that while full understanding may require specialized knowledge, fostering curiosity and fluency in the subject could lead to a deeper appreciation and understanding.

Improving Teaching Skills and Curiosity

Kyle expressed a desire to improve his teaching skills and become a subject specialist in multiple areas. Sunil agreed with Kyle’s goal and emphasized the importance of teachers’ intentions, suggesting they should strive to provide a richer mathematical experience for their students. Sunil also presented an example of a question he asked his students, encouraging them to explore and discover the answer themselves, instead of being told. This approach fostered curiosity and engaged students in the learning process.

Inspiring Teachers to Enhance Mathematics Education

Sunil and Jon discussed the challenges of teaching mathematics and the need to inspire teachers to bring new and engaging materials into their classrooms. They highlighted the issue of teachers feeling overwhelmed with their current workload and the difficulty in introducing new content. Jon compared teachers to translators, explaining how the teaching of mathematics has often resulted in a loss of depth and beauty in the subject. Sunil shared his own experience of struggling with calculus and how a mentor challenged him, prompting a deeper understanding of mathematics.

Embracing Curiosity in Math Education

Sunil expressed his frustration with the current approach to math education, emphasizing the importance of curiosity and the emotional aspects of learning. He argued that confusion and a sense of being lost are not negative emotions, but rather essential parts of the mathematical journey. Kyle responded by highlighting the importance of awareness and the need for educators to strengthen their own understanding in order to better guide their students. Both agreed on the idea of encouraging a community of learners who are curious and willing to pursue ideas, even if it means admitting confusion or uncertainty along the way.

Addressing Math Education Challenges

Kyle expressed concerns about the lengthy process of transforming math education. Sunil proposed pausing to assess students’ attitudes towards mathematics and suggested involving them in discussions about making the subject more engaging. He shared a personal anecdote of using mathematics to elevate the mood of juvenile detention center inmates, emphasizing the power of the subject to temporarily transport individuals to a better mental state. JON acknowledged Sunil’s points.

Inspiring Teachers for Math Epiphanies

Jon, Sunil, and Kyle discussed the importance of inspiring teachers to create “math epiphanies” for their students. They agreed that focusing on content rather than pedagogy is key to this process. Sunil expressed his hope for participants in his upcoming summit session to leave feeling more excited and curious about mathematics. Both Kyle and Sunil emphasized the importance of lifelong learning for teachers to ensure they can continue to inspire their students.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:21:10
Jon Orr
In this episode, we’re going to speak with longtime friend of the show, Sunil Singh. Author, renowned featured speaker and great Canadian friend of us here at Make Math Moments. Sunil is one of the only, I think, guests we’ve had on the show that has presented every single one of our Making moments Virtual Summit and that’s the reason he is here to talk with you.

00:00:21:15 – 00:00:43:05
Jon Orr
We are going to talk about his summit session where we’re talking all about storytelling around mathematics. And specifically we’re going to talk about translator is in language of mathematics here in this episode. But just give you a sneak peek at what’s coming up in November. But let’s get right into it because we’re going to talk about transforming your math class into a space where students see the beauty relevance of mathematics in their everyday lives.

00:00:43:05 – 00:00:57:16
Jon Orr
Let’s go.

00:00:57:18 – 00:01:01:23
Kyle Pearce
Welcome to the Making Math Moments That Matter podcast. I’m Kyle Peirce.

00:01:01:23 – 00:01:04:23
Jon Orr
And I’m John or we are from that moment scope.

00:01:05:00 – 00:01:13:17
Kyle Pearce
This is the only podcast that coaches you through a six step plan to grow your mathematics program, whether it’s at the classroom level or at.

00:01:13:22 – 00:01:30:03
Jon Orr
The district level. And we do that by helping you cultivate and foster your mathematics program like strong, healthy and balanced SRI. So if you master the six parts of an effective mathematics program, the impact that you were going to have on your teachers, your students will grow and reach far and wide.

00:01:30:05 – 00:01:53:11
Kyle Pearce
Every week you’ll get the insight you need to stop feeling overwhelmed, gain back your confidence and get back to enjoying the planning and facilitating of your mathematics program for the students or the educators that you serve. Hey. Hey there, Sunil. Welcome back to the Making Wrap Moments That Matter podcast. You are one of our earliest guests and you’ve been back a few times since.

00:01:53:11 – 00:02:03:01
Kyle Pearce
Also, you have been a participant in our not a participant, but a presenter in our making math moments That Matter Summit is it every single time?

00:02:03:03 – 00:02:05:12
Jon Orr
I think every time I think five years in a row.

