Reflecting the World

Reflecting the World
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Reflecting the World
A Guide to Incorporating Equity
in Mathematics Teacher Education
Mathew D. Felton-Koestler
Ohio University
Ksenija Simic-Muller
Pacific Lutheran University
José María Menéndez

Pima Community College
INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Felton-Koestler, Mathew D., author. | Simic-Muller, Ksenija, author.

| Menbendez, Josbe Marbia, author.
Title: Reflecting the world : a guide to incorporating equity in mathematics
teacher education / Mathew D. Felton-Koestler, Ohio University, Ksenija
Simic-Muller, Pacific Lutheran University, Josbe Marbia Menbendez, Pima
Community College.
Description: Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing, Inc., [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016055065 (print) | LCCN 2017000027 (ebook) | ISBN
9781681237671 (paperback) | ISBN 9781681237688 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781681237695 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681237695 (EBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mathematics--Study and teaching--United States. |
Mathematics--Study and teaching--Social aspects. | Educational
equalization--United States.
Classification: LCC QA13 .F45 2017 (print) | LCC QA13 (ebook) | DDC
510.71--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055065
Copyright © 2017 Information Age Publishing Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America

Contents
Preface................................................................................................................................................xix
PART I
Foundation
1 Introduction........................................................................................................................................... 3
Why Real-World Problems?.......................................................................................................................... 3
What We Mean by “Real-World” Contexts................................................................................................. 4
Our Settings, Philosophies, Successes, and Challenges............................................................................. 4
Simic-Muller’s Story...................................................................................................................................... 5
Felton-Koestler’s Story................................................................................................................................... 6
Menéndez’s Story.......................................................................................................................................... 6
References............................................................................................................................................. 7
2 Frameworks............................................................................................................................................ 9
Types of Tasks............................................................................................................................................... 9
Type of Connection....................................................................................................................................... 9
The Structure of the Inquiry........................................................................................................................ 11
Summary of Types of Tasks......................................................................................................................... 12
Notes............................................................................................................................................................ 13
References................................................................................................................................................... 13
3 Getting Started.................................................................................................................................... 15
Where Do I Start? Do I Have to Redesign My Entire Course?................................................................ 15
How Does This Fit With What I Have to Teach?...................................................................................... 16
How Do I Decide What Real-World Topics to Investigate?...................................................................... 16
Should I Only Investigate Issues My Students Know and Care About?.................................................. 16
Are There Any Topics to Avoid?................................................................................................................ 17
Where Can I Get My Ideas?....................................................................................................................... 17
How Do You Create the Lessons?.............................................................................................................. 17
How Do You Come Up With Projects?...................................................................................................... 18
Reflecting the World: A Guide to Incorporating Equity in Mathematics Teacher Education, pages v–viii
Copyright © 2017 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. v
vi ◾ CONTENTS
What Are Some Challenges One Faces When Teaching in This Way?................................................... 18
What Are Some Counter-Resistance Strategies Instructors Can Use?................................................... 19
References................................................................................................................................................... 20
PART II
Overview of Lessons
4 Whole Number Lessons....................................................................................................................... 23

4.1 A Living Wage (Introduction)........................................................................................................... 23
A Living Wage (Task)......................................................................................................................... 24
A Living Wage (Data).........................................................................................................................25
4.2 Cost of Healthy Food (Introduction)................................................................................................ 26
Cost of Healthy Food (Task).............................................................................................................. 26
4.3 Cost of the War on Terror (Introduction)........................................................................................ 27
Cost of the War on Terror (Task)......................................................................................................28
4.4 Culture Quiz (Introduction)..............................................................................................................28
Culture Quiz (Bell Work)...................................................................................................................30
4.5 Poverty Problem Types (Introduction)..............................................................................................30
Poverty Problem Types (Task)............................................................................................................ 31
Poverty Problem Types (Answers)...................................................................................................... 33
Notes.................................................................................................................................................... 33
5 Rational Number Lessons.................................................................................................................... 35

5.1 A Representative Congress (Introduction).......................................................................................35
A Representative Congress (Task).....................................................................................................36
5.2 Childhood Poverty and Hunger (Introduction)............................................................................... 37
Childhood Poverty and Hunger (Task).............................................................................................38
5.3 Division of Income (Introduction)....................................................................................................40
Division of Income (Task)..................................................................................................................40
5.4 Renting to Own (Introduction).........................................................................................................42
Renting to Own (Task).......................................................................................................................43
5.5 The Gender Pay Gap (Introduction).................................................................................................44
The Gender Pay Gap (Task)...............................................................................................................45
5.6 The Gender Pay Gap: Equal Pay Day (Introduction)....................................................................... 47
The Gender Pay Gap: Equal Pay Day? (Task)...................................................................................48
5.7 Two Sides to Every News Story (Introduction).................................................................................49
Two Sides to Every (News) Story (Task)............................................................................................50
5.8 Who Gets More? (Introduction)........................................................................................................50
Who Gets More? (Task)...................................................................................................................... 51
CONTENTS ◾ vii
6 Algebra Lessons................................................................................................................................... 53
6.1 Graphing Towards Social Justice (Introduction)............................................................................. 53
Graphing Towards Social Justice (Task)...........................................................................................54
Graphing Towards Social Justice (Example Contexts).................................................................... 55
6.2 Incarceration Rates (Introduction)................................................................................................... 57
Incarceration Rates (Task)................................................................................................................. 58
6.3 Juvenile Delinquency (Introduction)................................................................................................ 59
Juvenile Delinquency (Task)..............................................................................................................60
6.4 The Cost of Water (Introduction)..................................................................................................... 61
The Cost of Water (Task)................................................................................................................... 62
7 Geometry and Measurement Lessons.................................................................................................. 65

7.1 Congressional Redistricting (Introduction).....................................................................................65
Congressional Redistricting (Task)...................................................................................................66
Congressional Redistricting (Map)...................................................................................................68
7.2 Displaced Persons (Introduction).....................................................................................................68
Displaced Persons (Task)...................................................................................................................69
7.3 Mountain Top Removal (Introduction)............................................................................................ 71
Mountain Top Removal (Task).......................................................................................................... 72
Mountain Top Removal (“Did You Know?” Fact Sheet)................................................................... 74
7.4 Native American Star Quilts (Introduction).................................................................................... 75
Native American Star Quilts (Task).................................................................................................. 76
7.5 Plastic Floating in the Ocean (Introduction)................................................................................... 76
Plastic Floating in the Ocean (Task)................................................................................................. 77
7.6 The Cost of Bottled Water (Introduction)........................................................................................ 78
The Cost of Bottled Water (Task)...................................................................................................... 79
7.7 Water Bottles for Detroit (Introduction)...........................................................................................80
Water Bottles for Detroit (Task)........................................................................................................ 82
Water Bottles for Detroit (Nets).........................................................................................................84
8 Data Analysis Lessons.......................................................................................................................... 87

8.1 Historical Trends in Crime (Introduction)...................................................................................... 87
Historical Trends in Crime (Task)....................................................................................................88
8.2 Income Inequality (Introduction).....................................................................................................89
Income Inequality (Task)...................................................................................................................90
8.3 Income Then and Now (Introduction)............................................................................................. 91
Income Then and Now (Task)........................................................................................................... 92
8.4 Income: Teacher Salaries (Introduction).......................................................................................... 93
Income: Teacher Salaries (Task)........................................................................................................ 94
Income: Teacher Salaries (Spreadsheet)...........................................................................................94
viii ◾ CONTENTS
8.5 Messages in Children’s Ads (Introduction)......................................................................................95

Messages in Children’s Ads (Task)....................................................................................................96
8.6 Mortality and Race (Introduction).................................................................................................... 97
Mortality and Race (Task).................................................................................................................. 97
Mortality and Race (Handouts).........................................................................................................98
8.7 Youth Poverty and Homelessness (Introduction).............................................................................99
Youth Poverty and Homelessness (Task)......................................................................................... 101
9 Probability Lessons............................................................................................................................ 103

9.1 Income Mobility (Introduction)...................................................................................................... 103
Income Mobility (Task).................................................................................................................... 104
9.2 Marijuana Arrests (Introduction)................................................................................................... 105
Marijuana Arrests (Task)................................................................................................................. 106
9.3 Money Cube (Introduction)............................................................................................................. 107
Money Cube (Task).......................................................................................................................... 108
10 Projects...............................................................................................................................................111
10.1 Paper Cup Use (Introduction)......................................................................................................... 111
Paper Cup Use (Task)....................................................................................................................... 112
10.2 Tunnel of Oppression (Introduction)............................................................................................. 113
Tunnel of Oppression (Task)........................................................................................................... 114
11 Additional Materials...........................................................................................................................117
Excerpts From Syllabus (Middle Childhood Methods)......................................................................... 117
Excerpt From Syllabus (Modern Elementary Mathematics)................................................................. 119
Readings (Various Content and Methods Courses)............................................................................... 120
Readings and Reflections (Math for Social Analysis)............................................................................ 121
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Introduction).................................................................................. 123
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Directions)....................................................................................... 124
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Interview Questions)...................................................................... 126
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Reflection Prompts)........................................................................ 127
Preface
W
e have been working with prospective and practicing teachers in a variety of contexts, including content
and methods courses and professional development settings, for the past ten years. During this time, our
primary concern has been preparing teachers to teach mathematics for equity, diversity, and justice. While
we have addressed this goal in a variety of ways, this book is primarily concerned with the curriculum we have de-
veloped and implemented, primarily in our mathematics courses for prospective K–8 teachers. We believe, along
with others whose work precedes us, among those Gutstein (2006) and Frankenstein (2009), that mathematics is a
powerful and essential tool for understanding the world. We see an opportunity in the recent emphasis in the Com-
mon Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010) on real-world
mathematics contexts and mathematical modeling. We argue that, to bring forth equity in mathematics education,
mathematics learning must go beyond “neutral” topics to include real-world contexts that may be deemed contro-
versial or political. Investigating controversial social issues—such as income inequality, racial justice, or disparity in
educational outcomes—helps us understand the world as it is and as it could be.
In our informal conversations with colleagues we have found that while many mathematics teacher edu-
cators are concerned with social justice and would like to see future teachers attend to these ideas in their
own teaching, many of them shy away from integrating these issues into their content or methods courses,
because they are unsure of how to do so and uncomfortable with how they may play out. We offer this book as
a response to these concerns: as a guide for those who wish to incorporate issues related to equity and social
justice into their courses for the first time, as a refresher for those who are already doing this work, and as a
resource for anyone else who is interested in the fruitful relationship between teaching mathematics and social
justice. In this book, we share stories of our own journeys, give some theoretical background to our work, offer
practical advice for getting started, and most importantly, share the lessons, activities, and projects we have de-
veloped. We also hope this book will foster new conversations about what we see as the central goal of teacher
education: preparing teachers to teach for a more just world.
This book is divided into two parts. Chapters 1–3 lay the foundation for our work, and Chapters 4–12 pro-
vide the actual lessons and materials we have used in our courses. In the first part, Chapter 1 provides some
theoretical background and rationale for our work: It describes our understanding of real-world problems and
argues for the importance of the use of authentic real-world mathematics problems in teaching and teacher
education. This chapter also includes our stories: the contexts in which we teach, our philosophies, experi-
ences, and journeys. Although many of our beliefs and practices are shared, our contexts and approaches
differ. By sharing them, we hope to engage teacher educators and teachers with a variety of backgrounds and
circumstances. Chapter 2 includes a framework for our work, including a categorization of different types
of problems that we have identified in our curriculum. Chapter 3 offers an introduction to the practicali-
ties of implementing a social justice-based mathematics curriculum especially in courses for prospective K–8
teachers. It gives practical advice for getting started with social justice contexts, and addresses some potential
questions and concerns. In this chapter we also share our experiences with implementation of social justice
contexts, though we offer much more detail about individual lessons in the second part.
The second part of the book contains the lessons and materials we have developed and used. We introduce
this second part by providing a tabular representation of all the lessons, organized by different criteria. The
lessons are divided according to strands of school mathematics, and Chapters 4–9 address each strand: whole
Reflecting the World: A Guide to Incorporating Equity in Mathematics Teacher Education, pages ix–x
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ix
x ◾ PREFACE
number, rational number, algebra, geometry and measurement, data analysis, and probability. In Chapter 10
we include two projects that do not fit neatly into any one category and instead span a range of mathematical
content. Finally, Chapter 11 includes additional materials, such as recommended readings to assign, other as-
signments, and excerpts from our course syllabi. There is a website where supplemental materials, such as Excel
spreadsheets that accompany some lessons, can be downloaded (http://www.infoagepub.com/simic-muller).
References
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2010). Common Core State Standards for mathematics. Washington, DC: National Gov-
ernors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Retrieved from http://www.
corestandards.org/assets/CCSI_Math Standards.pdf
Frankenstein, M. (2009). Developing a critical mathematical numeracy through real real-life word problems. In L. Verschaffel, B.
Greer, W. Van Dooren, & S. Mukhopadhyay (Eds.), Words and worlds: Modelling verbal descriptions of situations (pp. 111–130).
Boston, MA: Sense.
Gutstein, E. (2006). Reading and writing the world with mathematics: Toward a pedagogy for social justice. New York, NY: Routledge.
I
P A R T
Foundation
1
Introduction
W
hile all mathematics educators agree that teaching and learning mathematics is essential, our reasons
for why mathematics is important vary. In this book we argue that mathematics is essential because it
helps make sense of the world students live in and of their particular circumstances (Gutstein, 2006).
In particular, we argue that mathematics classes are natural settings for exploring social justice, because quan-
titative reasoning is a necessary part of virtually any conversation about real-world issues (e.g., poverty rates,
unemployment rates, or worker wages).
We believe that prospective teachers need ample opportunities to engage with real-world mathematics, and
in particular need to be exposed to real-world issues that shed light on their lives and the lives of others. The
benefits of this approach are multiple: Prospective teachers deepen their understanding of mathematics, in-
crease the appreciation for mathematics as an endeavor deeply connected to the human experience, begin to
see mathematics as relevant to their lives and the lives of their future students, and begin to grapple with social
justice issues for the first time through a mathematical lens.
Why Real-World Problems?

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the use of real-world contexts in teaching mathematics.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) gave real-world problem solving a central place in
its Principles and Standards (NCTM, 2000) and has more recently confirmed this commitment in the document
Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (NCTM, 2014), recommending that teachers “focus
on connections among key mathematical ideas that are situated in real-world and mathematical contexts”
(p. 115) instead of ignoring the standards that emphasize applications, as has often been the case in the past.
The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) also place an emphasis on mathematical modeling,
by including it as one of the eight mathematical practices meant to span all of K–12, and describing mathe-
matically proficient students as those who “can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in
everyday life, society, and the workplace” (Common Core State Standards Initiative [CCSSI], 2010, p. 7).
There are a variety of reasons for integrating the real world into K–12 mathematics. One of them is ensur-
ing that all students are “college and career ready” (CCSSI, 2010) as is emphasized in the CCSSM. While we
Reflecting the World: A Guide to Incorporating Equity in Mathematics Teacher Education, pages 3–8
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 3
4 ◾ INTRODUCTION
believe it is important to prepare students for these purposes, we are also concerned that such a narrow focus
serves primarily to reproduce existing inequalities (Apple, 1992; Gutstein, 2010). Instead, we see real-world
contexts as having the potential to support mathematics learners in valuing diversity, connecting mathematics
to one’s life, and critiquing the world. While our work includes emphasis on all three of these goals, the prima-
ry focus of this book is on the third one: using mathematics to understand the world, to question why things
are this way, and to imagine more just alternatives. In short, we want students to be able to analyze, critique,
and take action regarding pressing social and political issues through mathematics.
Mathematics is not neutral, nor is mathematics teaching. Consciously or unconsciously, teachers make de-
cisions about which knowledge to privilege in the classroom (Felton, 2010; Felton-Koestler, 2015; Gutstein &
Peterson, 2013; Koestler, 2012). For example, attributing all mathematical knowledge to ancient Greeks and
Europeans, teaching only standard algorithms, choosing to remain silent on pressing issues of our time, or
considering students’ backgrounds deficient, are all political decisions because they advantage some groups
over others. The scholarship of teaching mathematics for social justice argues that mathematics should be
used to make sense of the world and in particular of the injustices that are prevalent in it (Frankenstein, 2009;
Gutstein, 2006). For example, Frankenstein (2009) proposes the use of “real real-world problems,” where the
goal is, among other things, “to reveal more accurate descriptions of the world,” and “understand the mean-
ings that numbers can hide in descriptions of the world” (p. 116). Teachers should present contexts that are
relevant to their students’ experiences. Many public school students experience injustice in their lives, and it is
important for prospective teachers to have awareness of issues their future students face. Examining injustices
through mathematics can be an empowering experience, as it certainly has been for some of our students,
whose passion for social justice also helped them see mathematics in a different light.
What We Mean by “Real-World” Contexts

As we discuss in greater detail in Chapter 2, we use a variety of real-world contexts in our lessons. However, we
try to avoid traditional textbook story problems. Typically, textbook story problems feature contexts (which are
often contrived) that are almost identical to worked examples from the section, only with different numbers.
In a popular TED talk, former teacher Dan Meyer compares textbook story problems to sitcoms, as both are
expected to be completely and neatly resolved in the previously allotted amount of time, and therefore unable
to capture complexities of real life (Meyer, 2010). This leads to a number of difficulties for students when
solving realistic problems (as opposed to typical textbook story problems): They misinterpret the real-world
context, choose to ignore aspects of problems they find irrelevant, and generally develop strategies for solv-
ing problems that do not take the contexts into account (Palm, 2008; Verschaffel, Greer, & De Corte, 2000).
Because we believe it is important for students to engage with the world through mathematics, instead of text-
book-like problems, we use problems that arise in the real world, and in particular regularly draw on contexts
that are traditionally seen as lying outside of the discipline of mathematics, such as poverty, homelessness, or
distribution of resources.
Our Settings, Philosophies, Successes, and Challenges

