MATHifying SFiAM

Pearl Arredondo • Cahn Fellow 2022

Across the nation, students struggle with demonstrating proficiency in mathematics. Society, as a whole, has given people permission to say, “I’m not good at math” or “I’m just not a math person”. In school, we have perpetuated the idea that you can either do math or you can't as non-math teachers say the same phrases. Therefore, it was time for us to MATHify our school. We had to break the cycle and start showing our community that everyone can be a math person. 

Using a data-informed theory of action we showed our school community the sense of urgency. Systems thinking and an equity lens allowed for us to tackle mindset as the first school-wide shift. We then looked at how we could shift the approach to teaching mathematics to engage more students in authentic learning with the application of mathematical concepts. 

We implemented strategies from Stanford’s Big Ideas and Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms to provide students with mixed-space practice and opportunities for collaboration. All teachers committed to playing math games during Advisory two times per week. We also purchased Math T-shirts for everyone in their grade-level color (6th is white, 7th is red, and 8th is black) to kick-off our MATHifying of SFiAM. The goal was to saturate the campus with numeracy the same way that literacy is usually apparent.