00:02:05:16 – 00:02:30:01
Kyle Pearce
I love it. I love it. And there’s always more to share. So the folks that go into the sessions, it seems like every time you would think it would be repetitive, but it’s not. There’s always something new going on. We’re super excited to chat with you here to kind of catch up, but then also to give folks a little bit of a glimpse into the future because this will be coming out before the next.

00:02:30:03 – 00:02:38:23
Kyle Pearce
Making math Moments that Matter summit coming up in November. So, Sunil, welcome back. What’s going on in your world lately? How have you been?

00:02:39:00 – 00:03:03:15
Sunil Singh
Oh, well, I mean, every time it seems like we. Come on, there’s something that’s happened recently or I’ve been traveling in this case. I was traveling, I. I flew to Vancouver for the first time. West Coast Canada loved it. I was there for my niece’s engagement party, flew back, And then the very next day, I flew to Austin to spend three days at the Number Lab, which is this really cool startup.

00:03:03:17 – 00:03:25:02
Sunil Singh
These two people who are exactly what it sounds like. When we think of a lab, we think of experimentation and sort of understanding the specimens of the chemistry and the properties of compounds, elements, how they interact. Being very sort of mindful of terminology. And the same thing with mathematics, like how do numbers interact when we multiply out and things like that.

00:03:25:04 – 00:03:46:02
Sunil Singh
It was a great experience and I’m sure I can sure that maybe next time I come on. But what I want to talk about, which has made me strangely, is actually the summit. And my idea and I haven’t really settled on this, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to do this and then we can sort of work backwards or talk about what’s swirling around.

00:03:46:02 – 00:04:06:17
Sunil Singh
That is the idea of language, of mathematics. And we talk about this all the time, like not about X as a language. I’ve thought about this a great deal because I don’t think we do it. The service in terms of the way we think about language in general. Well, first of all, mathematics is the language of the universe that’s thrown around quite a bit.

00:04:06:19 – 00:04:27:18
Sunil Singh
Okay. Well, that’s a heavy one right there in terms of just the way the universe operates. Okay. Now, if you go come back down to earth and we talk about language. Let’s look at mathematics as a second language. So the same way we adopt a language of language fluency. And I did this actually at OAB when I met you guys.

00:04:27:18 – 00:04:51:15
Sunil Singh
That was my part of my presentation. I shared a clip of Jodie Foster speaking French. Most people don’t know Jodie Foster speaks fluent French. Now, why I showed this clip is because when she’s speaking, she’s always smiling. There’s a lightness about her in terms of anticipating the question. She knows the nuance of the language. She’s very relaxed. She’s excited about the question.

00:04:51:21 – 00:05:14:02
Sunil Singh
She shares her answer with confidence. So we want that same kind of language acquisition of phonetics. If you’re going to talk about mathematics and language, then you must compare it to languages. We you know that we speak and that what it doesn’t mean. Like, are we just memorizing enough phrases to hang out in Paris for a weekend? And it’s functional language.

00:05:14:04 – 00:05:19:00
Sunil Singh
That’s that’s a really low bar. That’s a really low bar.

00:05:19:02 – 00:05:24:24
Kyle Pearce
You’re making me sad. Smell, because I can’t do that in Paris with my French. And I wish I could.

00:05:25:00 – 00:05:41:13
Jon Orr
I just got back from a trip to Italy, and I learned zero Italian to go there. And you’re right. Like, it’s like you go there and you’re like, okay, I’m going to be able to, like, get by, you know? And I’m hoping that they can speak my language. And that’s in the same. Put that spin on that. With mathematics.

00:05:41:13 – 00:05:49:21
Jon Orr
It’s like we’re in the mathematics realm and we want to be able to speak fluently, but everyone’s hoping they speak their language, not mathematics.

00:05:49:23 – 00:06:07:18
Sunil Singh
I’m glad you shared your experience in Italy because, I mean, I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it. I mean, I lived a whole year in Switzerland. I didn’t pick up any German, Italian or French. And I look back, I wonder what my experience might have been. And I lived in the French part. I lived in Lausanne, Switzerland. So the French part.

00:06:07:20 – 00:06:27:15
Sunil Singh
I wonder what my experience would have been if I even picked up some of the language I could. I had maybe better conversations with people I interacted with as opposed to them interact with me based on my English and their limited English. And it’s the same old, same old. But here’s someone who seems he wants to be a learner.

00:06:27:15 – 00:07:03:03
Sunil Singh
He’s going to make mistakes, but he’s trying and he’s interested in the language. He’s interested in learning about it. I mean, the parallels are all there and we just collectively may because it’s how we view mathematics and its purpose. It is pretty utilitarian and it has can be a Clydesdale horse in terms of application. I get that. But if you look at and again, I’ll share that video of Jodie Foster because it is so perfect, but if you look at what high level language acquisition looks like, you speak it fluently, that’s one thing.