This book is based on our experiences teaching mathematics methods and content courses for prospective
teachers and engaging with practicing teachers in professional development. Simic-Muller teaches at Pacific
Lutheran University, a private liberal arts university, with an institution-wide commitment to social justice.
Felton-Koestler has worked at two large state universities: first at the University of Arizona for four years and
presently in the College of Education at Ohio University, which has an explicit commitment to equity and
social justice. We both have a great deal of freedom in creating the curriculum for our courses, and we both
draw on a variety of real-world contexts in our teaching. Menéndez has taught mathematics content courses
for K–8 prospective teachers in mathematics departments at large- and medium-size public universities and
INTRODUCTION ◾ 5
currently teaches at Pima Community College. While at Radford University he taught a content course whose
main purpose was to connect mathematics and social justice.
While we share an interest in issues of equity and social justice, there are also differences in our teaching
philosophies and practices, as will be detailed in each of our personal stories. We will also share our individual
journeys as equity-oriented teacher educators, and some of the challenges we have encountered along the way.
Simic-Muller’s Story
I have been trained as a mathematician, but have always identified as an educator. I have officially come to
mathematics education through a post-doctoral position at the University of Arizona and the Center for Math-
ematics Education of Latinos/as (CEMELA). I believe that speaking about and fighting against injustice is an
ethical choice, and incorporating social justice issues into teaching for me is not a static academic endeavor,
but an active, dynamic process of action and change.
My first exposure to the field of teaching mathematics for social justice was through the work of Eric (Rico)
Gutstein—in particular through Rethinking Mathematics (Gutstein & Peterson, 2013)—and it was a life-chang-
ing experience, allowing me for the first time to combine my work with my passion. However, it was years
before I began to seriously implement social justice contexts in all my teaching, and in particular in courses
for prospective teachers. I soon discovered that the lessons featured in Rethinking Mathematics (Gutstein & Pe-
terson, 2013) were not easily implemented in these courses and instead I began creating my own curriculum,
initially only occasionally, and in the last few years regularly. It has now become a way of thinking for me and I
now see most current events through a mathematical lens.
I have been teaching mathematics content courses for prospective K–8 teachers since 2005, and have taught
at my current institution, Pacific Lutheran University, since 2008, typically two content courses per semester.
I am the primary instructor for the two content courses that we offer: one addresses number and algebraic
sense, and the other geometric sense, measurement, probability, and statistics. My lessons tend to be open-end-
ed. This approach is based on my belief in the importance of mathematizing, which Tate (1994) describes as
“the use of numbers to model or approximate the relationship between elements of a social or physical situa-
tion” (p. 484). The lessons I write are especially well suited for prospective teachers, being just the right level of
difficulty for them, addressing the content they need to learn for the course, and frequently addressing topics
relevant to future teachers.
I have gradually increased the amount of social justice-based content over the years. In the beginning I was
uncomfortable, almost apologetic, when using social justice contexts. This resulted in poor communication of
expectations and, on occasion, student discontent. During the first semester, during a quick investigation of
sweatshops, which happened completely out of context and without any prior discussion of equity or social jus-
tice, the vocal students in the front row all insisted that sweatshops were necessary, and that athletes deserved
to make thousands of times more money advertising shoes than the workers who had made them. Of course,
it was their right to believe so, but I knew that if I had framed the discussion differently, and let it rely more
firmly on mathematics and less on personal opinion, the outcomes would have been different. The following
year, when I incorporated a few more social justice contexts into the class, but also without placing them into
a larger context, a student accused me of pushing my political agenda in teaching. While I believe that talking
about homeless children and families is a humanistic, not a political agenda, I also do not want to antagonize
students. One of the lessons I learned from this unpleasant experience was the need not to defend the use of
social justice contexts against attacks, but to normalize it, that is, to place it in context of something students
already agree to, which in this case is providing institutional support and care for children. I now include the
university’s mission statement, which emphasizes “care for other people, their communities, and the earth,”
in the syllabus, and discuss the importance of connecting mathematics teaching to social justice, especially in
light of inequities faced by children that these students will teach. While not all prospective teachers agree
that these contexts are important or relevant to their teaching, they engage with them without protest and
often see them as an integral part of my courses. At times, the inclusion of social justice contexts changes stu-
dents’ perceptions; typically this happens when a student is already an advocate for social justice but has little
6 ◾ INTRODUCTION
appreciation for mathematics. These students are able to revise their beliefs about themselves as mathematics
learners. I have been fortunate to develop some lessons (including Lesson 7.6: The Cost of Bottled Water in
this volume) with a prospective teacher who was passionate about sustainability but had disliked mathematics
prior to taking my class, and whose attitude was completely changed when she realized that mathematics was
not only appropriate but essential for teaching about sustainability.
Felton-Koestler’s Story
I have taught mathematics content courses for future teachers as a graduate student at the University of
Wisconsin and as a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. I now teach
mathematics methods courses for future teachers at Ohio University in the Department of Teacher Education.
Our program has an explicit commitment to equity and social justice and it certainly makes this work easier to
do. Over the years I have slowly expanded the amount and variety of ways in which I have incorporated social
and political issues into my courses.
I came to social justice mathematics education in large part through my preparation in graduate school at
the University of Wisconsin—Madison. I came to graduate school focused on what Gutstein (2006) calls clas-
sical mathematics. I have always had a strong love of mathematics and benefited from being taught as a young
child by experts in Cognitively Guided Instruction (Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, & Empson, 2015). I
was drawn to graduate school in mathematics education through a collaboration with my former first and
second grade teacher, Maize Jenkins. Thus, I began my career in mathematics education focused very heavily
on problem solving, student invented strategies, and high-quality professional development for teachers. How-
ever, during my time in graduate school I was exposed to perspectives focused on issues of equity, diversity,
and social justice in education in general and in mathematics education specifically. Coming to appreciate
this perspective came through coursework and an amazing group of peers all dedicated to issues of equity and
social justice, and most notably through my partner and colleague Courtney Koestler who encouraged me to
expand my views about what a career in mathematics education could mean.
In my teaching I try to keep a strong focus on “the mathematics” and to do so from multiple perspectives.
On the one hand I want there to be frequent glimpses of the classical mathematics that I grew up loving. On
the other hand, I also want to challenge what counts as mathematics—to emphasize that to know mathematics
should also mean knowing the historical context in which it was developed; its role in creating and maintain-
ing the social structures we see; and its potential as a tool for unpacking, challenging, and improving those
structures. With these goals in mind I have experimented with a range of tasks that draw on real-world contexts
in differing ways. I see different genres of mathematics—some where you play with and explore mathematical
objects and their relationships simply for the sake of doing so and others where you apply mathematical think-
ing and tools to uncover social injustices—and I want children (and their future teachers) to have experiences
with a range of mathematical genres and to be comfortable switching between them as appropriate.
Menéndez’s Story
My background involves training as a secondary mathematics and physics teacher and an applied mathema-
tician. With this combination I had the great opportunity to participate in a postdoctoral program in Mathe-
matics Education at the Center for Mathematics Education of Latinos/Latinas (CEMELA) at the University
of Arizona. Working at CEMELA I started thinking of the intersections of language, culture, and the teaching
and learning of mathematics. Some fellows were focusing more on educational policy as it affects both teacher
preparation programs as well as grade school policies about the use of language other than English, and an-
other group had a strong social justice interest. Frequently in our work we observed that aspects of inequalities
were the result of institutionalized practices, by which certain personal identifiers (gender, ethnicity, country
of origin, language, socio-economical status, family structure, geography, etc.) came up as negatively influenc-
ing students’ abilities (more in terms of access and resources than cognitive capability) to learn mathematics.
At the same time, those characteristics that set up students as deficient are also their strengths, if the system
INTRODUCTION ◾ 7
could recognize and value them as assets. These conversations forged my sensitivity to injustices and the im-
portance of using this lens in our practice of teaching.
During my three years at CEMELA I regularly taught the mathematics content course for pre-service ele-
mentary school teachers. However, the seed to think of education as the vehicle for self-realization as a person
in the context of a society was planted during my formative years as a teacher, which included, among other
experiences, reading Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
It was not until 2009 when the idea of teaching a mathematics content class for prospective teachers with
a specific focus on social justice came to fruition. I started working at Radford University as an assistant pro-
fessor in the Department of Mathematics. Following two courses on the mathematics knowledge needed for
teaching (Ball, Hill, & Bass, 2005; Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008), Laura Jacobsen Spielman had developed a
third course about mathematics for the social justice with the goal for the prospective teachers to “learn how
to critically analyze and explore the world using math, and for citizenship” (for more information see Mistele
& Spielman, 2009a, 2009b; Spielman, 2009). This course revisited and applied some concepts from classical
mathematics content: numbers and operations, geometry and measurement, data analysis and probability, and
algebraic reasoning. However, the syllabus did not prescribe any specific topics. The focus was on applications
of these concepts to understand topics from the real world. Besides the classroom activities and small projects,
prospective teachers in this class performed a service learning project offering their knowledge and skills as
mathematics tutors for children of low socioeconomic status at local public schools or a research project on
topics showcasing social injustices for which students had to use mathematics in order to better understand
the problem and/or propose a solution. Both the service learning project and the research project took almost
the whole semester.
As I timidly incorporated social and political issues into the mathematics classes I taught at Radford, I faced
resistance and pushback from students because they were not expecting to see these issues raised in a mathe-
matics class. One of my main concerns was with making the class relevant for my students. I have had the most
success in meeting this goal by bringing in real-world contexts that connected to my students’ future practice
as teachers.
By sharing our stories, we want to put in perspective how our experiences have shaped our beliefs and our
practices, which continue to evolve, and to show that our individual attempts to infuse our teaching with val-
ues of social justice and equity are at different stages and take on a variety of forms. Thus, as you use the tasks,
projects, and assignments in Chapters 5 through 12, feel free to adapt them for your purposes in a way that is
comfortable for you, responsive to your students’ context, and meets your instructional goals.
References
Apple, M. W. (1992). Do the Standards Go Far Enough? Power, Policy, and Practice in Mathematics Education. Journal for Research
in Mathematics Education, 23(5), 412–431. http://doi.org/10.2307/749562
Ball, D. L., Hill, H. C., & Bass, H. (2005). Knowing mathematics for teaching: Who knows mathematics well enough to teach third
grade, and how can we decide? American Educator, 29(3), 14–22.
Ball, D. L., Thames, M. H., & Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: What makes it special? Journal of Teacher Edu-
cation, 59(5), 389–407.
Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Franke, M. L., Levi, L., & Empson, S. B. (2015). Children’s mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction
(2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Felton, M. D. (2010). Is math politically neutral? Teaching Children Mathematics, 17(2), 60–63.
Felton-Koestler, M. D. (2015). Mathematics education as sociopolitical: Prospective teachers’ views of the What, Who, and How.
Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-015-9315-x
Boston, MA: Sense.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Seabury.
8 ◾ INTRODUCTION
Gutstein, E. (2006). Reading and writing the world with mathematics: Toward a pedagogy for social justice. New York, NY: Routledge.
Gutstein, E. (2010). The Common Core State Standards Initiative: A critical response. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education,
3(1), 9–18.
Gutstein, E., & Peterson, B. (Eds.). (2013). Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed.). Milwaukee, WI:
Rethinking Schools.
Koestler, C. (2012). Beyond apples, puppy dogs, and ice cream: Preparing teachers to teach mathematics for equity and social
justice. In A. A. Wager & D. W. Stinson (Eds.), Teaching mathematics for social justice: Conversations with educators (pp. 81–97).
Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Meyer, D. (2010). Math class needs a makeover. Retrieved March 6, 2016, from https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math
_curriculum_makeover?language=en
Mistele, J. M., & Spielman, L. J. (2009a). Engaging preservice teachers in mathematics: Social analysis in the mathematics class-
room. Democracy & Education, 18(3), 64–67.
Mistele, J. M., & Spielman, L. J. (2009b). The impact of “math for social analysis” on mathematics anxiety in elementary preser-
vice teachers. In S. L. Swars, D. W. Stinson, & S. Lemons-Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North American
Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (31st, Atlanta, GA: Georgia State University) (Vol. 5,
pp. 483–487). Atlanta: Georgia State University.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2000). Principles and standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2014). Principles to actions: Ensuring mathematical success for all. Reston, VA: Nation-
al Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Palm, T. (2008). Impact of authenticity on sense making in word problem solving. Educational Studies in Mathematics 67(1), 37–58.
Spielman, L. J. (2009). Mathematics education in the public interest: Preservice teachers’ engagement with and reframing of
mathematics. In S. L. Swars, D. W. Stinson, & S. Lemons-Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North American
Tate, W. F. (1994). Race, retrenchment, and the reform of school mathematics. The Phi Delta Kappan, 75(6), 477–480.
Verschaffel, L., Greer, B., & De Corte, E. (2000). Making sense of word problems. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.
2
Frameworks
Types of Tasks
There are a range of types of real-world tasks throughout this book. While not every task is easily categorized,
we do identify several key ways of thinking about the relationship between the real-world context and the math-
ematical concepts in the tasks included here. In this chapter we focus on two aspects of any given task: (a) the
type of connection between the mathematics and the real-world context, and (b) how structured the direction
of inquiry into the context is.
Type of Connection
One consideration with our tasks is the nature of the connection between the mathematics and the re-
al-world context. We identify four types of tasks: (a) stepping stone, (b) providing insight, (c) backdoor, and (d)
tool. It is important to note that while we are discussing tasks, what ultimately matters is how a task is taken up
by the teachers and learners when it is enacted.
Stepping Stone Tasks

Stepping stone tasks involve real-world contexts, but they serve primarily as a stepping off point for thinking
about particular mathematical concepts. For instance, in Lesson 4.5: Poverty Problem Types, Felton-Koestler
gives the following problem to teachers and ask them to identify which type of Cognitively Guided Instruction
(CGI) (Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, & Empson, 2015) problem it is: “In Arizona there are 392,851
children living in poverty. There are 806,272 children living in low-income situations. How many children are
low-income but not poor?” Here the context is about an important social issue: childhood poverty. However,
the focus of the task is on understanding CGI problem types, not on unpacking the real-world context. Thus,
the context serves primarily as a stepping stone for focusing on particular mathematical concepts (Felton,
2010, 2014; Felton-Koestler, 2015).
10 ◾ FRAMEWORKS
Providing Insight Tasks

Many of our tasks are designed so that the mathematics done provides some new insight into the real-world
topic under investigation. The learners should learn something new about the context by doing the mathemat-
ics. Note that this is different than simply picking up factual information by reading the context of the prob-
lem—the mathematics done in the task must provide further insight. One example can be seen in Lesson 8.2:
Income Inequality, in which learners use mathematics to unpack the extent of household income inequality
in the United States. There is factual information introduced through the task (such as the mean income of
each quintile), but the mathematical analysis provides additional insight (such as determining the percentage
of total income earned by each quintile and examining the difference between the mean and the median
incomes). Another example is Lesson 5.4: Renting to Own. The factual information consists of rent-to-own
prices of different items, but the mathematical analysis sheds light on exorbitant interest rates rent-to-own
businesses charge.
Backdoor Tasks
Felton-Koestler has been experimenting with backdoor tasks. These begin as stepping stone tasks with a
largely “apolitical” context. But it is then revealed that the mathematics done has another, real world, mean-
ing. One example of this can be seen in Lesson 9.3: Money Cube, which begins with learners recreating a
simple probability game involving spinners and drawing blocks from a bag based on data for the outcomes of
the game. It is then revealed that these numbers actually correspond to the number of low income Black and
White children in the United States. We view these tasks as existing somewhere between stepping stone and
providing insight tasks.
Tool Tasks
Finally, there are some tasks in which the mathematics done does not provide insight into the social issue, but
instead the mathematics serves as a tool for reaching a goal. One example of this can be found in Lesson 7.7: Water
Bottles for Detroit in which learners must develop a method for selecting the best water bottle for bringing water
to people who have had their water shut off in Detroit. The mathematics involved (developing a model, consider-
ations of volume and surface area, etc.) does not provide insight into the water shutoffs in Detroit. An analysis of
those issues would likely involve analyzing the cost to the water companies, comparing what homeowners owe with
what large corporations that have not paid their bill but continue to receive water owe, and an examination of the
economic conditions and lack of social safety net in Detroit that leave so many unable to pay their bills. Instead, the
mathematics done in this task is to help with the goal of helping those in need. Another example would be using
mathematics to design a wheelchair ramp to provide greater accessibility at school (Renner, 2013).
Relevant or Superficial?
Stepping stone and backdoor tasks have the advantage of allowing us to focus on particular mathematical
content. However, they run the danger of being simply “window dressing” problems (Frankenstein, 2009), in
which we dress up the same old mathematics in a supposedly socially relevant context that we then promptly ig-
nore. This is of particular concern when social and political issues are rarely integrated into a course. We share
this concern and have experienced cases where prospective and practicing teachers have found the context
to be irrelevant, a distraction, and even frustrating because they felt tricked (in the case of backdoor tasks).
Despite this concern, we also think there is a place for these tasks and continue to use them in our work.
In courses where real-world connections are heavily emphasized, these seemingly superficial uses of context
may take on another meaning—They may serve as additional experiences that support the idea that mathe-
matics can have meaning outside the realm of school mathematics, that it can tell us something about us and
the world we inhabit. Felton-Koestler experienced this once when using the backdoor task Lesson 9.3: Money
Cube late in the semester in a methods class where he had placed a strong emphasis on real-world connec-
tions. A prospective teacher said something to the effect of “I had a hunch there was something else going on
with these numbers. I figured they had a deeper meaning.” In this case, because of the regular attention to
real-world contexts in general, and social and political issues in particular, the prospective teacher had begun
FRAMEWORKS ◾ 11
to approach problems (at least in this course) by attending carefully to the context as well as the mathematical
concepts.
In addition, how learners experience a particular task, or mathematics more generally, is subjective. For
instance, Lubienski (2002) describes a challenge she faced when implementing a Standards-based (National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000) curriculum: Many of her lower-SES students tended to focus on
the real-world contexts instead of the mathematical concepts that she intended for them to focus on. Similarly,
one semester Felton-Koestler gave a homework assignment that involved exploring the relationship (or lack
thereof) between perimeter and area in the context of refugee camps (see Lesson 7.2: Displaced Persons). As
part of the assignment he asked the prospective teachers, “What would you say seemed to be ‘more in charge’
in terms of the direction that this homework went, the mathematical concepts or the real-world context? Why?”
(italics in original). Consider these two contrasting reactions to this task:
I would say the mathematical concept because while I was solving the problems, I wouldn’t [sic] thinking about the
refugees, but rather how I could accurately construct a camp and the area and perimeter.
The real world context because though we covered the math concepts, the context stuck out because it was about real
people. For example, when designing camps having to decide how much room people should get was mind blowing to me.
For one prospective teacher the context faded into the background, while for another it remained central to
how they experienced the task.
The Structure of the Inquiry

A second aspect of each task to consider is how structured the direction of inquiry into the real-world
context is. We distinguish between directed tasks, in which the task largely dictates how to use mathematics
to analyze the context, and modeling tasks, in which the learners have to make decisions about how to use
mathematics to unpack the context. As discussed below, we also include proto-modeling tasks, which involve
some aspects of mathematical modeling. Note, that the distinction between directed and modeling tasks is
not a question of whether or not the task engages the learner in mathematical problem solving—finding a
solution to a problem that they do not already know how to solve—or whether it engages them in justifying or
explaining their work. Directed tasks may be (and often are) mathematically open-ended in that they allow for
multiple mathematical strategies and we often require learners to justify their work. What is being directed is
how to use mathematics to investigate the context—what kinds of mathematical questions are asked about the
context—not the mathematical method for answering those questions. It is best to think of this as a continuum
with highly directed tasks on one end and modeling tasks on the other. In addition, many tasks may vary along
this continuum during different parts of the task.
Directed Tasks
Many tasks in this book and in other collections of social justice mathematics tasks (e.g., Gutstein & Pe-
terson, 2013; Stocker, 2008) are directed tasks. Generally, these involve the presentation and discussion of
relevant background information, and then one or more specific mathematical problems to complete that are
intended to reveal something about the context. One fairly well-known example is Gutstein’s (2005) South
Central Los Angeles task that examines disparities in the distribution of movie theaters, community centers,
and liquor stores in different communities as one way to shed light on the riots in reaction to the Rodney King
verdict—because it demonstrates the unequal investments we, as a society, make in different communities. Af-
ter estimating the number of movie theaters, community centers, and liquor stores in an “average” community,
they are then told that at the time of the riots there were zero movie theaters and community centers, and 640
liquor stores within a three-mile radius in South Central Los Angeles. They are then asked, “What would you
say is the density of liquor stores in the area?” (p. 102). While the students can use a variety of mathematical
strategies to solve these problems, we would classify it as directed for our purposes because the kinds of math-
ematical questions asked about the context primarily come from the task/instructor, not from the learners.
12 ◾ FRAMEWORKS
Modeling Tasks
Mathematical modeling involves using mathematics to analyze, understand, answer questions about, and/
or make predictions about real, or realistic, situations. It goes beyond simple application or story problems,
and must engage the learner in making significant decisions about how to make sense of the context and
how to analyze the context mathematically (Cirillo, Pelesko, Felton-Koestler, & Rubel, 2016; Consortium for
Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP) & Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2016).
One example of a mathematical modeling task is Lesson 6.2: Incarceration Rates, in which learners are
asked to make predictions about the size of the U.S. prison population and use this to inform their recommen-
dation about whether or not to vote for a hypothetical bill intended to shorten prison sentences. The learners
are provided with some data and direction as to how to approach the task, but many of the decisions about
how to use mathematics to investigate the information they have is left up to them. Simic-Muller has recently
experimented with modeling tasks, and found that prospective teachers were much more interested in and
successful at these tasks than she had anticipated. In some cases she simply removed structure from already ex-
isting tasks, for example Lesson 5.4: Renting to Own, where prospective teachers were asked if they would rent
to own an item and why. The most successful examples have been those where the question asked is very broad,
for example, Lesson 5:7: Two Sides to Every News Story, where the question was to verify a claim made by a
talk-show host that White Americans are more frequently killed by police than Black Americans. She has found
that prospective teachers willingly engage in solving tasks where they are required to make a recommendation,
and expects that asking prospective teachers to take action would make modeling tasks even more effective.
Proto-Modeling Tasks
We also include a category for “proto-modeling” tasks, which involve some aspects of mathematical model-
ing, but do not engage the learner in the full modeling process. One example is Lesson 9.2: Marijuana Arrests,
in which learners are asked to determine the different probabilities for Whites and Blacks of being arrested for
having used marijuana based on some basic statistics. While there are some assumptions to be made and the
task can lead to discussion of different models, the modeling process and the number of decisions to be made
are minimal because of the limited information provided and the structured nature of the task. Simic-Muller
also refers to these types of tasks as mathematizing and many of her lessons fit into this category.
Summary of Types of Tasks