00:07:03:03 – 00:07:21:13
Sunil Singh
But you’re also aware of the culture that the language sits in. You may be aware of its history. There’s a lot of nuances which get folded in when you learn language that high. I’m not saying that we’re going to necessarily get there. What I’m saying is that we haven’t even set the bar for that.

00:07:21:15 – 00:07:46:15
Jon Orr
So think about this as like a big lesson that you want to teach teachers in, say, this particular summit session. And we think about mathematics as a language and think about the different things that we have to consider when learning a second language and how do we speak that fluently. What would you say is like an important aspect that a person who’s in the summit session going to be pulling out of this being like, Let’s get this, I got this idea, It makes sense.

00:07:46:17 – 00:07:58:00
Jon Orr
We’ve got these pieces to consider that we’ve got all these kind of things that are kind of are surrounding mathematics. What can I put into practice today or how do I how do I think about that in terms of my classroom?

00:07:58:02 – 00:08:29:10
Sunil Singh
Well, it’s going to start again. If you look at language and right now type of fluency, fluency is everywhere. So fluency is part of language. And so what I’ve done is I’ve already broken it down into five pillars of fluency. Now, we normally normally I think we only talk about factual, procedural, conceptual. We kind of cap off a conceptual, but the two fluency And so what I’ll do is I’ll go through there are familiar fluency, you know, even factual fluency, which teachers will agree.

00:08:29:10 – 00:08:49:16
Sunil Singh
But I’ll even say they’re like, I mean, what we spend a lot of time talking about factual fluency. But my my pushback will be, which facts are we saying are important? Because you are saying certain facts are more important than others wins over factual fluency. For example, K six times seven, as a matter of fact. Sure, it’s equal to 42.

00:08:49:18 – 00:09:13:10
Sunil Singh
But I would argue that knowing that two times three times seven equals 42 is more important because you can build your own family of math facts. People at one number take a two, three, two times seven is 14, put the three back in 14 times three equal 42 now. Now who’s going to know there 14 times table to break down numbers into their primes and to establish your fluency cycle in that is more important knowing your times tables.

00:09:13:12 – 00:09:36:23
Sunil Singh
It just is so it’s going to start with the familiar. Then we’ll go into some procedural fluency, conceptual fluency of the two ones, which I’ll add, which are the ones which people do exhibit in other areas, is what is your contemporary fluency like with mathematics? Like, do you know what’s going on in the world of mathematics? Do you know how many unsolved problems there are in mathematics?

00:09:36:23 – 00:09:58:18
Sunil Singh
Like over a thousand. And if which ones, if were to be solved, would they be affect the lives of you and your students? Only the science teachers generally know what’s going on. The world of science. English teachers are well read. They are always looking for new books, updating their curriculum in terms of content with new books in terms of how things have changed.

00:09:58:23 – 00:10:21:17
Sunil Singh
I mean, when I went to high school, I mean, everything was through the canon of sort of white euro centric authors. I mean, Shakespeare was great, but it wasn’t a person of color. Author in 1981 82 that I read, but now we’ve updated it. There’s a lot of great books out there, especially which kids would be interested. So again.

00:10:21:19 – 00:10:43:15
Jon Orr
I just want to jump in here because I was like, I like I like this thought. I like this thought about like this contemporary fluency. But is it because do you think the contemporary mathematics is because the contemporary mathematics feels like it’s up here, it’s at the university level and therefore we can’t access it in a way that would be meaningful to us.

00:10:43:15 – 00:11:07:00
Jon Orr
And that’s kind of why this contemporary mathematics is not on par or behind in a way compared to, say, language, you know, reading and writing and English teachers and language teachers updating their curriculums to be modern science teachers probably are like, Yeah, we can we can update some of it over here. That makes sense. But math is just like, is it because it’s way up there or is there a way for us to access it?

00:11:07:00 – 00:11:45:10
Jon Orr
Like you just talked with Conrad Wolfram and he was talking about specifically like computers could be a way for us to access that higher level thinking. I really liked his thought that there was really no reason that elementary students can’t be accessing calculus ideas because their ideas are very simple. In a way, it’s just the algebra that’s prevented us from actually accessing it in thinking about it, because we all think that we have to be really fluent with the algebra before we can even experiment with calculus ideas, even though, you know, the idea of a limit rate of change is they’re early in our journeys, but is AI or is technology the answer that we

00:11:45:10 – 00:11:51:07
Jon Orr
can get up here and be more contemporary, or is it something that we’re maybe never going to be able to access?

00:11:51:09 – 00:12:22:20
Sunil Singh
I think at least partially, right, in terms of the perception of that contemporary fluency swirls around post-secondary, I think that’s definitely something which I think is also true, but it’s also false. And what I mean by that and I did this at the Number lab, so I can bring back Ed, I was talking to teachers that I was talking about prime numbers as we did some activities with prime numbers at the time with the Riemann Hypothesis, which is about to jibe the distribution of prime numbers.

00:12:22:20 – 00:12:47:19
Sunil Singh
Now I, I don’t even understand the Riemann hypothesis. I have I mean, even people who go over to university, you got to it’s a very specific branch of mathematics. To fully, fully understand it, all you need to know is it’s generally about the distribution of primes. And I told them I go, Look, it’s probably not going to solve my lifetime, but I tell my kids one day someone’s going to solve something called the Riemann Hypothesis.

00:12:47:19 – 00:13:08:03
Sunil Singh
Imagine in your lifetime because it takes a long time. Sometimes you look at Fermat’s Last Theorem 452 years, but when it does get solved, it’ll make the front page of every newspaper or online thing because of how important it is, because and the one I put it right to teachers who are in the room, most are elementary, middle school.

00:13:08:05 – 00:13:33:11
Sunil Singh
I said if you were to put multiply two 200 digit numbers into a supercomputer like here’s 200 digit numbers in a supercomputer, how long would it take? A fraction of a second. Take that answer. And just for narrative purposes, to stick that answer into another supercomputer and asked that supercomputer to find the two primes? I sorry, these two, two or three digit numbers of prime numbers ask that supercomputer, which the prime numbers built.

00:13:33:13 – 00:13:55:05
Sunil Singh
The answer you got and I know I’ve done this before. Some teachers think, Oh, it’ll take maybe longer, five, 10 minutes. You’re right. You take a billion years. And that’s good because if it took any shorter, then for banks, financial transactions would be at risk because they’re all encrypted with that kind of thinking. So the actual mathematics, you don’t have to fully understand.

00:13:55:07 – 00:14:19:06
Sunil Singh
You have to fully understand the implications sometimes. And in science, I mean, the Webb telescope, I mean, yeah, you can see the Webb telescope and share it. But again, the mathematics of the Webb telescope, how it was built and how it gets the images is really complicated. So I think we haven’t even had the discussion, which I think is so important as to why does this knowledge sit up here and can it be brought down.

00:14:19:06 – 00:14:32:17
Sunil Singh
And that’s why it being brought down not for full understanding, but for curiosity. That’s the whole point. It’s to foster the curiosity, to continue to learn this language through this fluency. A contemporary sense.

00:14:32:19 – 00:14:57:12
Kyle Pearce
Right now I’m listening and I’m nodding and I see John’s nodding as well. And I’m sure everyone listening at home is going, Yeah, like we need more of this in our math classrooms, and then I’m going to do the whole record screech. We’re going to do the screech here and we’re going to throw this at you. And the reality is, is like, I’m going to be the typical teacher because my wife is still in the classroom.

00:14:57:12 – 00:15:16:02
Kyle Pearce
I’m no longer in the classroom myself, but she’s going to say, that would be awesome. But like, how do I go about that? And we always, like, try to find like, how can I as an educator, I want to sort of paint a picture here. Let’s picture elementary for a second where I’ve got to teach all these different subject areas.

00:15:16:04 – 00:15:42:15
Kyle Pearce
I need to essentially, at least in the minds of my students, I need to be a subject specialist in that grade level for all of these subject areas. And like, how can I get started on this journey to again, it’s not going to be just overnight, right? We know this like change takes time. But Sunil, if you’re there and you could sit and be on the shoulder of an educator who’s like, I do want to take a step in that direction.

00:15:42:15 – 00:15:59:17
Kyle Pearce
I agree with what Snell’s saying here fundamentally, but like, what does that look like and sound like for me in a way that is going to feel like I’m actually making a difference, like I’m shifting in that direction and doing something positive to get towards this end goal.

00:15:59:19 – 00:16:34:04
Sunil Singh
Well, and I think the what you actually said to me is the first goal is that would we collectively generally agree that curiosity and this definition of fluency and all that this is something I wish I could do if I had the time resources That’s the first that’s so critical because I’ve said this before. I think I have said in the Debate Math podcast that to me is a victory because the teacher wants it.

00:16:34:06 – 00:16:59:07
Sunil Singh
And you’re also tempered by their reality that I’m just swamped with a whole bunch of other stuff which I have to do. So the fact that this sits beside the teacher going, Yeah, absolutely. So because that’s the first by it. Teachers, good or bad, are gatekeepers or the gatekeepers, They’re the gatekeepers and their intentions generally are very good.