The types of tasks are summarized in Table 2.1. We have classified each task in this book with respect to
the relevance of the mathematics and how structured the inquiry is. However, this classification is somewhat
TABLE 2.1 Summary of Types of Tasks

Relevance
Stepping Stone The real-world context is used as a stepping off point for investigating specific mathematical concepts.
Providing Insight The mathematics done provides deeper insight into or understanding of the real-world context.
Backdoor The task begins as an “apolitical” stepping stone task, but then a more significant real-world meaning to
the mathematics is revealed.
Tool The mathematics involved helps accomplish a goal (such as efficiently bringing water to those in need),
but it does not provide insight into the causes or extent of the social issue at hand.
Structure of Inquiry
Directed The task dictates how mathematics is used to analyze the real-world context, and in particular dictates
the kinds of mathematics questions asked about the context.
Proto-Modeling The learner engages in some aspects of mathematical modeling, such as exploring assumptions or
considering one or more ways to mathematically analyze a context.
Modeling The learner must engage in mathematical modeling to investigate a real-world context. There is more
than one way to analyze the context mathematically and the learner must make assumptions, decide what
kinds of questions to ask and what mathematics to use to answer these questions.
FRAMEWORKS ◾ 13
subjective. As discussed above, different learners may experience the same task in different ways. In addition,
it is important to note that what ultimately matters is how the task is enacted and taken up by the instructor
and learners. Finally, many tasks involve aspects of multiple categorizations. Therefore, we have classified tasks
based on what we saw as the overall emphasis, but your experiences may vary. We offer this classification both
as a way to make sense of the tasks presented here, but also as a lens for thinking about what you want to em-
phasize in your own practice.
Notes
1. These tasks were inspired by feedback from Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings during Felton-Koestler’s dissertation defense
References
Cirillo, M., Pelesko, J. A., Felton-Koestler, M. D., & Rubel, L. (2016). Perspectives on modeling in school mathematics. In C. R.
Hirsch (Ed.), Annual perspectives in mathematics education 2016: Mathematical modeling and modeling mathematics (pp. 3–16).
Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP), & Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). (2016).
Guidelines for assessment & instruction in mathematical modeling education. Bedford, MA and Philadelphia, PA. Retrieved from
http://www.siam.org/reports/gaimme.php
Felton, M. D. (2014). Mathematics and the real world [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/Publications/
Mathematics-Teaching-in-Middle-School/Blog/Mathematics-and-the-Real-World/
Felton-Koestler, M. D. (2015). Mathematics education as sociopolitical: Prospective teachers’ views of the What, Who, and How.
Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-015-9315-x
Boston, MA: Sense Publishers.
Gutstein, E. (2005). South Central Los Angeles: Ratios and density in urban areas. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking
mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (pp. 101–102). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Gutstein, E., & Peterson, B. (Eds.). (2013). Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed.). Milwaukee, WI:
Rethinking Schools.
Lubienski, S. T. (2002). Research, reform, and equity in U.S. mathematics education. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 4(2–3),
103–125.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2000). Principles and standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics.
Renner, A. (2013). Designing a wheelchair ramp: Putting the Pythagorean theorem to use. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.),
Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed., pp. 136–137). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Stocker, D. (2008). Maththatmatters: A teacher resource linking math and social justice (2nd ed.). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Center for
Policy Alternatives.
3
Getting Started
I
n this chapter we tried to anticipate and respond to some questions that might arise for readers consid-
ering incorporating contexts that value diversity, connect mathematics to students’ lives, and critique the
world. The chapter is written in a Q&A form.
Where Do I Start? Do I Have to Redesign My Entire Course?

Creating or using one or two lessons is a good place to start and it is where we started. Of course, as time pro-
gresses you may look for additional opportunities to integrate equity and diversity more consistently through-
out your course. If doing a few standalone lessons, we strongly recommend ones where your prospective teach-
ers are likely to be open to the context and where the school mathematics is easy to see. Some lessons we have
had good success with in this regard are: Lesson 8.2: Income Inequality, Lesson 7.7: Water Bottles for Detroit,
Lesson 6.1: Graphing Towards Social Justice, and Lesson 8.1: Historical Trends in Crime.
Our approaches are slightly different. Felton-Koestler, for example, makes equity a consistent theme
throughout his courses through the use of lessons and readings (see Chapter 11). This approach can help
guard against the idea that equity is a side issue or an add on that can distract from the mathematics. Simic-
Muller also incorporates multiple social justice-related lessons into her courses, but they are more likely to be
clustered around a particular topic such as data analysis or proportional reasoning than to be evenly distribut-
ed across the semester. Most recently, she spent the last two weeks of a course simultaneously discussing pro-
portional reasoning and modeling, with students working on the familiar Barbie lesson (Mukhopadhyay, 1998,
2013), Lesson 5.4: Renting to Own, and Lesson 5.7: Two Sides to Every News Story, all modified into modeling
lessons. This was especially beneficial as it was the end of the semester, and students were far more engaged
working on modeling tasks than they would have been listening to a lecture or working on worksheets. A few
students commented that the real-world contexts were the best part of this particular class. The same held true
in Menéndez’s class when students collected data from current television commercials (Lesson 8.5: Messages
in Children’s Ads).
16 ◾ GETTING STARTED
How Does This Fit With What I Have to Teach?

Our lessons fit well with the content covered in typical courses for prospective teachers. Some tasks are short
and can be done as warm-up problems; some lend themselves well to being assigned as homework for later
discussion in class. Small projects can also be started in class with the overview of the mathematical topic, while
leaving the social aspect for students to investigate on their own as homework and present at a later time. In
other cases group work can be turned in and graded as a quiz. In addition, the tasks in this book also heavily
emphasize the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMPs) (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010),
especially SMP3: constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others, and SMP4: modeling
with mathematics.
How Do I Decide What Real-World Topics to Investigate?

While there is no one right answer to this question, in our experience prospective teachers are initially more
likely to be open to issues that are not too controversial. What is controversial will vary, but it is probably not
helpful to shock students with the very first lesson. Simic-Muller, for example, teaches near a large military
base, and avoids discussing any topic that may be viewed by students as anti-military.
Similarly, we have found that students tend to respond well to topics they are already familiar with. For
example, Simic-Muller’s students are well versed in sustainability, and are very receptive to lessons related
to it. We also expect our students, as future teachers, to be interested in topics that are related to children
and education. A local context might be an easier one to start with. Although many students may be aware
of and informed about recent news stories, you cannot assume that all of your students are. Many lessons
will require careful structuring and/or time to discuss and unpack the real-world context. Tying a lesson to
a current event or to happenings on campus that students are already talking about is probably the most
powerful approach.
We also generally tell our prospective teachers that not every topic we choose is something we are expecting
them to take directly into the classroom (although we also often emphasize that there is a tendency to under-
estimate what children are capable of investigating). We choose our real-world topics for a variety of reasons.
In some cases we choose topics we believe are important for future teachers to be familiar with, such as insti-
tutional racism or the broad range of ways mathematics is done around the world. In other cases we choose
topics that we believe connect to their interests as adult learners so they can experience what it means to do
mathematics in a way that connects to their lives. Finally, sometimes we choose topics because we are passion-
ate about them or because they connect well to the mathematics at hand.
Should I Only Investigate Issues My Students Know and Care About?

In thinking about our work we draw on Gutiérrez’s (2007) argument on the importance of including mirrors
and windows in the curriculum: “Students need to have opportunities to see themselves in the curriculum
(mirror) as well as have a view onto a broader world (window)” (p. 3). We agree that there should be a place
for both. It is important to recognize, though, that what functions as a mirror for one person may act as a win-
dow for another. While you may get more buy-in from students at the beginning of a course by starting with
topics they care about, or that they anticipate their future students will care about, we also believe there is an
important role for incorporating windows into the curriculum—for helping prospective teachers learn about
their broader worlds through the lessons you use. This is especially true if the windows are potential mirrors
for the prospective teachers’ future students.
GETTING STARTED ◾ 17
Are There Any Topics to Avoid?

This is something instructors have to decide for themselves. As mentioned above, Simic-Muller intentionally
avoids lessons that might come across as anti-war or anti-military because so many of her students have military
connections. Regardless of which topics you choose, we strongly advocate not forcing students to reach a par-
ticular conclusion. For instance, on a task exploring income inequality students may still believe current levels
of inequality are fair because they rewards hard work or are the most efficient way to encourage economic
growth. Another example might be analyzing an election cycle. We would not recommend creating a lesson
that singled out a particular politician, although we know colleagues who have created lessons that allow stu-
dents to select political statements and analyze them mathematically—The difference here is that the students
are driving the focus as opposed to the instructor.
A useful strategy is to allow students to bring topics they care about and can be seen within the scope of a
social or humanitarian issue where inequity or injustice is present. This helps to give students voice in their ed-
ucation and other students will not feel the topic is imposed by the teacher or driven by the teacher’s “agenda.”
We also strongly suggest avoiding approaches that single out particular students or make them feel stereo-
typed, for instance by requiring students to speak for a whole group or perspective (they should, of course, be
allowed to offer up their perspectives if they want to).
Where Can I Get My Ideas?

Once you begin teaching mathematics through social justice, your approach to teaching changes. Now all news
stories are potential lesson material. We often bring examples from the news to our classes. A few years ago the
Occupy movement provided rich opportunities for discussion about topics ranging from percentages to Gini
coefficients. Recently, the increased awareness of police brutality in Black communities has also raised important
mathematical questions. Similarly, pay attention to the calendar: Dates such as Equal Pay day provide opportu-
nities for quick and relevant mathematical problems if not entire lessons. Simic-Muller has also connected her
courses with campus events, and has found this experience especially rewarding. In particular, students have at-
tended campus events and have engaged with them through mathematics, either by writing mathematics lessons,
writing mathematical reports, or, most recently, creating ads to highlight issues through mathematics. However,
some of the most powerful lessons can arise from comments that students make in class.
How Do You Create the Lessons?

Simic-Muller: For me, the context typically motivates the content: I start with a topic that interests me (most
notably poverty, homelessness, and racial injustice), and the mathematical content follows. For example, I re-
cently read a news story about the claim of a radio talk show host that more White than Black people are killed
by police (Greenberg, 2014). It was obvious to me that debunking this claim required proportional reasoning,
so I developed a lesson around it (see Lesson 5.7: Two Sides to Every News Story).
At other times, I begin with the context, typically modifying lessons from textbooks. Frequently, a book
problem will have high mathematical demands, but use contrived or “neutral” data. I will replace these with
actual data, problematize the context, and ask students to dig deeper. This was the case with the Lesson 5.1:
A Representative Congress task, which I modified from the Selecting Delegates exploration in the Compar-
ing and Scaling unit from the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) (Lappan, Fey, Fitzgerald, Friel, & Phillips,
2006). Whereas the CMP task was about choosing a representative conference delegation, I changed it to
choosing a racially and ethnically representative Congress.
Felton-Koestler: I often begin with a focus on particular mathematics content. I do this because my courses are
often structured around content strands, so I want lessons that are compatible with the topic we are currently
focused on. I visualize my process as having two rolodexes in my mind: one that includes all the real-world
issues I might explore and another that includes all the mathematics content I can focus on. I see myself as
moving to a particular section in the math rolodex (say algebra) and flipping through the cards in that section
while simultaneously flipping through the real-world rolodex to find something that matches up.
I find that a flexible understanding of mathematics content is crucial. For instance, if all algebra meant
to me was following procedures to solve for x, then I would be extremely limited in the types of real-world
contexts I could make connections to. However, because I also think of algebra as reasoning about qualitative
graphs and rates of change I was able to create Lesson 6.1: Graphing Towards Social Justice. As I gain more
experience with this work I add more cards to both of my rolodexes. The more diverse each rolodex is the
easier it is for me to make connections across them.
Staying informed about events in the world is critical to expanding my real-world rolodex. I try to read the
news regularly, but because of my connections to colleagues on social media I regularly have relevant news sto-
ries pop across my front page. I have an ever-growing (and unorganized) list of bookmarks on my computer. I
also follow groups, such as Racial Justice Now (racialjusticenow.org), Teaching Tolerance (www.tolerance.org),
and Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org). Finally, as I create more lessons I also develop a better
understanding of the kinds of data that are available—What data am I likely to be able to find? How should I
search for it? How does that affect the kind of task I can design? Mostly, I think this just takes time and expe-
rience. Be prepared to spend significant portions of time hunting down data or playing around with how you
can connect mathematics to the context or information you are working with.
Menéndez: In creating my own activities, I look at the mathematics content I want my students to practice or
apply, which is why my activities tend to be more directed. As I read through the applications problems given
in textbooks, I imagine what relevant current topic I can adapt for the mathematical content the textbook as-
signment is trying to cover, and then I think about how to incorporate the equity or social justice component.
I also generally modify activities by adding a requirement for students to justify their reasoning.
How Do You Come Up With Projects?

Simic-Muller: In addition to relatively self-contained lessons, I also engage students in larger projects (see
Chapter 10). Almost all my projects consist of connecting my classes to the campus. My university frequently
offers events related to social justice, and a few of those match my interests closely. One year, in response to
a symposium about water, students developed lessons about the global access to water and inequities in its
distribution. One of my longest-running projects has been related to the Tunnel of Oppression, an interac-
tive event that explores injustices through a series of scenes, many of which contain numerical and statistical
information. Most recently, I have obtained data from our dining services about paper cup consumption and
asked prospective teachers to create reports and visual representations that would investigate different aspects
of paper cup use and possibly encourage other students to switch to reusable cups. Both projects are included
in Chapter 10.
One distinct advantage of projects over lessons is that they give prospective teachers more freedom in topics
to investigate, and more ownership of the material. The disadvantage, and one of my greatest challenges, is
that in creating arguments about a topic based on their own research is much more difficult for the prospec-
tive teachers, because they do not necessarily know which mathematics to use, or how to distinguish between
sophisticated and less sophisticated mathematical reasoning. As a consequence, these assignments usually
favor those students who are already good at mathematics, and I have been considering ways to scaffold the
projects to minimize this issue.
What Are Some Challenges One Faces When Teaching in This Way?
One of the most significant challenges is that all content and methods courses are overflowing with material to
cover. This can make it difficult to dedicate enough class time to particular lessons or to fully integrating social
GETTING STARTED ◾ 19
justice lessons throughout the curriculum. Sometimes this leads to a superficial reflection on the real-world
content in a social justice lesson—While many of our lessons are designed to provide insightful mathematical
answers about the world, without time to probe the meaning of those answers, this insight may fall flat. If we
are serious about raising prospective teachers’ awareness about real-world issues, then we need to offer them
opportunities to reflect on and discuss what they have learned about these issues. We continue to work on this
in our teaching.
There are mathematical obstacles as well. Many prospective teachers come to our courses having experi-
enced a highly procedural version of mathematics, which has damaged their ability to connect mathematics to
the real-world in meaningful ways (Verschaffel, Greer, & De Corte, 2000)—They often struggle to understand
real-world data, may easily jump to erroneous conclusions, and do not bring relevant real-world knowledge to
bear when doing mathematics. To some extent this can be alleviated when assignments are carefully scaffolded
and examples are given of how data tables, for example, should be read. However, again the pressure to address
a broad range of content means we cannot always devote as much time to quantitative literacy as we might like.
Finally, we have all occasionally gotten push back from students about integrating real-world (and especially
political) issues into the mathematics curriculum. In some cases, this results in a rejection of student-centered,
problem-solving based instruction as well because the prospective teachers view these as intertwined. However,
we suggest never being defensive or apologetic about using social justice in the classroom. Having done this
work for a number of years we emphasize that doing social justice mathematics is still doing mathematics, and
having conversations with the prospective teachers before giving them assignments helps. We also explicitly
position our prospective teachers as professionals who will have to make their own decisions about the kinds
of mathematics they want to teach when they have their own classrooms.
What Are Some Counter-Resistance Strategies Instructors Can Use?

As discussed above, carefully selecting topics and introducing them in a way that encourages students to reach
their own conclusions can be an important first step. Moreover, positioning your students as professionals
who will have to make their own decisions about the kind of mathematics they want to teach allows them the
opportunity to explore issues without feeling boxed in. Ultimately, though, you will learn a lot through exper-
imenting and seeing not only what works for the students in your courses, but also what you are comfortable
with. There are a few other strategies we have used to try to increase students’ openness to these ideas.
One approach is to have students come up with topics in which they are interested. In one of Menéndez’s class-
es students who did not do a service learning project had to do a research project for which they needed to use
mathematics to understand an issue of injustice or to try to find a solution to that problem. Large categories such
as gender, income, the cost of war, incarceration, famine, etc., were listed to get students started on their project,
but each group chose their specific “problem.” A potential pitfall while using this technique is that it may allow
students to get away with “light” topics. The instructor needs to have clear parameters to assess the relevance and
depth of the topics proposed. In Chapter 11 Felton-Koestler explains how he has begun introducing a Funds of
Knowledge assignment by brainstorming interests and concerns of his prospective teachers. He then attempts to
integrate these into the lessons he uses during the semester. This allows for a connection to the students’ interests
while also having the potential to approach the topics with a critical stance.
A second approach is to create activities that show how mathematics can be “useful” for solving real-world
problems. We have found that students reported a greater sense of engagement and enjoyment when learning
mathematics in a way that relates to their lives and to other subjects (Felton, Simic-Muller, & Menéndez, 2012)
and others have found that this approach can lower students’ mathematics anxiety (Mistele & Spielman, 2009).
Finally, you can incorporate tasks during lessons or projects that use students’ situational experience as
prospective teachers to help them see how the mathematical task and the social topic are applicable to their
training. For example you might point out how the content relates to mathematics content and practice stan-
dards for various grade levels or have prospective teachers create mathematics problems or lessons that their
future students could answer with the information related to the activity.
References
Felton, M. D., Simic-Muller, K., & Menéndez, J. M. (2012). “Math isn’t just numbers or algorithms”: Mathematics for social justice
in preservice K–8 content courses. In L. J. Jacobsen, J. Mistele, & B. Sriraman (Eds.), Mathematics teacher education in the
public interest: Equity and social justice (pp. 231–252). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Greenberg, J. (2014). Talk show host: Police kill more Whites than Blacks. Retrieved from http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/
statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/
Gutiérrez, R. (2007). Context matters: Equity, success, and the future of mathematics education. In T. Lamberg & L. R. Wiest
(Eds.), Proceedings of the annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education (29th, Lake Tahoe, Nevada) (pp. 1–18). Reno, NV: University of Nevada, Reno.
Lappan, G., Fey, J., Fitzgerald, W. M., Friel, S. N., & Phillips, E. D. (2006). Comparing and scaling. In Conneted Mathematics Project
(2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Mistele, J. M., & Spielman, L. J. (2009). The impact of “math for social analysis” on mathematics anxiety in elementary preservice
teachers. In S. L. Swars, D. W. Stinson, & S. Lemons-Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North American
Mukhopadhyay, S. (1998). When Barbie goes to classrooms: Mathematics in creating a social discourse. In C. Keitel (Ed.), Social
justice and mathematics education: Gender, class, ethnicity, and the politics of schooling (pp. 150–161). Berlin, Germany: Freie
Universität Berlin.
Mukhopadhyay, S. (2013). Deconstructing Barbie: Math and popular culture. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking
mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed., pp. 200–201). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Verschaffel, L., Greer, B., & De Corte, E. (2000). Making sense of word problems. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.
II
P A R T
Overview of Lessons
P
art II of the book provides a collection of lessons that we have used in content courses, methods courses,
and/or professional development contexts. The lessons are organized by content area, although many
connect to multiple content areas. Each lesson is broken up into (a) the Introduction, which provides
background information for the instructor; (b) the Task, which is the lesson itself; and (c) some tasks have a
third section with additional data, handouts, or materials. In the introduction to each lesson you will find a ta-
ble indicating the relevance of the mathematics to the real-world context (see Chapter 2), the structure of the
lesson (see Chapter 2), and the grade band. Below is a table summarizing this information for all the lessons.
Many of the lessons can be taken and used in their current form, but we encourage you to adapt them to
your students and context. Some of the lessons will require extra research and preparation before being used,
mostly because the data must be adjusted for your context. Note that, due to space limitations, we did not
include large data sets in the lessons; however, when indicated, supplemental materials are available on the
companion website: http://www.infoagepub.com/simic-muller.
Connection Structure Grade Band

Modeling
Modeling
Backdoor
Stepping
Directed
Provide
Middle
Insight
Proto-
Stone
Elem.
High
Tool
Chapter 4: Whole Number

A Living Wage • • • •
Cost of Healthy Food • • • •
Cost of the War on Terror • • •
Culture Quiz • • • •
Poverty Problem Types • • •
(continued)
Reflecting the World: A Guide to Incorporating Equity in Mathematics Teacher Education, page 21
22 ◾
Connection Structure Grade Band
Modeling
Modeling
Backdoor
Stepping
Directed
Provide
Middle
Insight
Proto-
Stone
Elem.
High
Tool
Chapter 5: Rational Number
A Representative Congress • • • •
Childhood Poverty & Hunger • • •
Division of Income • • •
Renting to Own • • • •
The Gender Pay Gap • • •
The Gender Pay Gap: Equal Pay Day • • •
Two Sides to Every (News) Story • • • •
Who Gets More? • • • •
Chapter 6: Algebra
Graphing Towards Social Justice • • • •
Incarceration Rates • • • •
Juvenile Delinquency • • • •
The Cost of Water • • • •
Chapter 7: Geometry & Measurement
Congressional Redistricting • • • •
Displaced Persons • • •
Mountain Top Removal • • • • •
Native American Star Quilts • • • •
Plastic Floating in the Ocean • • • • •
The Cost of Bottled Water • • • •
Water Bottles for Detroit • • • •
Chapter 8: Data Analysis
Historical Trends in Crime • • • •
Income Inequality • • •
Income Then and Now • • •
Income: Teacher Salaries • • • •
Messages in Children’s Ads • • •
Mortality and Race • • • • •
Youth Poverty and Homelessness • • • • • •
Chapter 9: Probability
Income Mobility • • •
Marijuana Arrests • • •
Money Cube (Poverty by Race) • • •
Chapter 10: Interdisciplinary Projects
Paper Cup Use • • • •
Tunnel of Oppression • • • •
L ESSON
Whole Number Lessons
4
4.1
A Living Wage (Introduction)
Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Providing Insight Proto-Modeling Elementary
Modeling
Mathematics
• Multi-digit whole number computation
• Making assumptions and decisions about what is fair and reasonable
Real-World Context
This task explores the costs of basic needs for families of various sizes. The task is designed to include discus-
sion of how students think the minimum wage should be set and what they think the purpose of the minimum
wage should be.
Implementing the Task

I have used this lesson successfully with prospective and practicing teachers. In most cases the students have
enough background understanding of the topic to engage with it easily. The results of the computations are
often quite eye opening, especially for those who have not had to manage their own money yet.
24 ◾ WHOLE NUMBER LESSONS
This task can be completed in a short time (50 minutes) if needed, but more time allows for richer discus-
sions and explorations.
If not raised by the students, it is important to point out that these calculations do not include any form of
government benefits. This can be connected to the broader conversation about what the purpose of a mini-
mum wage should be.
Extensions
The Spent game (http://www.playspent.org) could serve as a nice connection to this task, especially as a
means of helping students think more about what additional expenses might come up in life.
A Living Wage (Task)

Families
The instructor will assign a family to your group: (a) single adult; (b) single parent, two kids; (c) two par-
ents, both work, two kids; or (d) two parents, one works, two kids.
Task
Your group must be prepared to share:
• What hourly wage do the workers in your family need to earn to pay their bills?
• How did you find this value?
• What assumptions did you make and why do you think they are reasonable?
While you have been given some information, your group will still have to make a number of decisions. Some
(but not all) things you might think about are:
• What (if any) other essential costs do you want to include?

• How much should someone work in a year?
• Do you think the typical expenses from the handout are reasonable? (Take a look at how they are de-
fined on the handout.)
Extensions
1. Break down the amount spent on food. On average, how much is being spent each day? Each meal?
Compare and contrast this with your own spending habits. Repeat this process with some of the other
spending categories.
2. Add a financial goal for your family (e.g., saving to go back to school, vacation, down payment on a
home) and recalculate the needed hourly wage.
3. Figuring out a living wage is one piece of the debate about minimum wage. Discuss: What other fac-
tors would you still want to explore?
4. Discuss: What are your thoughts on the minimum wage? How, if at all, were they influenced by this
activity?
5. Choose one of the following:
a. Another family scenario and repeat this process
b. Another geographical region
WHOLE NUMBER LESSONS ◾ 25
A Living Wage (Data)

These data come from the Living Wage Calculator (http://livingwage.mit.edu/), © 2016 Dr. Amy K. Glasmei-
er and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Adults
2(1) means 2 adults but only 1 is working. In these tables the non-working adult is assumed to be providing
childcare.
Children
• For one child: Assumed to be 4 years old
• For two children: Assumed to be 4 and 9 years old
• For three children: Assumed to be 4, 9, and 15 years old
Food
Compiled using the USDA’s low-cost food plan. The low-cost plan assumes that families select lower cost
foods and that all meals (including snacks) are prepared in the home.
Housing
The housing component captures the likely cost of rental housing in a given area in 2014 using U.S. Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fair Market Rents (FMR) estimates.
The FMR is the 40th percentile of gross rents for typical, non-substandard rental units occupied by recent mov-
ers in a local housing market. (This means 40% of rents would be below this and 60% would be above it.)1
• Gross rents: Sum of rent paid plus any extra utility costs.
• Typical, non-substandard rental units: The FMR does not include public housing, rental units built in the
last 2 years, rental units considered substandard in quality, seasonal rentals, and rental units on 10 or
more acres.
Other
The basic needs budget includes cost estimates for items not otherwise included in the major budget com-
ponents such as clothing, personal care items, and housekeeping supplies. Expenditures for other necessities
are based on 2012 data by household size from the 2013 Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure
Survey including: (a) Apparel and services, (b) Housekeeping supplies, (c) Personal care products and ser-
vices, (d) Reading, and (e) Miscellaneous.
Athens County, Ohio

Adults 1 1 2 2 (1)
Children 0 2 2 2
Food $3,087 $6,849 $9,095 $9,095
Child Care $0 $10,381 $10,381 $0
Medical $2,060 $5,244 $5,308 $5,308
Housing $6,792 $8,412 $8,412 $8,412
Transportation $4,569 $9,589 $11,236 $11,236
Other $2,127 $4,046 $4,891 $4,891
Annual Taxes $2,346 $5,604 $6,209 $4,902
LESSON
4.2
Cost of Healthy Food (Introduction)

Providing Insight Directed Elementary
(Proto-Modeling)
Mathematics
• Whole number computation
Real-World Context
Issues of poverty often come up in my courses and in the media. Sometimes poor people are framed as mak-
ing bad choices. Another topic that comes up frequently is obesity, especially when I have students select their
own topics to investigate mathematically, which is also often framed as the result of poor choices. This lesson is
intended to be one small illustration of how there are costs to being poor that may make it difficult to eat well.

I have used this problem as part of a larger homework assignment in a mathematics content course and
as an in-class activity as part of a set of tasks designed to provide examples of social justice mathematics in a
professional development.
Extensions/Modifications
This task can be easily updated with more recent prices. Searching online about the costs of eating health-
ier will yield a number of articles. Some articles argue that eating well is not necessarily more expensive and
investigating this in greater depth could lead to an extended project. Similarly, the task could be extended by
asking students to visit a local grocery store and compare costs per calorie of various foods and/or by compar-
ing costs in stores in different parts of a city or in different types of stores (e.g., convenience stores, which may
be all that is available in some neighborhoods).
Cost of Healthy Food (Task)

The following is from “Spoiled System: Eating Healthier Comes With a Price for Families” by Karen Auge at
The Denver Post (Sep 5, 2010). http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_15996357
As Revisha Martinez pondered the cost of peaches and watermelon at her local King Soopers recently, she became the
last stop in a complicated food-production system that critics believe has turned healthy eating into expensive eating.
If Martinez wants each member of her household to have one peach, it’ll cost her about $3.
If she chooses Kraft macaroni and cheese, she can get 18 servings—with 400 calories and 580 milligrams of sodium in
each—for the same price.
The reasons fresh fruits and vegetables are so pricey compared with processed food in a carton are a complicated stew
of government subsidies, politics, and the whims of Mother Nature.
...
Locally grown and long-awaited Western Slope peaches were on sale for 99¢ a pound. With each peach weighing rough-
ly half a pound, it would cost about $3 for each Martinez family member to have one.
According to Calorie Count (http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-peaches-i9236), medium peaches (about

4 peaches per pound) have 38 calories each and 0 milligrams of sodium.
Use the information above to answer the following questions. Be sure you think through the details of the
real-world situation as you solve these problems.
1. If Revisha Martinez spends $3 on Kraft macaroni, how many calories total will each member of her
family get? Show and explain your work.
2. Although clearly the estimate from Calorie Count is not for the same kind of peach, use this estimate
to figure out the following problem. If Revisha Martinez instead spends $3 on peaches, how many
calories total will each member of her family get? Show and explain your work.
3. What other mathematical questions could you ask about this topic, either based on the data presented
here or by doing additional research?
L ESSON
4.3
Cost of the War on Terror (Introduction)

Providing Insight Directed Elementary
Mathematics
• Multi-digit whole number computation
Real-World Context
This task is meant to highlight the financial cost of the War on Terror that the United States began following
the attacks on September 11, 2001. Of course, this leaves the very real human costs unexamined.

This task is currently set up as a quick, self-contained, task. I used it as part of a set of examples of social
justice mathematics in a professional development course for experienced teachers. It could, however, be used
as a launching point for a much more extended conversation and investigation.
This task could be extended by considering the lives lost on both sides of this conflict, and especially the
civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Resources
Peterson, B. (2013). The war in Iraq. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the num-
bers (pp. 40-41). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Cost of the War on Terror (Task)

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 112,611,029 households in the United States (in the
years 2005–2009).
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War):
The costs of the War on Terror are often contested, as academics and critics of the component wars (including the Iraq
War) have unearthed many hidden costs not represented in official estimates. The most recent major report on these
costs come from Brown University in the form of the Costs of War project, which said the total for wars in Iraq, Afghan-
istan, and Pakistan is at least $3.2–4 trillion.[1] The report disavowed previous estimates of the Iraq War’s cost as being
under $1 trillion, saying the Department of Defense’s direct spending on Iraq totaled at least $757.8 billion, but also
highlighting the complementary costs at home, such as interest paid on the funds borrowed to finance the wars and a
potential nearly $1 trillion in extra spending to care for veterans returning from combat through 2050.[2]
The Cost of War website is: http://costsofwar.org/

The summary of how they determined the $3.2–4 trillion dollar estimate can be found at http://costsofwar.
org/article/economic-cost-summary
1. How much have these wars cost each household in the United States?
2. Discuss: What does this number mean? How do you feel about it? What do you think of The Cost of
War’s estimate for the overall cost of the War on Terror?
LESSON
4.4
Culture Quiz (Introduction)

Backdoor Directed Elementary
(Middle School)
Mathematics
• Place value
• Negative numbers
• Decimals
• Multi-step story problems
• Multi-digit division
Real-World Context
This task is different than others in the book. It is less about exploring a real-world context than it is about
recognizing the role cultural knowledge may play in mathematics. It is meant to emphasize the role of cultural
or practical knowledge in both “abstract” mathematics (by considering other notations and algorithms) and
in story problems (by drawing on knowledge that many of my students do not have).

I only use this task after having established some level of trust and rapport with my students. I often assign
the Philipp’s (1996) and/or the Perkins & Flores’ (2002) article(s) from the Resources section as homework
either before or after doing this task.
To setup the task I announce that we are going to try out a more traditional approach in class today and that
we will start with “bell work” (a small task given at the beginning of the period, often for review of previous
topics). I give the students five minutes to complete the bell work. They then pass the quiz to their neighbor
and we correct the quizzes as a class. I emphasize that to be correct, answers must be correctly labeled and no-
tated. I then go over the answers relatively quickly, responding to confusion with statements like, “This should
be review, I know you learned this stuff. If you still have questions you can come talk to me later.”
I then move into another “review” activity, where I quickly refresh them on the “division algorithm.” I go
over two examples using a division algorithm that is common in some Latin American and European countries
(but I speak about it as though it is the standard algorithm they all should be familiar with). It involves the
same steps as the long division algorithm that is commonly taught in the United States but it is written differ-
ently and some steps are not written down. An example is below, but the materials in the resources sections
provide more detail. Again, I brush off concerns and confusion by saying, “This is review, you have learned
this before.” I then give them a worksheet with several division problems that they must complete. I usually let
them work for a couple of minutes before stopping to debrief the lesson.
Example for 791 ÷ 25 = 31 remainder 16
791 25 Step 1: Figure out that 25 goes into 79 three times,

mentally subtract 75 from 79 and write the result
4 3
(4) beneath it.
791 25 Step 2: Bring down the 1.
41 3
791 25 Step 3: Figure out that 25 goes into 41 once,

mentally subtract 25 from 41 and write the result
41 31
(16) beneath it.
16
To debrief, I explain each of the answers on the culture quiz and that the division algorithm is one used in
many Latin American and European countries.
• Questions 1 and 2 are explained in the Perkins & Flores (2002) article.
• Question 3: Horses are often measured in hands. There are 4 inches in a hand. Partial hands are notat-
ed with a decimal and the amount after the decimal is the number of extra inches. Thus, a horse that is
“15.2 h” tall is 15 hands (15 × 4 = 60 inches) and 2 inches tall (total height 62 inches).
• Question 4: When you cut wood, a small amount of the wood is lost due to the width of the blade (the kerf).
I follow up with a discussion about the activity, with prompts such as:
• How did you feel today?

• How would you have felt if I had also been speaking in another language?
• Whose mathematics was represented today? And how did that relate to you?
• Other thoughts?
Resources
Philipp, R. A. (1996). Multicultural mathematics and alternative algorithms. Teaching Children Mathematics, 3(3), 128–133.
Perkins, I., & Flores, A. (2002). Mathematical notations and procedures of recent immigrant students. Mathematics Teaching in the
Middle School, 7(6), 346–351.
Mathematical notation comparisons between U.S. and Latin American Countries, compiled by Noemi R. Lopez for TODOS:
Mathematics for all—http://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/oreyd/acp.htm_files/todos.operation.description.pdf
Wikipedia article on Long Division—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_division
Wikipedia article on hands—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_(unit)
Article about the kerf in woodworking—http://mymilescity.com/diy-carpentry/beware_the_kerf.html
Culture Quiz (Bell Work)

1. Write out the following as a number (no words). This is one big number, not four different numbers:
“3 billion, 475 million, 125 thousand, 371.”
[Common incorrect answer: “3,475,125,371.” Correct answer: “3,000,475,125,371.”]
2. Solve:
8 – 12 = ?
31 + ? = 18
[Common answers: “–4” and “–13.” Correct answers: “4” and “13” (4 and 13 with lines over the top).]
3. Solve: “My horse is 15.2 h tall. My friend’s horse is 14.3 h tall. How much taller is my horse than my
friend’s?”
[Common answer: “0.9 h.” Correct answer: “0.3 h.”]
4. Solve: “You are in a woodworking class and you need to precisely cut 12 pieces of wood that are each 2
feet long. The store sells boards that are exactly 8 feet long. How many boards do you need to buy for
your project?”
[Common answer: “3 boards.” Correct answer: “4 boards.”]
LESSON
4.5
Poverty Problem Types (Introduction)

Stepping Stone Directed Elementary
Mathematics
• Identifying Cognitively Guided Instruction problem types
Real-World Context
Many content and methods courses emphasize learning problem types. Often these problems are about ev-
eryday things, such as marbles, toys, or food. Instead, in this lesson the contexts all deal with real data related
to poverty. I focus on the problem types from Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) (Carpenter, Fennema,
Franke, Levi, & Empson, 2015) because they build on a strong research base and a version of these types has
largely found its way into the Common Core (see Tables 1 and 2 of the glossary Common Core State Standards
Initiative, 2010, pp. 88–89).

I typically use this after introducing problem types in my course using more typical “school” word problems.
Difficulties With Problem Types

Many learners struggle with both identifying and creating the various problem types. I created several of the
problems (all of those marked with a †) to show change over time, and thus to be classified as action problems.
Consider, for example, problem 2:
In 2008 there were about 2,754K poor people who worked full time. In 2008 this decreased to 2,641K. How much did
it decrease by?
I would classify this as a Separate Change Unknown problem because there is a single set that changes over
time, we know its starting value in 2008 and its resulting value in 2009, but we do not know how much it chang-
es by. However, some colleagues I have spoken with view this as a compare problem because they are used to
conceptualizing these as two different data sets that would be compared side by side. As with any problem, the
problem type ultimately depends on how the learner interprets it.
Poor Versus Low-Income

Some learners struggle with understanding the relationship between “poor” and “low-income.” The set of
low-income people includes all poor people. The unfamiliarity of these terms combined with the general dif-
ficulties learners have with differentiating between the CGI problem types can create additional confusion for
those who struggle with these ideas.
Creating Problems
I have found that when learners try to create their own problems based on real data they often struggle
more than if they create simple “school” problems. Trying to identify data that will fit with the various CGI
problem types and/or finding data and attempting to make it conform to these problem types adds an extra
layer of complexity to this process.
Resources
Poverty Problem Types (Task)

Directions
• Identify the additive CGI problem types for each of the problems below. Be sure you read and un-
derstand the meaning of Low Income and Poverty—Understanding these terms and the relationship
between them is important to classifying the problems.
• Make up your own set of 11 additive CGI problems around one or two common themes. Extra credit if
you use real data on some problems and provide a citation.
• What do you think about the real-world context of these problems (ignore the difficulty of the num-
bers involved and the wording)? Do they belong in a classroom? Why or why not? Would you be likely
to use these types of topics as a teacher? Why or why not?
These data are from:
*
indicates the National Center for Children in Poverty (www.nccp.org), specifically http://nccp.org/
tools/demographics/
†
indicates the US Census Bureau, specifically http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/in-
cpovhlth/
2009/table4.pdf
I used their terms for race/ethnicity. The NCCP’s definitions for low income and poor are below.
Low Income: Families and children are defined as low-income if the family income is less than twice the
federal poverty threshold (see Poor).
Poor: Families and children are defined as poor if family income is below the federal poverty threshold.
The federal poverty level for a family of four with two children was $22,050 in 2010.
Problems
1. In Arizona there are 392,851 children living in poverty. There are 806,272 children living in low-in-
come situations. How many children are low-income but not poor?*
2. In 2008 there were about 2,754K poor people who worked full-time. In 2009 this decreased to 2,641K.
How much did it decrease by?†
3. In Arizona, 32% of Black children are below the poverty line. In Wisconsin this number is 49%. How
much higher is the percentage of Black children in poverty in Wisconsin?*
4. In 2008 there were about 10,987K Hispanic people in poverty. In 2009 this increased by 1,363K. How
many Hispanic people were in poverty in 2009?†
5. In 2008 there were about 3,656K elderly people (65 or older) living in poverty. This decreased by 223K
in 2009. How many elderly poor people were there in 2009?†
6. In Arizona there are 141,958 poor children whose highest educated parent (living in the household)
has less than a high school degree. There are 113,498 poor children whose highest educated parent
has a high school degree. Altogether there are 392,851 children living in poverty in Arizona. How
many children living in poverty have a parent with some college education or more?*
7. In Arizona there are 469,553 Hispanic children living in low-income situations. This is 398,209 more
than the number in Wisconsin. How many low-income Hispanic children are in Wisconsin?*
8. In 2008 there were about 39,829K people living below the poverty line. In 2009 this number had in-
creased to about 43,569K. How much did it increase by?†
9. In Wisconsin 63% of children are low-income. In Arizona it is 1% point higher. What percentage of
Hispanic children are low-income in Arizona?*
10. In 2009 there were about 5,425K non-citizens living in poverty in the United States. This was up 466K
from the previous year. How many non-citizens were in poverty in the United States in 2008?†
11. In Arizona there are 242,286 Hispanic children living in poverty. There are 227,267 Hispanic children
who are considered low-income but not poor. How many low-income Hispanic children are there in
Arizona?*
12. In 2009 there were about 3,433K elderly people (65 or older) living in poverty. This was down 223K
from the previous year. How many elderly poor people were there in 2008?†
Poverty Problem Types (Answers)
Problem Problem Type

1 Part-Part-Whole, Part Unknown
2 Separate, Change Unknown
3 Compare, Difference Unknown
4 Join, Result Unknown
5 Separate, Result Unknown
6 Part-Part-Whole, Part Unknown (3 Parts)
7 Compare, Smaller Unknown
8 Join, Change Unknown
9 Compare, Larger Unknown
10 Join, Start Unknown
11 Part-Part-Whole, Whole Unknown
12 Separate, Start Unknown
Notes
1. https://www.huduser.gov/periodicals/USHMC/winter98/summary-2.html
L ESSON
Rational Number Lessons
5
5.1
A Representative Congress (Introduction)

Providing Insight Directed Middle school
Proto-modeling
Mathematics
• Proportional reasoning
• Ratios, rates, percentages, or proportions, depending on which approach students take
Real-World Context
In this task, adapted from the Selecting Delegates exploration in the Comparing and Scaling unit from the
Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) (Lappan, Fey, Fitzgerald, Friel, & Phillips, 2006), learners use percentages
or solve proportions to decide if the Congress is representative of the general population with respect to race.
The 114th Congress was praised as the most diverse Congress in history. While this is true, this activity shows
that it is still far from being representative. This is especially true for the Senate.