00:16:59:12 – 00:17:24:24
Sunil Singh
Even the most stoic analog teacher, whatever you want to do, their intentions are always the best for students. This is the important thing, that it’s not a us versus them. It’s like, okay, we all want the best for students. Agree. That’s our starting point. We all do. And then what does that mean best? Does it mean high test scores or does it mean more of a richer mathematical experience to engender nurture curiosity?

00:17:25:01 – 00:17:43:23
Sunil Singh
So going back to your question that teachers. Yeah, I would love to. You know, then you have to think about Trojan horse moments where can I bring this in that’s aligned to my curriculum that’s already there? And I’ll give you a very simple example, very simple example that you can teachers could do. I mean, I’d say middle school, but even I mean lower.

00:17:43:23 – 00:18:02:04
Sunil Singh
So for example, I did I just at the number lab in Austin, it was my first question. I was closing the session out on the Thursday last Thursday, and I said just using a21, two and one three, I don’t want to see anything else. I don’t want to see any other numbers. I don’t want see the to use twice or the three used.

00:18:02:10 – 00:18:23:21
Sunil Singh
I want to see one, two, one three only with only one, two and one three. Can you make a question in which the answer is 16? Now, right away there is a conflict because it’s so simple in terms of I don’t know, you can’t use it to know. They know that the two, the exponent three is eight and every teacher knew that.

00:18:23:23 – 00:18:48:19
Sunil Singh
So they were wrestling with the idea that it is binary, you either know it or you don’t. It would take years for you to figure it out, which is fine in a different universe. But I created that tension right away. It was tension, a little bit of anxiety, but the curiosity was battling with the anxiety, even though nobody knew the answer, few were going to let me leave without knowing the answer.

00:18:48:21 – 00:19:18:09
Sunil Singh
So what we’ve learned, we’ve learned addition application and then exponentially action. And that’s where the knowledge stopped. We just assumed that the whole iteration cycle stopped that exponentially and it doesn’t. So if you write the three on the left hand side in superscript, so it looks kind of weird, like a mirror image that answers 16 A Why is it 16 is because now that three is giving instructions that to duplicate yourself three times.

00:19:18:09 – 00:19:44:19
Sunil Singh
So right. A tower of three twos. So just like exponential iteration of multiplication, this thing called titration is the iteration of exponential nation. So you write these three twos in the tower, so two the exponent two is four, and then two the exponent four is 16. And it was that and these were almost all elementary and middle school teachers.

00:19:44:19 – 00:20:12:18
Sunil Singh
And I was there that moment when I shared, that’s what you do. And like they were like elated, excited to learn this new in the big scheme of things, it’s a piece of insignificant factual fluency information, but because it challenged their beliefs of what they that’s should be, that’s it. And it keeps going around. So there are so many moments as a Trojan horse, at least to bring it, which is a line to the curriculum.

00:20:12:18 – 00:20:14:13
Sunil Singh
And I’ll share some of those things.

00:20:14:15 – 00:20:40:13
Jon Orr
When you said the gatekeepers of knowledge is that teachers do this, it is a complex situation, like you said, like so many things on a teacher’s plate, and that is it’s unbelievable how many things, you know, they’re asked to do and we’re asked to do every single day. So asking them to do something else for sure feels like I can’t do something else but I think the way that it needs to happen is I think what you’re trying to say as well is that that teachers themselves have to be inspired to make.

00:20:40:13 – 00:21:04:17
Jon Orr
I’m going to bring this in and I’m going to teach through this lens, and that’s how I’m going to share these stories. In a way, it’s like I thought about this, about your analogy, about fluency in a language is like, are the teachers, the translators? They’re translating this language between this to this other language in the language that students are experiencing.

00:21:04:17 – 00:21:23:11
Jon Orr
But the problem, right? Imagine a translator who just doesn’t know the language well enough and all of a sudden what’s coming out. The other side is that bare bones, you know, this is the way we talk for a long time is that we teach the naked problems because we’re trying to get kids. Like you said, there’s so many good intentions, but it’s like we don’t see the beauty.

00:21:23:11 – 00:21:57:01
Jon Orr
We don’t really understand that stuff, the mathematics at that deep level ourselves, because we were translated from teachers who also didn’t know it. So it’s like it’s been passed down. All this translation is in mathematics has been lost in this translation in a way, right? Like this beauty has been been passed down to down. We continually do this to students, but it but you know, you get a good translator when a teacher brings these storytelling elements into play, brings the mathematics into play for the students to grapple with.

00:21:57:03 – 00:22:12:16
Jon Orr
Because you’re teaching through this lens of contemporary math or through the beauty of math or through numbers, sense in actual mathematics and actual fluency. So I don’t know, what do you think? Are we translators or are we playing a different role in this language of mathematics?