I have implemented this task on a number of occasions, and have recently updated the wording, as stu-
dents tend to complete the calculations but not write meaningful paragraphs in conclusion. The mathemat-
ical content is interesting to the students, and table discussions for this task are lively, especially since there
36 ◾ RATIONAL NUMBER LESSONS
is more than one way to solve the problem. The discussion about the actual context is not as nuanced as for
some other contexts that are a bit more tangible for the students, such as renting to own or homelessness.
Sometimes groups will argue that the Congress should not be representative of the population, but should
be based on ability (thus mirroring the recent affirmative action discussions). I have discussed this lesson in
Simic-Muller (2015).
Modifications and Extensions

The Census data provide multiple opportunities for engaging with mathematics. However, if we want to
specifically focus on the topic of diversity in the Congress, it would make sense to investigate gender in ad-
dition to race and ethnicity, and, especially, look at historical trends. The document, I used, Membership of
the 114th Congress: A Profile (https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43869.pdf) contains information need-
ed to conduct additional research about gender, age, or religion of members of the Congress. One possibil-
ity would be to plot the data points for each race and ethnicity, use scatterplots to make predictions about
the future make-up of Congress, and argue why these may or may not be valid predictions.
Another interesting extension relates to the proposed changes to the Census questionnaire, to combine
race and ethnicity into one category. A good resource on this comes from the Pew Research Center: http://
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/14/u-s-census-looking-at-big-changes-in-how-it-asks-about-race-
and-ethnicity/
A lesson in Gutstein & Peterson (2013) investigates the same context but through percent change, and
could be combined with this one.
Resources
The information about the U.S. population came from the Census website (e.g., http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/
c2010br-02.pdf). I used the information from the 2010 count, but more recent projections can be used as well, and can be
easily found on the Quick Facts page: http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00.
The Congress information was surprisingly difficult to find. I used an official document by the Congressional Research Service,
Membership of the 114th Congress: A Profile, found at https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43869.pdf, but the number
of White Congress members was not disclosed, so I had to do some additional research and make an educated guess as to
the actual number.
Denny, F. (2013). Teaching percent change + social justice = opportunity for deep mathematical discussion. In E. Gutstein &
B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed., pp. 154–160). Milwaukee, WI:
Rethinking Schools.
Lappan, G., Fey, J. Fitzgerald, W. M., Friel, S. N., & Phillips, E. D. (2006). Comparing and scaling. Boston, MA: Pearson-Prentice Hall.
Simic-Muller, K. (2015). Social justice and proportional reasoning. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 21(3), 163-168.
A Representative Congress (Task)

The Census, which takes place every ten years, collects, among other things, information about race and eth-
nicities. Respondents can check one of six categories for race: White or European American, Black or African
American, Asian American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and
Other. A separate question asks respondents whether they are of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. This means that
a person of Hispanic origin can belong in any of the six racial categories in addition to identifying as Latino
or Hispanic. Similarly, people who are of multiple races can check more than one box in the race category,
meaning that there is overlap between the race categories.
Following are some data from the most recent Census.
RATIONAL NUMBER LESSONS ◾ 37
Race Population
White or European American 223,553,265
Black or African American 38,929,319
Asian American 14,674,252
American Indian or Alaska Native 2,932,248
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander 540,013
Hispanic or Latino 50,477,594
Total 308,745,538
Based on these data, and the knowledge that there are 435 members of the House of Representatives and
100 members of the Senate, what should a “fair” racial make-up of the House and Senate be? Show your
work below.
Do not turn the page until you are finished.
(TURN OVER)
Below is the actual racial breakdown of the House and Senate. Again, note that the numbers do not add up,
because of the overlap in categories.
Racial Composition of the 112th Congress

(Including Delegates in the House)
Race U.S. House U.S. Senate
White 355 a
94
Black 46 2
Hispanic 34 4
Asian/Pacific Islander 13 1
American Indian 2 0
a
It was surprisingly hard to verify this piece of information, so I am
not 100% sure that this number is correct. The others are.
1. Write a paragraph, as if for a newspaper, about your findings regarding the racial make-up of the House
and Senate, using the mathematical information from this worksheet and reasoning mathematically.
Make an argument either for or against the statement that the House and Senate are representative of
the U.S. population. If you think that the House and Senate are not representative, provide recommen-
dations for numbers that would be more representative. Use the word “proportional” at least once.
2. What other questions do you have about this or related topics? You have to ask at least one question.
L ESSON
5.2
Childhood Poverty and Hunger (Introduction)

Provide Insight Directed Middle School
Mathematics
• Generating equivalent ratios
• Comparing ratios
Real-World Context
This task involves common school-like ratio problems related to rates of childhood poverty broken down by
race and rates of childhood “food insecurity” broken down by family income level.

The semester that I created this lesson I had my class brainstorm issues and concerns they had about the world (see
how I implement the Funds of Knowledge assignment described in Chapter 12). One of the concerns they raised
was childhood poverty and hunger. Therefore, I created this lesson as a substitute for Lesson 5.5: The Gender Pay
Gap. This illustrates how the general structure of some of the lessons in this book can be adapted to new contexts.
When introducing the task I begin with a whole class discussion of what my students know and want to know
about childhood poverty and hunger.
Childhood Poverty and Hunger (Task)

1. Individually: Fill out the first two columns of the KWL chart before starting this task. As you do this,
make a note of what you think the current percentage of childhood poverty is.
To understand the scope of childhood poverty and hunger we are going to imagine scaling down to the size
of classrooms, grade levels, and schools. For each of the schools in the scenarios below we will imagine that each
classroom, grade level, or any other group of children always have the same rate of poverty or food insecurity.
Childhood Poverty Background Information1

The official federal poverty line is set based on a relatively outdated measure. Many have argued that a new
measure should be used because in some ways the official poverty line over counts and in other ways it under
counts people in poverty. The Census Bureau does have some data that use an updated measure (called the
Supplemental Poverty Measure (SMP)), but the vast majority of statistics and federal programs rely on the
official poverty line (and therefore this is the definition we will work with). The table below compares and
contrasts the two ways of measuring poverty.
Official Poverty Line Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)

The poverty line is three times the cost of The poverty line is calculated based on the costs of food, clothing,
the minimum food diet in 1963. shelter, and utilities.
It is the same in all 48 lower states. It varies by city/region.
The income considered is household Income considered adds in government assistance and tax breaks
gross (pre-tax) income. and subtracts taxes, work expenses, medical costs, and childcare.
In 2015, for a household with 2 adults and In 2014, for a household with 2 adults and 2 children in Baltimore,
2 children, the poverty line was $24,036. the poverty line was $29,659.
Poverty Problems
For each of the different schools in problems 2–4 below, figure out how many children would be living in and
out of poverty in:
a. A smaller-sized class
b. A whole grade level
c. The whole school
2. A classroom in School A has 5 children living in poverty and 19 not living in poverty.
3. A classroom in School W has 3 children living in poverty and 13 not living in poverty.
4. A classroom in School B has 6 children living in poverty and 10 not living in poverty.
5. Which school has the highest rate of poverty? How do you know?
6. School A is a hypothetical school with children from any background, W is only White children, and B
is only Black children. Discuss the following:
a. What is your reaction to the overall rate of poverty in School A? How does it compare to what you
thought the childhood poverty rate was?
b. What is your reaction to the differences in rates of childhood poverty between School W and B?
What does this communicate to you about children’s opportunities in the United States?
Food Insecurity Background Information

Instead of studying hunger directly, we will instead examine rates of “food insecurity” instead. These defini-
tions are adapted from a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA):2
Food Security—access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life—is an important foundation for
good nutrition and health.
Food Insecurity—the lack of consistent access to adequate food—may result in hunger if it is severe or prolonged.
To measure food insecurity the USDA gives a questionnaire to adults in households. There are 10 questions for
households with only adults and 8 more questions for households with children. If two or more of the questions
are answered with a “yes” then the household is classified as having food insecurity among children. Some
example questions (with what counts as a “yes” underlined) are shown below:
• “We relied on only a few kinds of low-cost food to feed our children because we were running out of
money to buy food.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months?
• In the last 12 months, were the children ever hungry but you just couldn’t afford more food? (Yes/No)
Food Insecurity Problems

7. Before starting, make a note about what you think the rate of childhood food insecurity is.
For each of the different schools in problems 8–10 below, figure out how many children faced food insecurity
and how many did not in:
a. A smaller-sized class
b. A whole grade level
c. The whole school
8. A classroom in School 100 has 5 children facing food insecurity and 15 who do not.
11. Compare the rates of food insecurity. Rank them from least to greatest, but also come up with some
way of describing how much higher or lower the rates of food insecurity are for each group.
12. School 100 is a hypothetical school where all the children are living in poverty (their families make less than
100% of the federal poverty line). School 130 is children from families that earn between 100% and 130%
of the federal poverty line (so they make more money than those at School 100). School 185 is children that
are from families that earn between 130% and 185% of the federal poverty line. Discuss the following:
a. What is your reaction to these rates of food insecurity?
b. How might this influence children’s opportunities to learn in the classroom?
Reflect
13. Discuss:
a. How does this task connect to the course themes?
b. How did you feel learning/doing mathematics in this way?
c. How do you feel about the idea of teaching mathematics that connects to topics like this?
d. What is your reaction to the real-world information you worked with?
e. What work do you think went into making this lesson?
14. Fill in the last column of your KWL chart.
LESSON
5.3
Division of Income (Introduction)

Provide Insight Directed Elementary
Mathematics
• Fraction multiplication and division problems
Real-World Context
This task highlights the changing levels of income inequality in the United States from 1968 to 2013 by
comparing the mean household income level of the third quintile (fifth) of all households with the mean
income of the richest 5% of all households. The ratio between these values is one way of measuring the extent
of income inequality.

This is a relatively straightforward task that places typical school mathematics front and center but also
illustrates changes in income inequality. Students may struggle with coming up with multiple strategies for
working with fractions, especially if they have had primarily procedural experiences prior to this. Therefore,
this lesson might work well as a follow up to a lesson examining children’s invented strategies for adding and
multiplying fractions.
Division of Income (Task)

Background
When analyzing income levels, we often look at household incomes—so if more than two people were work-
ing in the same household their incomes would be combined.
The distribution of household income is often analyzed by putting the population into quintiles. You line up
every household (well a sample of households) in the United States from lowest income to highest. Then you
break the data up into five equal groups (these are the quintiles). So each quintile will have the same number
of households in it, they each include one fifth, or 20%, of all U.S. households. Then we often look at the mean
income in each quintile and make comparisons between quintiles.
Another common group to compare to is the mean household income of the top 5% of all U.S. households.
This group is already counted within the top quintile, but it can help separate the “really rich” from the “rich.”
Many economists narrow this down even further to consider the top 1% and 0.1%, but those data are not easily
available (the U.S. Census reports the quintiles and the top 5% each year).
On this task we will compare the mean household incomes from the third quintile with the mean household
incomes of the top 5% of households. The third quintile is one way to define the middle class since it is the
middle 20% of all households.
Bars
For this task we are going to convert incomes into gold bars. While this is artificial, it allows us to investigate
incomes using fractions instead of multi-digit numbers and decimals. The relationships between the incomes
are relatively good approximations of the actual incomes.
Part 1
1. Make sure everyone has at least one card showing the income (in “gold bars”) from a particular year.
Make sure everyone understands all the directions for Part 1 before starting.
2. Work individually: Come up with at least one strategy for solving the problem on your card. If you are
waiting for your group mates to finish you can generate other strategies.
3. People take turns sharing.
a. The first person shares, without interruption, their strategy for solving their problem.
b. Then if anyone has clarifying questions they can ask. Why questions are also encouraged.
c. Then the next person shares in the same way.
4. People take turns sharing again.
a. Each person must share a new strategy for their card. They must use a strategy that someone else shared
and adapt it to their card. Your group members can help you figure out how the strategy works with
your card.
b. If everyone used the same strategy in the first round, then the group must come up with one or
more alternative strategies that can be used with the cards.
5. Identify two strategies that you think were particularly interesting or mathematically insightful. Call
me over when everyone in the group is prepared to share/explain these two strategies. If you are wait-
ing for me you can start Parts 2 and 3 below.
Part 2
6. Discuss as a group:
a. How has the distribution of incomes changed over the last half century? What did you already know
about this, what have you learned through this task? Do you know anything about why they have
changed in this way?
b. Based only on income distribution, which of the four years would you rather live in?
c. The information I used to create this task is in the endnote.3 What kinds of mathematics do you
think was involved in creating this task?
Division of Income (Cards)
In 1968 the mean income for the top 5% of In 1983 the mean income for the top 5% of
households was 17⁄8 gold bars. The mean income households was 6 gold bars. The mean income
for the third quintile was 1⁄2 gold bar. How many for the third quintile was 11⁄3 gold bars. How many
third-quintile households would it take to earn third-quintile households would it take to earn
the same amount as a top 5% household? the same amount as a top 5% household?
In 1998 the mean income for the top 5% of In 2013 the mean income for the top 5% of
households was 141⁄6 gold bars. The mean income households was 207⁄12 gold bars. The mean
for the third quintile was 21⁄2 gold bars. How many income for the third quintile was 31⁄4 gold bars.
third-quintile households would it take to earn How many third-quintile households would it take
the same amount as a top 5% household? to earn the same amount as a top 5% household?
LESSON
5.4
Renting to Own (Introduction)

Providing Insight Proto-modeling Middle school
Modeling
Mathematics
• Percentages, primarily percent change
• Multiplication
Real-World Context
In this task, learners investigate predatory practices of rent-to-own businesses by calculating interest rates
these businesses charge. Rent-to-own businesses are typically, though not always, found in low-income neigh-
borhoods. They rent items to customers for a weekly charge. At the end of a set time period, if all payments
have been made, the renter comes into possession of the item. In some cases, if a payment is missed, however,
the item is repossessed by the business. More importantly, although the weekly payments are low, they are
typically made over a 2–3 year period, resulting in extremely high interest, sometimes even up to 500%. These
businesses prey on the inability of low-income customers to obtain a credit card, and remain secretive about
their practices: It is really difficult to find their prices.

I have used a simpler form of this lesson on numerous occasions. It was used as a homework project, a prob-
lem on a take-home final, in-class lesson, and a warm-up problem. In the past I provided more guidelines in the
assignment, but have recently changed the main question into a modeling problem. Both versions are given
here. It usually shocks prospective teachers who expect large interest rates, but not 200% and higher, which
is what the interest usually is. For this reason, they often miscalculate the interest rate, for example as 35% in-
stead of 135%, which is the opposite of the typical error in finding percent change. This is especially true if we
do not discuss the percent change formula before working on the problem. The discussion after the problem
usually addresses the question of why people do not use credit cards instead of renting to own.

A more complex question would be how long it would take to pay off an item bought in a store or online
using a credit card. A possible extension of the lesson would include access to credit cards, and the recent
advent of prepaid debit cards. Payday loans are a closely related topic and could also be investigated. Another
possible extension would include taking action on the issue, to raise awareness or contact consumer protection
agencies.
Resources
The only rent-to-own business prices I have been able to obtain have been for Buddy’s Rentals, at http://www.buddyrents.com/
electronics-rent-to-own/.
There are a few consumer protection websites that explain the practices of rent-to-own businesses in more detail. Consumer
Reports published an extensive report in 2011, strongly recommending against renting to own: http://www.consumerre-
ports.org/cro/money/shopping/rentacenter/overview/index.htm.
The Washington Post article recommended to students as a follow-up to the lesson deals with personal stories of people who regret
their decisions to rent-to-own from Buddy’s Rentals: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/
she-bought-a-sofa-on-installment-payments-now-its-straining-her-life/.
Renting to Own (Task)

Introductory Questions:
1. What do you know about renting to own a product?
2. What are some advantages of renting to own?
3. What are some disadvantages of renting to own?
Main Problem:
Look at the following flyer for a rent-to-own business:
http://www.buddyrents.com/electronics-rent-to-own/television/plasma-tvs.
Look at a few items, and identify the following:

• how much they cost to rent per week and per month,
• what the length of the contract is, and
• how much they cost to buy immediately at the store.
The information may be confusing or hard to find, but is all listed on the item’s page.
Questions [Version 1]:

1. Choose a specific item being rented and sold, and compute how much this item would cost you if:
a. You bought it at the rent-to-own store.
b. You rented to own the item by making weekly payments. Assume you make all the payments for it.
c. You rented to own the item by making monthly payments. Assume you make all the payments for it.
d. You bought it at a regular retail store. You will have to do some more research online to answer
this question: Go to the website of a major store that sells electronics and appliances, and see how
much they charge for the same or similar product. If you find a few possible prices, choose the
lowest one, but only consider new products.
2. Find the percent interest you are paying if:

a. You buy the item at the rent-to-own store instead of at a retail store or online;
b. You rent to own the item at the rent-to-own store instead of buying it at a retail store or online, if
you pay monthly; or
c. You rent to own the item at the rent-to-own store instead of buying it at a retail store or online, if
you pay weekly.
Note: Finding percent interest requires the same formula as finding percent increase, since percent interest is
just the percent increase from the base price (reference value). In this case, the base price is the price at the
retail store.