00:22:12:18 – 00:22:36:17
Sunil Singh
I love that explanation. I think that explains kind of the general arc history of math education really well is that we were looking at we were being translators, but that’s what we were doing. And I’ll give you a perfect example. I mean, it took me ten years of teaching calculus to understand calculus. I mean, my grade 13 mark was like 90 for like three.

00:22:36:17 – 00:22:41:19
Sunil Singh
I can write in calculus. I was a fraud.

00:22:41:21 – 00:22:44:12
Kyle Pearce
For me as well.

00:22:44:14 – 00:22:44:22
Sunil Singh
Right.

00:22:44:22 – 00:22:48:16
Jon Orr
That you were the critical translator. You were like, I’m just going to like, mimic this.

00:22:48:18 – 00:23:10:22
Sunil Singh
I was a really good Google translator. And the scary part was at that time, even though, yeah, I was aping procedures and okay, that question, I do that, I think I must have convinced myself I was doing mathematics. I’m pretty sure I thought, hey, I’m the, you know, Cat’s meow or the bee’s knees or whatever like this is.

00:23:11:03 – 00:23:36:18
Sunil Singh
Yes, this is pretty good at math. And I got a little bit of a rude awakening university. Luckily, I had a good mentor, Peter Harris, Another you challenged me in terms of, I think that epiphany revelation in terms of, Wow, I don’t think I fully understand what’s going on in the world of calculus at least, and I’m going to try to understand it better and I’m not going to put a stopwatch on it.

00:23:36:24 – 00:23:57:11
Sunil Singh
And that goes back to the this is why I get frustrated with math education, because I’m not asking teachers to swallow whole boxes of knowledge. I just ask you to be curious for it that your journey starts with, okay, go. I’m curious now. And in fact, the more open ended ness of the question you share in which a student.

00:23:57:11 – 00:24:21:22
Sunil Singh
Michael or how did they do that back then in 12? How do they do that? And you go, Hmm, and they’re going to look it up. You want to create as many sky Ravager hunters as possible. That’s really, I think, the role of a especially a math teacher, is to create a community of people who are going to chase down ideas and bring it back to the classroom.

00:24:21:22 – 00:24:43:24
Sunil Singh
And oh yeah, I’m confused too. And those are the things to which I share that this is really important is that emotions that we associate negatively with mathematics like confusion, lost, being bewildered, perplexed. These are not negative emotions. These are the real. If you don’t have these reactions in mathematics, you’re not doing mathematics. Because the entire thematic development of mathematics has been about being lost.

00:24:43:24 – 00:25:18:14
Sunil Singh
Confused are we’re doing are we messed up? Let’s just that’s it. And because kids don’t know this history or the teachers, why do you think anxiety exists? Because they think they’re supposed to be right every single minute, and they’d be far more relaxed if they knew that. So I think I’ve talked about the previous podcast, everything that students learn, everything thing they learned at some point, if you were to build a time machine, keep going back, there would be a point at which that piece of knowledge they’re learning wasn’t known or poorly understood.

00:25:18:16 – 00:25:25:06
Sunil Singh
This is it. The kids are time travelers. And so I think it’s a lost in translation kind of situation.

00:25:25:08 – 00:25:44:13
Kyle Pearce
I’m still sort of like as an educator and as someone who is listening. I mean, being aware of it, I think is so key, right, that that’s the first step, right? Knowing that there’s a problem that’s the first step. And then how do we strengthen? How do we make ourselves more aware of what’s going on around us so that we can actually do it?

00:25:44:13 – 00:26:05:04
Kyle Pearce
Because you said something earlier that I 100% envision this as me. And I remember as a teacher, I taught data management for a very long time. And in my first year as a grade 12 data management teacher, which wasn’t calculus, but it was still like, you know, I remember going through that course and thinking like, Wow, I really love this stuff.

00:26:05:06 – 00:26:39:16
Kyle Pearce
But it wasn’t until like five or six times through that I was like, Oh, that’s how to make that awesome. So how do you do this in such a way? Because again, it’s like if we’re waiting for every educator to get ten reps in ten years, in 20 years, and before they start to like, see the quote unquote, like this is going to take us a really long time for us to and make a true dent in what it is that we’re actually trying to envision here in trying to make math class more about real math than, say, school math.

00:26:39:18 – 00:27:03:04
Sunil Singh
And I think you might have brought this up in the previous podcast in terms of just how do we shrink that timeline without kind of doing a disservice to the organic acquisition language of mathematics and I think first of all, hitting a pause button that do you have discussions with your students in terms of not like, Hey, how do we feel about that topic?