1. Choose a specific item being rented and sold, and compute how much this item would cost you if:
a. You bought it at the rent-to-own store.
b. You rented to own the item by making weekly payments. Assume you make all the payments for it.
c. You rented to own the item by making monthly payments. Assume you make all the payments for it.
d. You bought it at a regular retail store. You will have to do some more research online to answer
this question: Go to the website of a major store that sells electronics and appliances, and see how
much they charge for the same or similar product. If you find a few possible prices, choose the
lowest one, but only consider new products.
2. Would you rent to own your chosen item? Why or why not? You have to use mathematics to answer this
question. The mathematics has to be beyond just comparing numbers, and should include operations
and work with percents and/or ratios. Write a paragraph explaining your decision.
Additional question: You decide to rent to own your item and pay for it weekly. Once you paid the full amount
required by the contract, what is the percent interest you will be paying on the item compared to just buying
it from a retail store?]
Note: Finding percent interest requires the same formula as finding percent increase, since percent interest is
just the percent increase from the base price (reference value). In this case, the base price is the price at the
retail store.
Reflection Questions:
1. What does this investigation tell you about rent-to-own businesses? Write a paragraph.
2. Why do you think people use rent-to-own businesses?
3. Optional: Read the following Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sto-
ryline/wp/2014/10/16/she-bought-a-sofa-on-installment-payments-now-its-straining-her-life/ about
Buddy’s rentals whose prices we investigated and write a few sentences connecting the reading with
the investigation.
Homework:
Are there ever situations where it is worthwhile to rent an item instead of buying it? If so, create a scenario in
which renting is more beneficial, and use actual numbers and calculations (e.g., retail prices, rental rates, etc.)
to show that this is indeed the case.
L ESSON
5.5
The Gender Pay Gap (Introduction)

Provide Insight Directed Middle school
Mathematics
• Solving ratio and proportion problems when one value is unknown
• Generating equivalent ratios
• Comparing ratios
Real-World Context
This task involves common school-like ratio problems related to the gender pay gap. It also provides addi-
tional background on more careful research that has been done to establish that this gap persists even after
controlling for many commonly cited reasons. It also extends the mathematics beyond simply working with
ratios and proportions by asking students to consider what the extra money men earn could be spent on.

I generally introduce the quote from the Department of Labor and the subsequent discussion as a whole
group. One common argument for why the statistic might be misleading is that it lumps all women together
and all men together and does not, therefore, adjust for differences in experience, education, chosen job or
career, and hours worked.
Resources
Ellis, A. (2013). Research brief: Teaching ratio and proportion in the middle grades. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics.
The Gender Pay Gap (Task)

Today, women on average are paid only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.
—United States Department of Labor (http://www.dol.gov/equalpay/)
I always find it a little uncomfortable to talk about “women” and “men” without discussing whether those
collecting and analyzing the data are thinking about sex or gender, or the fact that there are people who do
not identify as a woman or a man. In the data sources I was able to find this is never explicitly addressed. De-
spite this, it is important to consider these data because systemic differences do appear when we look at these
categories.
Discussion Questions:
• Have you heard this statistic before? What do you know about this issue?
• Some people argue that this statistic is misleading. What might make this misleading?
• What additional information would you want to explore this issue in greater detail?
Math Problems
The people in the problems below serve as representatives for the differences in earnings for that profession
for males and females (with slight adjustments to make for easier computations).
Courtney and Matt both work as managers at a financial firm. Over the last few days they both worked the same
number of hours and Matt was paid $600, but Courtney was only paid $400.4 Imagine that they always have the
same work schedule (i.e., they work the same number of hours in any time period).
1. If Matt makes $1,500 in a week, then how much does Courtney make? Come up with at least two strat-
egies for solving this problem, at least one of which uses a picture.
2. So far we know that when they work the same hours, if Matt is paid $600 then Courtney is paid $400.
You also found another pair of values in Question 1. Come up with as many other pairs of earnings as
you can. Again, come up with multiple strategies, at least some of which use pictures.
3. How much more does Matt make than Courtney in a year? Is that a lot? What could Matt do with that
extra money?
Andy and Larissa both work as middle school teachers in a private school, but for every $850 Larissa makes,
Andy makes $1,000.5
4. If Andy made $1,100 in a week, then how much does Larissa make in a week?
5. How much more per year does Andy make than Larissa? Is that a lot? What could Andy do with that
extra salary?
6. Based on the problems above, do financial managers and middle school teachers have the same gen-
der pay gap? If not, which is larger? How do you know?
Some Research
7. Read the information below and reflect on the calculations you did above. What are your reactions to this?
While some of the “78 cents on a dollar” statistic comes from men and women taking different jobs and/or
working different hours, there are differences that continue even after controlling for many of these factors.
For instance, consider the following from a New York Times article about the work of Dr. Goldin:
Rearranging women into higher-paying occupations would erase just 15 percent of the pay gap for all workers and
between 30 and 35 percent for college graduates, [Dr. Goldin] found. The rest has to do with something happening
inside the workplace.
Take doctors and surgeons. Women earn 71 percent of men’s wages—after controlling for age, race, hours, and educa-
tion. Women who are financial specialists make 66 percent of what men in the same occupation earn, and women who
are lawyers and judges make 82 percent.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html
Teaching Ratio and Proportion

Ellis (2011) summarizes the research literature on how to teach ratio and proportion in the middle grades.
In her summary she gives examples of different types of ratio and proportion problems, which I have sum-
marized below. (This article lists additional types of problems one could use: http://www.cehd.umn.edu/ci/
rationalnumberproject/88_8.html)
8. Identify which of these problems were used on this task and where.
9. Which problem type do you think is the most common in most classrooms and textbooks? What is the
potential advantage of also using the other problem types?
Problem Type Example Abstract Summary

Find the Missing A leaky faucet is dripping at a steady rate. It dripped 6 ounces of water in Given three values, find
Value 8 minutes. How much water would it drip in 4 minutes? the fourth.
a c
=
b d
Create Equivalent Frog walks 10 centimeters in 4 seconds. Find as many different ways to Given two values, create
Ratios make Clown walk the same speed as Frog as you can. other possible pairs.
a ?
=
b ?
Compare Ratios Does a batch of orange juice made with 2 cans of orange concentrate and Given all four values,
3 cans of water taste equally orangey, more orangey, or less orangey than compare the ratios.
a batch made with 4 cans of orange concentrate and 6 cans of water? a c
(<, >, =)
b d
Source: Adapted from Ellis (2011). http://www.nctm.org/Research-and-Advocacy/research-brief-and-clips/Ratio-_-

Proportion/
L ESSON
5.6
The Gender Pay Gap: Equal Pay Day (Introduction)

Providing insight Proto-modeling Middle school
Mathematics
• Percentages
• Operations on whole numbers
• Algebraic reasoning and function graphs
Real-World Context
Because of the wage gap between men and women in the United States, the average woman would have
to work almost 16 months to make as much money as the average man makes in 12 months. The day when
women “catch up” is called Equal Pay Day. It is not the exact date because the previous year’s wage data are not
available by April. It is known to happen in mid-April, so it always occurs on a Tuesday in order not to conflict
with any religious holidays.

I use the first three problems from the lesson as a warm-up, always within one day from Equal Pay Day. Pro-
spective teachers have typically not heard of Equal Pay Day, but are familiar with the fact that disparities exist
between men’s and women’s wages. As the vast majority of my students identify as female, they are engaged
with the context and willing to participate in the discussion. The idea of women catching up to men’s salaries
often confuses students so I have to explain the problem before they can solve it. They usually come up with
2–3 different strategies, which are shared in whole class discussions.

This lesson is obviously connected to Lesson 5.5: The Gender Pay Gap. Furthermore, The National Commit-
tee for Pay Equity (http://www.pay-equity.org/day.html) has a wealth of reports and fact sheets, all of which
abound in interesting quantitative data. For example, one report contains the quote below. It is a worthwhile
problem to figure out how these facts were calculated.
If the wage gap were eliminated, a woman working full time, year round, would have enough money for approximately:
• 89 more weeks of food (1.7 years’ worth),
• More than seven more months of mortgage and utilities payments,
• More than one year of rent, or
• More than 3,000 additional gallons of gas.
Source: http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/Wage_Gap_National.pdf?docID=12421
Resources
Data for Question 1 were retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, http://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/
womensearnings_washington.htm#table1. This article also contains the table for the entire country by state, but the full
report can be found at http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/highlights-of-womens-earnings-in-2013.pdf.
Numbers for Questions 2 and 3 were found on the National Committee on Pay Equity website (http://www.pay-equity.org/day.
html), which also contains wage gap information about each state, and the nation as a whole. The website is updated every
year, so the information is always up-to-date.
The Gender Pay Gap: Equal Pay Day? (Task)

In-Class Problems:
1. Equal Pay Day happens every year on a Tuesday in mid-April. This date symbolizes how far into the fol-
lowing year women must work to earn what men earned in the year before. Men in Washington State
in 2013 earned a median salary of $963 a week compared to women, who earned a median weekly
salary of $764. When should Equal Pay Day for Washington State be?
2. In Washington State, an African American woman makes 61.3 cents for every dollar a White, non-His-
panic man makes. When is Equal Pay Day for African American women?
3. Also in Washington State, a Hispanic woman makes 46.5 cents for every dollar a White, non-Hispanic
man makes. Estimate, without calculating, when Equal Pay Day for Hispanic women is.
4. How do you think the wage gap is calculated? Why might this calculation be misleading? What are
these numbers not telling us?
Homework Problems:
1. Consider the graph found on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website at http://www.bls.gov/regions/
west/news-release/WomensEarnings_Washington.htm, showing the historic trends in the wage gap
between men and women in the United States and Washington State. Use the graph to predict when
the wage gap will close, both in Washington and nationally. Justify your answer. Which of the two pre-
dictions are you more sure about and why?
2. What are, in your opinion, the causes of the wage gap?
3. The wage gap in sports: In 2014, the average NBA salary was $4,500,000, and the average WNBA salary
was $72,000. When is Equal Pay Day for female basketball players? Note: They will not catch up in the
following year, so please give the date and year they will catch up.
L ESSON
5.7
Two Sides to Every News Story (Introduction)

Providing insight Proto-modeling Modeling Middle school
Mathematics
• Ratios, rates, percentages, or proportions, depending on which approach students take
Real-World Context
Police shootings of Black Americans are at the forefront of the nation’s attention, though not everyone
agrees on the severity of the problem. I came across this article during my regular perusal of the news, and
found it a poignant example of mathematical illiteracy.
A quick estimate helps us see that the White population in the United States is 6 times the size of the Black
population, while there are twice as many White than Black deaths by police. This means that Black Americans
are killed by police at three times the rate of White Americans.

I have implemented the second version of this task for the first time in Spring 2016. There were six groups
of prospective teachers working on the problem, and every group solved it using a somewhat different strategy.
The prospective teachers had no difficulties arguing that Medved’s claim was wrong. The class was engaged
with the mathematics and the discussion, and it seemed that this was a problem that interested them and they
wanted to discuss.

There are many aspects of race and policing that can be investigated. Data is now more readily available about
police stops of motorists, imprisonment rates, and deaths, and can be investigated for potential racial bias, and
lessons and mathematical articles investigating them already exist (e.g.,Gutstein, 2013; Khadjavi, 2006).
Resources
The quote, as well as additional information, came from http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/
michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/.
Gutstein, E. (2013). Driving while Black or Brown: A math project about racial profiling. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.),
Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed., pp. 16–19). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Khadjavi, L. (2006). Driving while Black in the city of angels. Chance 19(2), 43–46.
Two Sides to Every (News) Story (Task)

Instructions: You will work in a group on this task. When prompted, share your work with your instructor before
continuing. Be ready to share your argument with your classmates when you are finished.
Claim: “More Whites than Blacks are victims of deadly police shootings.” Made by radio talk show host Michael
Medved on Tuesday, August 19th, 2014 in a Web post from the “Michael Medved Show”
Additional Information: According to the data collected by The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, be-
tween 1991 and 2011, 2,151 Whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 Blacks. (http://www.politifact
.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/)

1. Explain how Medved can be correct. If you think you need additional information to answer the ques-
tion, state what it is.
2. Explain how Medved can be incorrect. If you need additional information to answer the question, state
what it is.
Before you proceed, show your answers to Questions 1 and 2 to your instructor.
3. Look up, or ask your instructor, for the information you need to answer Questions 1 and 2 fully, and
then answer them, if you haven’t already.
4. Do you think it is more accurate to say that Medved is correct or that he is not? Explain. Be ready to
share with your classmates.

Is Medved correct?
You can use your phone to look up any additional information, but you also have to use the information given
in the claim and perform calculations instead of guessing or estimating. Note that since I am asking you this
question, the answer is more complex than just comparing the two numbers given above. Think about what
else you need to know to answer this question.
LESSON
5.8
Who Gets More? (Introduction)

Elementary
Backdoor Directed
Middle school
Mathematics
• Comparing fractions or ratios
• Multidigit computation
Real-World Context
This task begins as a seemingly innocuous task where students must decide which table represents the better
deal. It then turns out that the numbers found relate to income differences between White and Black households
in the United States. Students reflect on these values and other ways they might analyze this issue.

Part 2 of the task is typically on the back page so the students are less likely to see it.
Who Gets More? (Task)

Part 1
1. Read the scenario below. Your group is responsible for coming up with at least two different strategies
and talking about the relationships between them, including their advantages and disadvantages. Any-
one in your group should be prepared to share your strategies.
There are two tables with gold bars and several people sitting at them. The gold bars are all the same. The gold
bars will be sold and the proceeds will be shared equally by the people at the table. Table A has 3 bars and 8
people. Table B has 7 bars and 12 people. If you were one of these 20 people would you rather be sitting at
Table A or Table B?
2. Call me over when everyone in your group is prepared to share your strategies. DO NOT CONTINUE
TO PART 2 until checking in with the instructor.
Part 2
3. Each bar is worth $140,000 and the money you earn from the sale will be your household’s annual
income. How much money would you make at each table?
4. These numbers roughly correspond to the mean household incomes for households that indicated
they were White (and no other race and not of Hispanic origin), and those that indicated they were
Black (and no other race and either of Hispanic origin or not) (the actual differences are slightly
larger).6 Discuss the following:
a. Which table do you think corresponds to which group? What are your thoughts about these num-
bers? How does that make you feel or think about the math you did above? What other questions
do you have about the data or this issue?
b. We looked at the distribution of income when it comes to race (specifically White and Black
households). What other demographics might we consider?
c. This is how the bars are currently distributed. What do you think causes these results? What, if
anything, should be done about them?
d. Do you see this as an example of teaching math for social justice?
e. The information I used to create this task is in footnote 1. What kinds of mathematics do you
think was involved in creating this task?
Notes
1. The background information and data used come from:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/povmeas/
http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-254.pdf
http://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/data/data-tools.html
2. Food Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics by Mark Nord available at: http://
www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib56.aspx
3. The table below shows the mean household income of each quintile and of the top 5% of households for the years shown
(from Table H-3 here: https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/).
First Second Third Fourth Fifth Top 5%

1968 $1,806 $4,842 $7,680 $10,713 $18,616 $28,461
1983 $5,053 $12,693 $20,986 $31,492 $57,819 $87,359
1998 $9,223 $23,288 $38,967 $60,266 $127,529 $222,283
2013 $11,651 $30,509 $52,322 $83,519 $185,206 $322,343
4. The actual weekly values are $1,671 for men and $1,127 for women (see “Financial Managers” in Table 39 here: http://
www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm). Note that some data sources adjust for how many hours males vs. females work in a week
while others do not. This source give the “Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers,” so it is only count-
ing people working full time.
5. The actual weekly values for teachers (public or private is not specified) are $1,096 for men and $956 for women (see “El-
ementary and Middle School Teachers” in Table 39 here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm).
6. I am assuming race and Hispanic origin are what the “head of household” indicated about themselves. In 2014, the actual
mean household income for White alone, not Hispanic is $77,843 and for Black alone is $47,737. See Table H-6 here:
http://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html
Algebra Lessons
6
L ESSON
6.1
Graphing Towards Social Justice (Introduction)

Stepping Stone Directed Middle school
Provide Insight
Mathematics
• Moving between descriptions of a context, graphs, and tables
• Making qualitative graphs (graphs without a scale) and quantitative graphs
• Understanding rate of change
Real-World Context
This lesson can be used with any real-world context that involves two variables that are related to each other.
I include two examples after the lesson: college spending that comes from tuition and water quality.
Depending on how the task is implemented the contexts could largely fall to the background (making it
more of a stepping stone task). However, the students often learn about the context by reading the background
54 ◾ ALGEBRA LESSONS
information and relating it to their graphs. Moreover, the final question of the task refocuses on the context by
asking them to pose meaningful questions to further explore their topic of interest.

This task works well in groups of three or four, with four different graphs available for students to use (so
each person in the group starts with a different context/graph).
In more recent versions I have given students a legal size piece of paper in landscape with unlabeled axes
taking up about two-thirds of the page and room to write notes on the last third.
Resources
I often assign the following readings for homework prior to this task:
Maus, J. (2005). Every story tells a picture. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 10(8), 375–379.
van Dyke, F., & Tomback, J. (2005). Collaborating to introduce algebra. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 10(5), 236–242.
Graphing Towards Social Justice (Task)

1. Read all of the directions for Part 1 as a group and make sure everyone understands before starting the task.
Part 1: Individually (15 minutes MAX)

2. Each person chooses one of the four story sheets and gets one of the blank graph sheets. DO NOT
unfold your story sheet to look at the table.
a. Read the background information and story for your graph.
b. Create a graph that matches the story.
• Label your axes
• Only include specific values given in the story (do not make up additional values)
• Pay particular attention to the rate of change described in the story (e.g., “increasing slower
and slower” or “steady rate”).
c. If you are waiting, start generating questions you have about your topic, additional data you
would like to look up, and how you could further investigate your topic mathematically (these can
be written in the space to the right of the graph and can be continued on the back if needed).
3. Pass your graph and story sheet to the left. Do not unfold your new story sheet.
a. For each segment of the graph check that the rate of change described in the story (e.g., “increas-
ing slower and slower” or “steady rate”) matches the way the graph is drawn. If not, modify it
(draw with a thicker line or different color).
b. Circle and label the following points on the graph:
• Beginning
• The point between two of the “segments” described in the story for your graph
• End
c. For each of the points you have labeled, describe what is happening in the real-world context.
d. If you are waiting, you can write questions, additional data you would like to look up, and further
mathematical investigations about your topic.
4. Pass your graph and story sheet to the left.
a. Unfold your new sheet so you can see the table of values.
b. Adjust the graph if needed based on the actual values (draw with a thicker line or different color).
c. Add numbers to the axes.
d. In the table: Fill in hypothetical missing values that fit with the story.
ALGEBRA LESSONS ◾ 55
5. Pass your graph and story sheet back to the original person. Now that you have your original graph
and story sheet back, review it to see if you agree with all the additional work that people did (if you
have any questions or disagreements they will be resolved next).
Part 2: As a Group
6. Read all of the directions for Part 2 as a group and make sure everyone understands before starting
the task.
7. Go around the group and check in with each person. If you are in agreement with the final product
then move on, but if you have a question or disagreement about someone’s work on your graph/sto-
ry/table then discuss it and resolve it as a group.
8. Choose one graph/story/table to focus on and once you are ready call the instructor over for a group
quiz (if you are waiting you can start item 9 below). For the group quiz the instructor can pick anyone
to explain the graph. They must be ready to explain the following:
a. How does the shape of the graph match the story, and in particular how does it match the rates
of change (e.g., “increasing slower and slower” or “steady rate”) in the story.
b. What the x and y values of the graph means in the real-world context, and what the approximate
values would be at any point.
c. How the rates of change described in the story can be seen in the values in the table. (Note: This
was not explicitly addressed in #2–5 above.)
d. The connection between the values in the table, the context, and the graph.
9. Using your same focus graph/story/table do the following:
a. Generate a list of questions this graph raises for you and what additional information you would
like to research to figure out the answers to these questions.
b. Describe what additional mathematics you could do around this topic. Be specific.
c. Begin researching your questions online and be prepared to report what you have found.
Graphing Towards Social Justice (Example Contexts)

(I print these on normal [8.5" × 11"] paper in landscape with the text on the left and the table on the right
[large enough for them to write in it]. Then I fold them in half so the table is hidden for the first part of
the task.)
Example 1: Water Quality Study

Background Info
This comes from a report by the Ohio EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). They write that, “The Lye
Creek watershed is predominantly surrounded by agricultural land use and elevated nitrate+nitrite and to-
tal phosphorus levels above statewide targets were observed at all five locations sampled in 2013 (Table 7,
Figure 3).”1
They sampled the amount of Nitrate+nitrate at several places along the river, so the graph is of the amount
of Nitrate+nitrate as you move along the river in miles.
Story for Graph

At the beginning of the creek, the amount of Nitrate+nitrate is 1 mg/l.
Segment 1: It then increases, but at a slower and slower rate, for four miles.
Segment 2: It then decreases at a steady rate for the next six miles of the creek, ultimately ending just a
little higher than where it started.
Mile mg/l of Nitrate+nitrate

0 1
1
2
3
4 3
5
6
7
8
9
10 1.5
Example 2: Tuition
Background Info
“States are spending $2,353 or 28% less per student on higher education, nationwide, in the current 2013 fiscal
year than they did in 2008, when the recession hit. . . .
Public colleges and universities across the country have increased tuition to compensate for declining state
funding. . . .
Tuition increases have made up only part of the revenue loss resulting from state funding cuts. Public col-
leges and universities also have cut faculty positions, eliminated course offerings, closed campuses, shut down
computer labs, and reduced library services, among other cuts.
[Note from graph used:] Total educational revenue combines net tuition with state and local appropriations
for higher education, excluding medical students, and represent the vast majority of instructional funding.”2
Story for Graph

In 1988 the percentage of Higher Ed funding from tuition was 23%.
Segment 1: Over 8 years, the percentage of funding coming from tuition increases, first faster and faster,
but then it slows and levels out.
Segment 2: The percentage decreases pretty steadily, but slowly, over a period of four years. It ends higher
than where it started in 1988.
Segment 3: It increases steadily for four years, then slows and levels out over the next two years.
Segment 4: It slightly decreases for two years.
Segment 5: It increases steadily, and at a faster rate than seen before until 2012.
Year % of Funding From Tuition

1988 23%
1990
1992
1994
1996 32%
1998
2000 29%
2002
2004
2006 36%
2008 35%
2010
2012 47%
L ESSON
6.2
Incarceration Rates (Introduction)

Provide Insight Modeling Middle School
High School
Mathematics
• Mathematical modeling
• Interpreting data and making predictions
• Representing data
Real-World Context
In this task students must describe the change in the U.S. prison population and make projections for future
growth. In Part 1, they are given data from 1925 to 1970 and must make predictions for the next five decades.
In Part 2 they are given data through 2006 and must make predictions through 2050. There is a sharp increase
in the prison population starting in the 1970s, which requires a substantial revision of their work from Part 1.
I wanted to explore incarceration rates because the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in
the world and it has skyrocketed over the past several decades. This rapid growth is often attributed to the war
on drugs, which began under President Reagan.