00:27:03:04 – 00:27:25:07
Sunil Singh
Like, what is the do you have the pulse of your classroom about their attitudes towards mathematics? I’m guessing teachers do this the most because I don’t like math, but I don’t think they’re allowing that question to sit in the classroom because it’s going to stick and it’s not going to be a personal indictment on you. You know, we’re just collectively just delivering the system.

00:27:25:09 – 00:27:52:03
Sunil Singh
But I think part of this discussion has to occur with students in terms of what would make mathematics more interesting. And there might be some overlap in some of the answers you’ve been sharing. But I think we need to have a long enough pause button to go, okay, yeah, I wish we had sort of more curiosity in mathematics, a little bit more contemporary stuff coming in, then finding moments to put it, and then maybe finding colleagues to work with.

00:27:52:03 – 00:28:09:19
Sunil Singh
I could starting your own classroom. It starts individual teacher. It starts with you because I don’t know the makeup of your kids, their backgrounds. But having said that, I’m going to say this too. But I was in San Jose last year to give a keynote for Silicon Valley Education Foundation, but the day before I spent a whole day in a juvenile detention center.

00:28:09:21 – 00:28:36:12
Sunil Singh
And most kids are like teenage boys, Latino. A lot of them have gang affiliations. Now, I didn’t go in and do mathematics, so I could have been around their culture or their experiences. This is why I get angry about education. Every student deserves high quality mathematics and the mathematics I did was I did some number theory and birthday game.

00:28:36:14 – 00:28:58:17
Sunil Singh
And every night I wrote a whole blog about that. And I have a witness, the Bernard Sala Greenhouse, who’s the new president of California Math Council. She was there for the whole time. These kids all left smiling. Now these kids are doing all the changes that are going back to their two and a half, three inch mattresses and they only have library time, 30 minutes per week, but temporarily for 30, 40 minutes.

00:28:58:18 – 00:29:24:18
Sunil Singh
Mathematics, The mathematics I did elevated them to a space where they forgot about where they were. They had no reason to respond that way because of their current situation. The mathematics has a history of doing this. It elevates people from their current situation, as bleak as it is temporarily. And again, why did it work? Fine? A little bit has to do with presentation and personality.

00:29:24:24 – 00:29:32:17
Sunil Singh
I’m not going to push back on that, but a lot of it had to do with the mathematics. The mathematics is the star of the show.

00:29:32:19 – 00:29:52:22
Jon Orr
The way that we view it. And this is, you know, you’re talking about like how does a teacher do this in the class but also get inspired enough to want to bring it in, Because that’s where we’re at in a sense. Like when I said before, as and you said before, is that there’s so much going on, a teacher has to say, I want to bring this into my classroom to teach through this.

00:29:52:22 – 00:30:20:01
Jon Orr
And I think where we have in I know what you’re saying here, too, is where you’re we’re seeing gains with students smiling around mathematics. And I want to know more is when we create what we even you know, we’ve been saying was math, epiphanies. Where are these epiphanies that people are having around mathematics? And they’re like, Oh, you said at the beginning of this podcast was like mystery.

00:30:20:03 – 00:30:41:07
Jon Orr
It’s built in mystery. So it’s like how many math epiphanies can we make when we’re talking with our district leaders in our district improvement program? One of our stages is about how do we do this on a regular basis? Because when you create a math epiphany for a teacher, it’s a shocking moment for them. They want to repeat that for their students, and that’s like a way for them to get in.

00:30:41:07 – 00:31:08:22
Jon Orr
And it is all mathematics, like you’re saying. It is all content driven to grapple with the behaviors of the mathematics in its Oh my gosh moment that we could do. And if we could do more of that, then teachers will naturally say, I want to do more of that in my classroom. So when we try to suite inspire teachers to, say, grapple or grab mathematics by the horns and say, I’m going to bring this in because you know that the curriculum is out there and you most a lot of teachers are just following it.

00:31:08:22 – 00:31:31:05
Jon Orr
Page by page. We know that all of these standards are listed and it feels overwhelming when we look at all of this. We have to cover all of this this year. It’s little math epiphanies. One at a time is I think the actual snowball effect will eventually happen because we can create more epiphanies. But it is through content, it’s not through pedagogy, it’s not through some of these other pieces.

00:31:31:05 – 00:31:55:15
Jon Orr
It’s all content. Now, Cindy, I want to toss one more question here at you, which is in this session that you’re you know, you’re going to do at the summit coming up in November, what would you say is one big takeaway you hope to give, say the participant who shows up to that session? Like, what’s the one thing you will hope they leave their session with that day?

00:31:55:17 – 00:32:23:12
Sunil Singh
I mean, it sounds simple, but, you know, we want simple solutions, simple beginnings. But one thing that I would like every teacher takeaway is that they themselves are now more excited about mathematics than prior to coming in, that they whatever level of interest, Curiosity Elementary, middle school, high school teacher, whatever it is, you came at me, maybe even came in already excited.

00:32:23:14 – 00:32:46:18
Sunil Singh
But even that teacher, I want them to feel more excited. And the reason why I want this to be a universal thing is that you have to and I will convey this, is that you have to understand that there is no end point in learning anything in life, especially mathematics, and that you must be a lifelong learner first before a lifelong teacher.

00:32:46:23 – 00:32:59:23
Sunil Singh
That eclipses your teacher. So that would be my take away that. Wow. I feel more curious and excited about being a teacher of mathematics. That reaction emotion is the takeaway that I want.

00:33:00:00 – 00:33:40:11
Kyle Pearce
I love that. And as a mathematics teacher myself and we’ve talked about it on the podcast and I think all three of us can relate that very quickly if we aren’t trying to find those ways to stay curious, to learn something new, to get excited, it becomes a very hard career and it shows, right? And we wonder why our students don’t respond positively to maybe coming to class or coming to learn about mathematics as if we’re up there and it’s the same thing, the same boring thing as it was in year one of my teaching as it is in year five, as it is in year 15, as it is in your 30, it’s going

00:33:40:12 – 00:34:04:23
Kyle Pearce
to just get harder and harder both for you and for the students. And we lose that opportunity. So through this conversation and through many of the conversations we’ve had in the past, and I’ll always walk away with some really great thoughts, perspectives that we can put not only into our math teaching, but also other areas of our life, because I think this is not something that stops in mathematics.

00:34:04:23 – 00:34:24:24
Kyle Pearce
It’s in every aspect of life. There’s so much to learn, there’s so much to know, there’s so much exciting things going on that we can take advantage of. We just have to look for them, right? Keep our eyes open. So thanks so much, Sherry Snell, for being a part of the podcast and for being a part of the summit coming up in November.

00:34:25:04 – 00:34:40:09
Kyle Pearce
Friends, if you head over to make math moments dot com forward slash summit, you can sign up for the free live virtual summit. And hey, make sure that you click yes on Sunil’s session because I’m sure it’s going to be a good one. Thanks a ton there.

00:34:40:09 – 00:34:43:06
Sunil Singh
SNELL Thanks a pleasure.

00:34:43:08 – 00:35:04:18
Jon Orr
Thank you. All right. I hope you enjoyed that quick discussion with Sunil. It’s always enlightening to bring Sunil onto the show because we get into some deep ideas around mathematics. We try to be as practical as we can when we talk about deep ideas, but sometimes talking about those deep ideas helps us figure out what’s most important in the work that we do in our classrooms.

00:35:04:18 – 00:35:32:17
Jon Orr
We think about our classroom trees. We think about our mindset, our beliefs, the soil, the water, the sunlight of our trees. We have to kind of keep watering those pieces of the tree that it can grow. And sometimes we have to have discussions around big ideas, around mathematics so that we can then focus specific efforts into the leaves of the tree, the resources we’re using, our classroom, you know, the branches of the tree, the moves that we’re doing, which are a little bit more specific and practical.

00:35:32:21 – 00:35:59:07
Jon Orr
But we do need to think big ideas to make sure that that water spreads throughout the tree and not just kind of sits at the trunk or at the roots level of that tree. Sunil is going be presenting at our McMath Moments Virtual Summit in November of 2024. So that’s November 15th, 16/17. If you have not yet registered for that or pre-registered, get on over to make math moments dot com port a summit and you can register for that summit.

00:35:59:07 – 00:36:20:08
Jon Orr
It is completely free event and this is the sixth annual summit that we’ve been putting on completely free since I guess six years ago. But I was going to do the quick number math there in my head of 2018. So make sure that you get on over to the summit because it’s a great event. We have a number of guests attending who have been past speakers at the summit.

00:36:20:10 – 00:36:38:05
Jon Orr
Peter Little is going to be joining us. Joe Boler was one of our first presenters way back at the very first summit. She’s back, excuse me, presenting a live session again this year. We’ve got many, many, many people that you’re going to be wanting to check out and attend the summit. So head on over to McMath moments. Dotcom talks US Summit.

00:36:38:07 – 00:36:54:13
Jon Orr
Get yourself registered and we will see you over there. Just a reminder, the links and resources you heard here today can be found over on the show notes page, which is at the moment dot com Forces Episode 302 Make math moments dot com for this episode 302.

00:36:54:15 – 00:36:59:00
Kyle Pearce
All right their math moment makers until next time I’m Kyle.

00:36:59:00 – 00:37:06:19
Jon Orr
Pierce and I’m John or high fives for us and a high bar for you. Oh.

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