Using the Computer
This task is set up to be done using Microsoft Excel®. I recommend only allowing one computer per group
or pair and reinforcing the idea that the group should come up with a plan/strategy first—so that it is a col-
lective decision—before trying to carry it out on the computer. I very explicitly offer to help my students carry
out their plans on Excel. I do not intend this to be a task about how to use Excel (although exposure to Excel
as a tool in the mathematics classroom can be valuable).
As the instructor, you should familiarize yourself with some of the features in Excel, especially: (a) the sci-
entific/exponential notation used, (b) how to create a scatterplot, (c) how to create lines (and other curves)
of best fit, (d) how to find the formula for the curve of best fit, and (e) how to get the formula to show up in
standard form (i.e., not in scientific notation). Point (e) is particularly important because you may get formulas
that are off by a significant amount due to rounding when the formula is in scientific notation.
Pre-Formatted Data
I prepared several spreadsheets with the relevant data so they were in a nice format. The two main spread-
sheets (1.1 and 2.1) have two columns: Year and Prison Population (the first goes from 1925–1970, while the
second goes from 1925–2006). I also created a second set of spreadsheets (1.2 and 2.2) with three columns:
Year, Prison Population, and U.S. Population. This second set of spreadsheets are for cases where the students
want to adjust the numbers to control for changes in the overall population. I manually created these spread-
sheets, which are available on the companion site for the book: http://www.infoagepub.com/simic-muller.
Models Created
Virtually all students start by attempting to create some kind of graph—usually a scatter plot or a line plot
of the data. After that I have seen several approaches:
• Finding a line of best fit and using that to make projections and sometimes switching to an exponential
function or polynomial of best fit in Part 2.
• Describing a general trend over 20 year intervals where the population first increases by a certain amount
over the first 15 years then decreases over the next 5. This trend is then repeated to make predictions for
future years.
• Finding piecewise linear functions for each increasing or decreasing section of the data.

These data could be broken down by race/ethnicity, gender, crime, or other subcategories of interest. An-
other extension might be to examine data related to racial disparities in sentencing.
It would be interesting to pair this lesson with Lesson 8.1: Historical Trends in Crime, which demonstrates
a decrease in crime rates.
Incarceration Rates (Task)

1. Setup:
a. Read all the directions for Part 1 as a group and make sure everyone understands before starting.
b. Throughout this task you will be working with real data. You may want additional data or informa-
tion. If so, check in with the instructor before searching online.
c. You have 30 minutes to complete all of Part 1. Check in with the instructor before moving on to
or reading Part 2.
Part 1: The Past

Some people believe the United States imprisons too many people, especially in recent years, while others
argue that we need to be tough on crime. Imagine that a law has been proposed that would reduce federal
prison sentences for most crimes and provide incentives for states to decrease their prison sentences as well.
Your group works for a senator and she is deciding how she wants to vote on this law. To get a sense of whether
prison rates have been climbing too quickly, as some people claim, she asks you to compare historical prison
rates with more recent trends.
2. First you find a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report that lists the prison population from 1925 to
1970 (see spreadsheet 1.1 from the instructor3). Make sure everyone has a chance to see the spread-
sheet and how it is set up. Then give everyone 2 minutes to work quietly and individually to think about
how to accomplish the task below.
3. Go around the group sharing: The first person gets an opportunity to share their thinking without inter-
ruption. After they finish sharing, others can comment. Then the next person shares in a similar fashion.
4. As a group, determine a method for proceeding. Your task is to:
a. Describe the prison population from 1925 to 1970 (for instance: stable, increasing, decreasing,
fluctuating, or some other description you feel fits best).
b. Predict what the prison population would be in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020.
c. Everyone in the group should be prepared to:
i. Explain how you ultimately tackled the problem and justify your answers.
ii. Succinctly describe the different ideas that were initially suggested; which ideas were pursued,
which were abandoned, and why; and how your approach to the task evolved both when you
were initially sharing and discussing and once you actually started working.
iii. Each person should have a record of the group’s work.
5. Call the instructor over when you are ready.
Part 2: The Present

6. Read all the directions for Part 2 as a group and make sure everyone understands before starting. You
have 20 minutes to complete all of Part 2.
7. Next you find new BJS reports that fill in the years from 1970 to 2006 (see spreadsheet 2.1 from the
instructor).
8. As a group, determine a method for proceeding. Your task is to:
a. Describe the prison population from 1925 to 2006 (i.e., stable, increasing, decreasing, fluctuat-
ing, or some other description you feel fits best).
b. Predict what the prison population will be in 2020, 2030, 2040, and 2050.
c. Make a recommendation to the senator about how to vote and/or about additional research and
analysis that should be done before reaching a decision.
d. Everyone in the group should be prepared to explain to the instructor or the class:
i. How you ultimately tackled the problem and justify your answers.
ii. Succinctly describe the different strategies that were considered; which ideas were pursued,
which were abandoned, and why; and how your approach to the task evolved.
iii. Why your recommendation(s) to the senator make sense.
9. If you are finished you can begin researching additional information about this topic and thinking
about how you could approach it mathematically.
L ESSON
6.3
Juvenile Delinquency (Introduction)

Stepping Stone Modeling Elementary
Middle school
Mathematics
• Linear functions
• Creating a line of best fit
• Making predictions
• Checking reliability of mathematical models
Real-World Context
In 1995 it was believed that juvenile crime would increase at an alarming rate. This belief gave rise to the
term “super-predator,” which even briefly resurfaced during the 2016 election. If juvenile arrests had followed
the trends from 1980 to 1995, over 10% of juveniles ages 10–17 would have been arrested in 2014. However, the
opposite has happened, and youth crime is currently at historic lows. The myth of teenage super-predator has
been damaging to youth, especially youth of color, and has resulted in some harsh laws. This lesson is similar
to Lesson 8.1: Historical Trends in Crime, as it addresses a similar myth that the United States is becoming
more dangerous.

I have not yet used this task. The intended implementation is for each part of the task to be given to students
separately, and that they only begin working on the next part when they have completed the previous one and
consulted with the instructor. They can create a line of best fit to the data either by hand or using technology,
though I encourage prospective teachers to use Excel® whenever possible.

Students can also compare crime rates and incarceration rates for youth or look at different crime catego-
ries. This lesson is related to Lesson 6.2: Incarceration Rates and Lesson 8.1: Historical Trends in Crime, and
can be part of a larger unit on crime and incarceration.
Resources
The initial quote can be found at http://www.retroreport.org/video/the-superpredator-scare.
The data are from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) at http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/
JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05201.
Juvenile Delinquency (Task)

Introduction
“In 1995, John DiIulio, Jr., then a Princeton professor, coined a phrase that seemed to sum up the nation’s
fear of teen violence: ‘superpredator.’ In the previous decade, teenage crime rates had exploded. Tele-
vision news led with story after story of seemingly incomprehensible violence committed by children as
young as 10. Many criminologists feared the trend would continue, and DiIulio warned that hundreds of
thousands of remorseless teen predators were just over the horizon.” (http://www.retroreport.org/video/
the-superpredator-scare)
Information
Table 6.3.1 contains juvenile arrest rates (arrest of persons age 10–17/100,000 persons ages 10–17) in the
United States between 1980 and 1995. Table 6.3.1 was obtained from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delin-
quency Prevention (OJJDP).
TABLE 6.3.1
Year Arrest Rate Year Arrest Rate Year Arrest Rate Year Arrest Rate
1980 6396.6 1984 6110.1 1988 7263.8 1992 7294.5
1981 6370.2 1985 6466.0 1989 7339.1 1993 7509.3
1982 6607.7 1986 6728.5 1990 7244.6 1994 8157.2
1983 6073.9 1987 6808.2 1991 7466.4 1995 8228.3
Part 1
1. Assuming that the trends in juvenile crime after 1995 stayed the same as between 1980 and 1995, what
should the arrest rate for juveniles have been in 2014? Assume that the data has followed a linear
trend. You may work with pencil and paper, with a calculator, or in Excel.
2. Is your answer reasonable?
3. Check in with the instructor when you finish.
Part 2
4. If you thought that your answer in Part 1 was not reasonable, modify your model. You may sketch a
possible graph of juvenile arrests between 1995 and 2016 or change your equation. What was the ar-
rest rate in 2014 according to your new prediction?
5. If you thought that your answer in Part 1 was reasonable, explain why you think it is reasonable.
6. Check in with the instructor when you finish.
Part 3
Table 6.3.2 shows the actual data between 1996 and 2016.
7. Extend your graph from Part 1 with the new data points.
a. How good was your prediction in Part 1?
b. How good was your prediction in Part 2 (if it was different)?
TABLE 6.3.2
Year Arrest Rate Year Arrest Rate Year Arrest Rate Year Arrest Rate
1996 8476.1 2001 6202.2 2006 6072.8 2011 4365.9
1997 8211.3 2002 6232.4 2007 5983.5 2012 3939.6
1998 7421.4 2003 6078.1 2008 5833.6 2013 3373.3
1999 6757.2 2004 5998.2 2009 5343.8 2014 3008.1
2000 6493.6 2005 5907.1 2010 4856.7
Reflection
Have the predictions of huge increase in juvenile crime been correct? Why or why not?
Note: John DiIulio, Jr., quit teaching and gave up social science, and has recently supported banning manda-
tory life sentences for juveniles convicted of murder. Hardly anyone talks about super-predators anymore, but
fear of young people, especially youth of color, still persists.
L ESSON
6.4
The Cost of Water (Introduction)

Backdoor Directed Middle School
Mathematics
• Linear equations and linear functions
Real-World Context
In addition to having to drink lead-poisoned water, the residents of Flint, Michigan have had the highest
water bills in the country. In fact, high water prices are the reason the city officials switched to a polluted water
source. In this task, students use basic algebra, along with unit conversion, to compare the cost of tap water in
Flint and Tacoma, Washington. Students write and solve equations before they learn that the numbers they are
using in the equation are the water bills in Flint.

I used this task in a quantitative literacy course. Students appreciated creating linear equations in a real
context, though having some trouble with understanding fixed and variable costs in a bill. Most of their pre-
dictions of water bills in Flint were off, even if they believed that Flint water bills were higher than in Tacoma.
They had some knowledge of the Flint water crisis, and the task provided the class the opportunity to gain a
better understanding of the issue.
Extensions
The Flint water crisis offers multiple opportunities for mathematical investigations, and some mathematics
educators are already creating lessons related to it. This lesson is directly related to Lesson 7.6: The Cost of
Bottled Water, and can be used in combination with it.
Resources
I used my own water bill.
The information about Flint water prices came from an article in the Detroit Free Press (http://www.freep.com/story/news/
local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/16/study-flint-paid-highest-rate-us-water/80461288/). The article references a
survey by the Food and Water Watch, found at http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/sites/default/files/report_state_of_
public_water.pdf.
Peterson, B. (2004). Measuring water with justice. Rethinking Schools. http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/19_01/wate191.shtml
The Cost of Water (Task)

On my monthly water bill, I pay $22.62 for fixed monthly costs, and pay $1.756 per CCF used. (Note: 1 CCF = 748
gallons.)
1. Why are there fixed monthly costs on my water bill? What do they represent?
2. Write an equation for the amount of dollars (y) that I will pay for water per year if I use x gallons of
water. (Note: You will have to convert from CCF to gallons.)
3. How much would I be paying for water per year if my family used 60,000 gallons per year? (Note: It is
estimated that an average U.S. family uses about this much water per year.)
4. How much water would I have used if my annual water bill is $864?
5. Do you think that Flint, Michigan residents had higher or lower water bills than I did on January 1,
2015? Why do you think that?
6. Make a guess as to how much a household using 60,000 gallons of water was paying for water in Flint,
Michigan in 2015. Turn over when you have made a guess.
(TURN OVER)
Answer: They were paying $864 a year, which was the highest cost in the entire country.
7. Compare the Tacoma and Flint water prices in at least two different ways.
8. What did you learn in this activity? What was surprising? What do you still want to know?
Note: As a result of lawsuits, a judge ordered in August 2015 that water prices be reduced by 35%. Even with
these reductions, Flint has extremely high water prices for a community that has been devastated by bad water.
Notes
1. Data and background info from: http://www.epa.state.oh.us/dsw/document_index/psdindx.aspx. Report from 2014, titled:
“Biological and Water Quality Study of the Lye Creek (Blanchard River) Watershed, 2012 and 2013. Hancock County, Ohio.”
Direct link to report: http://www.epa.state.oh.us/Portals/35/documents/2013_Lye_Creek_GLRI_Project.pdf (see page
14 and Figure 3 on page 16, but note that the y-axis is a logarithmic scale).
2. Data and background info from: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3927 (see Figure 5).
3. These data show the number of prisoners in federal or state prisons. They come from the BJS’s Prisoners Series (www.bjs.
gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=40). The data are not all reported in the same way. For instance, starting in 1977 there was
a change in how the government tracked the number of prisoners, and starting around 1995 the information is broken
down in a different way, so it was difficult for me to figure out what the comparable values were. Therefore, some of the
numbers in later years may be counting more/less prisoners than would have been counted in past years; however, from
what I can tell the amount the numbers may be off is relatively minor compared to the overall trends we will be looking at.
Geometry and Measurement Lessons
7
L ESSON
7.1
Congressional Redistricting (Introduction)
Relevance Structure Grade Level(s)

Middle School
Mathematics
This task involves limited mathematics (in terms of typical school mathematics standards), but it does high-
light the political nature of the geometric organization of our world.
Real-World Context
Gerrymandering has been discussed frequently in the media, in part because of the results of the 2010 elec-
tion, which gave Republicans widespread control of the drawing of district lines (which occurs every 10 years
when the census is completed).
66 ◾ GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT LESSONS

I used Geeks and Nerds for my political parties instead of Democrats and Republicans because I wanted the
focus to be on the (often problematic) process of creating congressional districts, not on blaming one party
or the other.
The map I created for them is included after the lesson. Each group received a sheet with six copies of this
map so they could make multiple attempts at the problem.
The first time I used this task was in a mathematics content course for future K–8 teachers and I pulled it
together very quickly after having voted for the first time in Arizona. Many of my students did not believe that
this was the process used to draw congressional districts—for instance, they said that we do not really know how
people are going to vote, so we cannot draw district lines based on that information. The next time I used it
(the version included here), I included more background information to set up the task.
I have not used this task since the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that struck down
significant portions of the Voting Rights Act. It would be valuable to include some discussion of the context of
the Voting Rights Act and changes since the Shelby ruling.
It is worth noting that both groups A & B in the task involve helping incumbents, and thus they could both
be happy with the same map.

Any of the resources provided below could be used to extend this lesson in other directions. This could in-
clude such things as investigating other voting systems, comparing the percentage vote received by Democrats
and Republicans and their representation in the House, or looking at the relative weight of each person’s vote
under the Electoral College in different states (which, depending on how you look at it, is influenced by such
things as state population, whether convicted felons are counted as part of the population, and voter turnout).
Resources
There are countless articles and resources on the topic of drawing congressional districts, voting systems, and gerrymandering.
Below are a few examples.
CPG Grey has a wonderful series of videos explaining various voting systems: http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the
-animal-kingdom/
FairVote advocates for changes in our election process: http://www.fairvote.org/
This Washington Post blog post succinctly illustrates some of the issues raised in this task: https://www.washingtonpost.com/
news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/
This Slate piece is a fun gerrymandering puzzle: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/08/
gerrymandering_jigsaw_puzzle_game_put_the_congressional_districts_back_together.html
The National Council of Teachers’ of Mathematics has a lesson on Gerrymandering: https://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.
aspx?id=3958
Congressional Redistricting (Task)

Background on the U.S. House of Representatives
• The U.S. House of Representatives has 435 voting members.

• These 435 members are distributed among the states proportionally based on population.
• The distribution is reevaluated after each census (conducted every 10 years).
• Following the census, states must redraw their district boundaries (redistricting) such that:
–– They have the right number of districts
–– Districts are roughly equal in population
–– Must not “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race
or color.”1
GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT LESSONS ◾ 67
(I also included background information on the history of redistricting in Arizona and the Voting Rights Act.)
Redistricting a State
Imagine that it is the near future. The political parties have changed—the two major political parties are now
the Geeks and the Nerds. Based on the latest census your hypothetical state continues to have 3 congressional
seats, but the district lines must be redrawn because people have moved around (all districts must have roughly
equal populations). You have to determine what the congressional districts should be.
Your state has been broken up in to 99 smaller regions (on this map, each region has the same population) and
based on past elections you have a good idea which party the people in each region will vote for. The handout
has several copies of your state broken up into these 99 regions. So that you do not have to count:
• 40 of the regions are heavy Geek supporters

• 59 of the regions are heavy Nerd supporters
Your group has to decide how to make three congressional districts. The rules for making districts are further
down on the page. Each group in the class has a different set of priorities. Follow the letter that corresponds
to your group:
A. You are currently a Geek congressperson facing reelection. You do not really care what happens in the
other two congressional districts—you just want to make sure there is one district where you will have a
very high chance of winning.
B. You and your friend are currently Nerd congresspersons facing reelection. You do not really care what
happens in the third district—you just want to make sure there are two districts where you and your
friend will have a very high chance of winning.
C. You represent the Geek party and you want to get as many seats for your party as possible.
D. You represent the Nerd party and you want to get as many seats for your party as possible.
E. You want as many hotly contested races as possible (elections where it is hard to tell which party will win).
Rules
• All three districts must be the same size in terms of population (which corresponds with area on this
map—so each district must have 33 squares in it).
• Each district must be connected meaning you could walk from any point in the district to any other
point in the district (not necessarily in a straight line) while staying within the district the whole time.
Reflect
Looking at the maps created by the class:
1. Which one(s) do you think are most fair and why?

2. Which might encourage moderates to run? Extremists to run? Why?
3. Other ideas for how we could fairly elect representatives?
4. Other mathematics you could do with this topic?
Congressional Redistricting (Map)
LESSON
7.2
Displaced Persons (Introduction)

Mathematics
• Calculations with percentages (beginning of task)
• Understanding the meaning of area, perimeter, and the relationship (or lack thereof) between the two
Real-World Context
This task focuses on the large numbers of displaced persons (a term that includes refugees and other peo-
ple displaced by conflict) and the amount of space the United Nations recommends for refugee camps. The
beginning of the task is intended to introduce the meaning of displaced persons and the scope of this issue.
However, the mathematics done may be viewed as superficial by some students.

I used this task as a homework assignment in a content course, but it could easily be done in class. As noted
in Chapter 2, some students viewed this task as closely connected to the real-world context, while others viewed
it as largely driven by the mathematics (see the final question in the assignment).
Question 4 is quite challenging for many future teachers because many of them have a procedural under-
standing of area.
The task could be significantly modified and expanded into a modeling/design task by asking students to
design a reasonable refugee camp. The various sources cited in the task provide more detail about the design
of camps and students might consider costs and what they feel is needed to meet refugees’ needs.
Displaced Persons (Task)

“For the fifth consecutive year the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide exceeded 42 million, a re-
sult of persistent and new conflicts in different parts of the world. By the end of 2011, the figure stood at 42.5
million. Of these, 15.2 million were refugees. . . . The overall figure also included 895,000 asylum-seekers and
26.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs).”2
Definition of a Refugee
A refugee is any person “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, national-
ity, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is
unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having
a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence is unable or, owing to such fear,
is unwilling to return to it.”3
Definition of an IDP
Many people refer to internally displaced peoples as refugees even though legally they are not the same. There
is no official legal definition of an IDP. Internally displaced peoples are similar to refugees in that they have
been displaced from their home for one or more reasons (often war or conflict) but they are still within their
home country, whereas refugees have fled to another country.
Demographics
“On average, women and girls constituted 49% of persons of concern to UNHRC (United Nations High Com-
missioner for Refugees). They accounted for 48% of refugees, and half of all IDPs and returnees (former refu-
gees). Forty-six percent of refugees and 34% of asylum-seekers were children below 18 years of age.”4
Length of Stay
“UNHCR defines a protracted refugee situation as one in which 25,000 or more refugees of the same nation-
ality have been in exile for five years or longer in any given asylum country. Based on this definition, it is esti-
mated that some 7.1 million refugees were in a protracted situation by the end of 2011. These refugees were
living in 26 host countries accounting for an overall total of 31 protracted situations.”5
1. How many refugees were children below 18 years of age (not the percentage, but the actual number)?
2. What percentage of refugees in 2011 were in a protracted refugee situation?
3. What percentage of “forcibly displaced people” in 2011 were IDPs?
You are going to design a refugee camp for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC).
• The host country has insisted that you put up a fence around your camp. You can buy a fence by the
hectometers. A hectometer is 100 meters.
• You are not sure what the layout will be for your camp because you have not found an exact location
for it yet, so it could have to be in all kinds of different configurations.
• Note: There are two similar words in this activity. Do not get them confused!
–– 1 hectometer = 100 meters (m)
–– 1 hectare = 10,000 square meters (m2)
4. Below is a picture of a camp. Your colleague says “this would be a camp with an area of 4 hectares and
it would require 10 hectometers of fence.” Each square in the picture is 1 hectare. Use the “groups of”
meaning of multiplication and the definition of a hectometer to explain why those squares must have
a total area of 10,000 square meters.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) makes the following recommendation:
Ideally, the recommended minimum surface area is 45 m2 (i.e., square meters) per person when planning a refugee
camp (including garden space). However, the actual surface area per person (excluding garden space) should not
be less than 30 m2 per person.6
5. You are going to design a camp for 8,000 people. Your colleague did some calculations and figured
out that to fulfill the ideal of 45 square meters per person, this will require a minimum of 36 hectares
of area. Show and explain the calculations she must have done to figure this out.
6. Use the graph paper provided. Also use the following scale: 1 square of graph paper is 1 hectar and
the edge of 1 square is a hectometer. Do the following:
a. You will make three camps that follow ALL of the following rules:
i. They are non-rectangular (they are not rectangles).
ii. You cannot cut/divide any of the squares on your graph paper.
iii. Each camp has an area of 36 hectares.
b. The area of your camp is always 36 hectares. Is the amount of fence needed always the same as
well? What can you say (or not say) about the relationship between the perimeter and the area
of a shape?
7. Use the graph paper provided to create every possible rectangular camp that would have an area of 36
hectares.
a. Can you make them all? If so, how are you sure you got them all? If not, why not?
b. Create a table like the one below and fill it in.
c. The area of your camp should always be 36 hectares. Is the amount of fence needed always the
same as well? What can you say (or not say) about the relationship between the perimeter and
the area of a shape?
d. Do you notice any patterns in your table? Is there a rectangular camp that requires the least
amount of fence? Is there one that requires the most amount of fence?
Length of Short Side Fence Needed Area of Camp

36 hectares
36 hectares
36 hectares
8. Reflect:
a. How do you feel about learning about area and perimeter in the context of refugee camps? Why?
b. How do you feel about teaching about area and perimeter in the context of refugee camps? Why?
c. What would you say seemed to be “more in charge” in terms of the direction that this homework
went, the mathematical concepts or the real-world context? Why?
L ESSON
7.3
Mountain Top Removal (Introduction)

Provide Insight Middle school
Mathematics
• Measurements (length, area, and volume)

• Unit conversions within and between measure systems (customary U.S. and metric)
• Large numbers and scientific notation (optional)
Real-World Context
Mountain Top Removal (or surface coal mining) is a coal mining process that has immediate, major con-
sequences for the natural habitat and for the human communities who live in the vicinity. Even though this
lesson is focused on a particular geographic region (Appalachia Mountains and surroundings: Kentucky, Vir-
ginia, and West Virginia), the trade of electric power goes nationwide. This task uses information related to
this practice as a context to motivate the need for understanding large numbers, practicing estimates of area
and volumes, and converting between customary U.S. units and metric units.
As of 2016, about over one third of our electricity is produced by coal. There is more than one way to extract
coal from the ground. One of such methods is called Mountain Top Removal or Surface Coal Mining. This
process essentially consists of blasting the top surface of a mountain rich in coal and cleaning up the debris to
extract the coal.
This is devastating for the environment because it involves deforestation, removing large amounts of soil, pol-
lution by dust from the explosion, and water contamination from the settling the dust and from byproducts of
the cleaning process. Consequently the impact in the health quality on the human communities is compromised.
Companies who use this type of coal mining do not invest in preventing or remedying the effects of their prac-
tices. When using this task in localities where this coal mining method is practiced, the topic may be considered
controversial as this may be, or has been, the main source of employment for many families of your students and
it may stand the strength of tradition and, in some cases, the only economical driver in the community.

You need two sessions for this assignment. On the first session you introduce the topic (need for energy,
sources of energy, what mountain top removal is, etc.), discuss the consequences of using this method of
mining, and assign the homework. On the second session, students share their homework in small groups,
choose one or two questions per group, and present to the larger group.
By having students refer to the Standards and to create questions or problems appropriate to a specific
grade level, we are counting on the motivation of students’ identity as future teachers to motivate the connec-
tion of social issues with their academic program.
This task is adapted from the one I used to do with my students in a course focused on mathematics for the
social analysis, designed by Laura Jacobsen and Jean Mistele (Spielman, 2009).

In assigning the homework, I pick a specific grade level, so that all students have the same level of difficulty
in creating questions/problems. You may choose to create groups beforehand for different grade levels.
Resources
More information on the subject can be found at:
www.ILoveMountains.org
http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/what-is-mountaintop-removal-mining?gclid=CID9tajsj84CFZNhfgodxrcEBQ
You will need the “Power Profiler” tool to see the kind of power source used by the local power company: https://oas-
pub.epa.gov/powpro/ept_pack.charts
A fact sheet (“Did you know?”) can be found below.
Spielman, L. J. (2009). Mathematics education in the public interest: Preservice teachers’ engagement with and reframing of
mathematics. In S. L. Swars, D. W. Stinson, & S. Lemons-Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North American
Mountain Top Removal (Task)

Day One
The Mining Practice
You may start the topic by having students contribute to the group’s knowledge on energy sources we use in
the country and in our specific region and your opinions about each of them. Then the conversation can move
to specifically what they know about Mountain Top Removal (MTR). Record their comments (board or poster
paper). In a more formal exposition, highlight the points of what MTR is, summarized here:
1. What is Mountain Top Removal?

a. One way to mine coal.
b. Also called surface coal mining.
2. Why is coal mined?
3. What is my connection to MTR?
a. The https://oaspub.epa.gov/powpro/ept_pack.charts website has a link by which you can input
your zip code and find out whether or not your distributor uses coal to generate electricity. Make
sure the link works or find out the information before class.
After the short presentation, it may be a good time to reinforce the content by showing the video https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPixjCneseE which can be accessed from the iLoveMountains.org website. Ask for
students’ reactions to the video.
The Social Issue

At this point you may shift the focus to mining this way as a social issue. You may continue with the conver-
sation (presentation) to highlight the following:
1. Private property concerns

a. Destruction of private property
b. Placing low values on private property
2. Environmental concerns
a. Endangering plant and animal life
b. Coal dust
c. Sludge ponds
d. Water for communities
3. Health issues
a. Lung diseases
b. Cancer
c. Children with asthma
4. Community issues
a. Lack of employment opportunities
b. Alcohol and drug abuse
c. Communities at risk from sludge ponds
d. Communities water supply undermined
At this moment you may turn the voice back to the students for ideas of what they can do as citizens (get
informed, write their representatives, etc.).
The Mathematics
Assignment (individually all same grade level or in groups, each group different grade level) due next class
meeting:
From the “Did You Know . . . ” handout, create and solve 3 mathematics problems based on this informa-
tion that reflect the expectations of the Common Core Measurement strand (http://www.corestandards.org/
Math/) for grade (as assigned by instructor)(or your State standards). Clearly state what the Standard is (type
it up), and solve the problems. Bring it to next class. The math questions should be at assigned grade (if every-
one works at the same grade level, make sure the objectives do cover area and volume in a rich way and unit
conversions; you may focus on large numbers as well).
Day Two
Form groups (if you assigned different grade levels, group by grade level).
In your groups:
1. Critique each others’ questions AND SOLUTIONS. Does the problem agree with the expectation,
grade level (3–5)? Is the mathematics used to solve the problem correct? How is that related to the
“mining facts”?
2. Choose two problems per table (from different students).
3. Choose one person from the group to present the problem, the Standard, and the solution.
4. After each group has presented, briefly have the rest of the class discuss the relevance of the problem
to the grade level and standard.
Mountain Top Removal (“Did You Know?” Fact Sheet)

Did you know? (from http://ilovemountains.org)
Mining mountains—The Process
Mountaintop removal has permanently destroyed more than 500 Appalachian mountains.
There are six components to the mountaintop removal process:
1. Clearing. Before mining can begin, all topsoil and vegetation must be removed. Because coal compa-
nies frequently are responding to short-term fluctuations in the price of coal, the trees are often not
used commercially, but instead are burned or sometimes illegally dumped into valleys.
2. Blasting. Many Appalachian coal seams lie deep beneath the surface of the mountains. Accessing these
seams can require the removal of 600 feet or more of elevation. Blowing up this much mountain is
accomplished by using millions of pounds of explosives.
3. Digging. Coal and debris are removed using enormous earth-moving machines known as draglines, which
stand 22 stories high and can hold 24 compact cars in their buckets. These machines can cost up to $100
million, but are favored by coal companies because they displace the need for hundreds of miners.
4. Dumping Waste. In 2002, the Bush Administration changed the definition of “fill material” in the Clean
Water Act to include toxic mining waste, which allowed coal companies to legally dump the debris,
called “overburden” or “spoil,” into nearby valleys. These “valley fills” have buried more than 2,000
miles of headwater streams and polluted many more.
5. Processing. Coal must be chemically treated before it is shipped to power plants for burning. This pro-
cessing creates coal slurry, or sludge, a mix of water, coal dust, and clay containing toxic heavy metals
such as arsenic, mercury, lead, and chromium. The coal slurry is often dumped in open impound-
ments, sometimes built with mining debris, making them very unstable.
6. Reclamation. While reclamation efforts are required by federal law, coal companies often receive waiv-
ers from state agencies with the idea that economic development will occur on the newly flattened
land. In reality, most sites receive little more than a spraying of exotic grass seed, and less than 3 per-
cent (http://www.ilovemountains.org/reclamation-fail/) of reclaimed mountaintop removal sites are
used for economic development.
The Human Cost of Coal
1. People living near mountaintop mining have cancer rates of 14.4% compared to 9.4% for people else-
where in Appalachia.
2. The rate of children born with birth defects is 42% higher in mountaintop removal mining areas.
3. The public health costs of pollution from coal operations in Appalachia amount to a staggering $75
billion a year.
4. People living near the destruction done by mountaintop removal are 50% more likely to die of cancer
and 42% more likely to be born with birth defects compared with other people in Appalachia.
Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal 7
1. The environmental damage caused by all the aspects of coal’s life cycle, including emissions and
impact on climate change, cost the American public roughly $500 billion annually and increased the
true cost of coal by up to $0.17/kWh.
2. More than 100,000 miners have been killed since 1900.
3. Black lung disease has claimed more than 200,000 lives in the region.
4. MTR has been completed on approximately 500 sites in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennes-
see, completely altering some 1.4 million acres, burying 2,000 miles of streams.
5. Each year, between 6 and 6.9 million tons of CO2 are emitted due to removal of forest plants and
decomposition of forest litter.
L E SSON
7.4
Native American Star Quilts (Introduction)

Stepping Stone Directed Middle school
High school
Mathematics
• Transformational geometry
• Properties of 2D shapes
Real-World Context
This task explores the implicit mathematics in a star quilt design of American Indians. However, the re-
al-world context is only minimally used, and because of that we considered not including this example. How-
ever, drawing on the resources included could allow for a more interdisciplinary project in a classroom that
situated this task within a broader investigation of the history and culture of Native American tribes.

The version included here was designed as a homework assignment to accompany a later reading and does
not require technology. Alternatively, I have taught a version of this lesson in which mathematics methods
students must design a star in GeoGebra® (www.geogebra.org/) that can pass the “pull test”—if I pull on any
edge or vertex the shape may change size and orientation, but it will not change shape (i.e., it will be similar).
I preface this assignment by asking my students to experiment with GeoGebra online prior to class and to ex-
plore some of the tutorials (in particular those on the transformational tools).
Methods students have found the GeoGebra version of the task to be quite difficult as they often have little
experience with both the tool and what it means to design a figure using mathematical relationships as op-
posed to plotting points by eye. Some students attempt to calculate the position of the points and plot them
on the coordinate plane (this tends to be quite difficult). Others use a combination of reflections and/or
rotations to generate the figure.
Resources
The article referenced in the task below is:
Neumann, M. D. (2003). The mathematics of Native American star quilts. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 9(4), 230–236.
Another resource is: To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions is a curriculum developed by The National Museum of the
American Indian–Smithsonian Institution’s (NMAI–SI) Education Department (http://nmai.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/
education/quilts.pdf). In particular, see the lesson Origins of Native Quilting (approximately p. 30).
Native American Star Quilts (Task)

For homework you will read an article about Native American star quilts. Below is a quote from the article you
will read and a picture of the star the author is describing.
The star quilt is made from material cut into rhombus, or diamond-shaped, pieces. The rhombus is formed by reflect-
ing a single isosceles triangle about its noncongruent side. Eight rhombus pieces are placed with the smaller angle
rotated about a central point to form the initial star pattern. From that central star, quilters add other rhombi outward
to form a larger eight-pointed star. (Neumann, 2003, p. 231)
1. Can the triangle have any angle measurements or must it have some specific angle measurements
to make an 8-pointed star? Show all your work and carefully explain how you know you are correct.
Include pictures to help your explanation.
2. The directions in the quote from the article are correct, but they are incomplete. Start by drawing a
picture of an appropriate isosceles triangle and give detailed step-by-step directions of all the transfor-
mations that must happen to create the entire star above.
3. If you change the angles in the isosceles triangle you can make stars with a different number of points.
Write step-by-step directions for how to make a 6-pointed star. Your directions should follow the format
below, should include pictures at each stage, and should include detailed explanations of how you figured
each part out:
a. Describe the angles and/or side lengths of the isosceles triangle.
b. Describe how to reflect the isosceles triangle to make a rhombus.
c. Describe how to rotate the rhombus to create the star (remember that to do a rotation we need
to know what point we are rotating around, how many degrees, and in what direction).
4. Identify all symmetries (rotations and reflections) on the 6-pointed star.
LESSON
7.5
Plastic Floating in the Ocean (Introduction)
In this task, learners visualize the amount of plastic floating in the Pacific Garbage Patch. While the amount of
trash in the patch is large, when scaled down, it does not sound nearly as alarming.

Providing insight Directed Elementary
Proto-modeling Middle school
Mathematics
• Converting between square units (which is often challenging for students)
• Unit rates
Real-World Context
Ocean pollution is a big problem, and the existence of the Pacific Garbage Patch, whose size cannot be
precisely determined, but which may be as large as Texas, is certainly a cause for concern. However, sometimes
the choice of how information is presented results in numbers seeming more alarming than they actually are.
The amount of over 300,000 pieces of plastic in one square kilometer is large. However, this means that there
is less than one piece of plastic per square meter, which is large, but not nearly as alarming.

I have not yet implemented this task.
Extensions
The report used to create this lesson notes that while there were fewer pieces of plastic than fish in the gar-
bage patch, the weight of the plastic was actually higher than that of fish. This fact could give rise to interesting
mathematical explorations. Additionally, a report was recently published stating that by 2050 years, the weight
of plastic in the oceans as a whole will exceed the weight of fish (http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
publications/the-new-plastics-economy-rethinking-the-future-of-plastics). This fact could also be investigated,
through measurement and algebra.
Resources
The “334,271 pieces of plastic per square kilometer” figure is widely shared on the Internet, but the original report can be found
on the Marine Pollution Bulletin website at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X0100114X
Plastic Floating in the Ocean (Task)

“334,271: Average plastic pieces per square kilometer floating in the Pacific Garbage Patch.” (First published
in the Marine Pollution Bulletin in 2001.)
Introductory Questions:
1. Why is plastic in the ocean a problem?

2. What is the Pacific garbage patch? If you do not know, look it up.
3. How do you think the authors of this statistic came up with the number 334,271? Did they count? Did
they calculate? How did they come up with such a precise number?
4. Let’s assume that this number is accurate. Is it meaningful to you? Why or why not?
5. Do you think that this number is alarmingly large, moderately large, or not very large? Explain without
doing any calculations.
Mathematical Questions:
1. One way to make the rate of 334,271 pieces of plastic per square kilometer more meaningful is to
convert it to a scale that is easier to visualize. Noting that a square kilometer is a large unit of area that
is difficult to visualize, pick an area of the Pacific Garbage Patch with different, smaller dimensions, to
consider. Check in with me before continuing to Question 2.
2. How many pieces of plastic are there, on average, in a piece of ocean surface of the size that you
chose? If possible, make a drawn-to-scale visual of the piece of ocean and trash floating on it.
3. Reevaluate your answer to Question 5 in the introductory questions.
4. Why do you think that the authors chose to express the number as rate per square kilometer and not a
smaller unit, such as square foot or square meter?
LESSON
7.6
The Cost of Bottled Water (Introduction)
Ksenija Simic-Muller and Sara Patterson

Directed
Providing Insight Elementary School
Proto-Modeling
Mathematics
• Unit conversion
• Proportions
• Calculations with whole numbers and decimals
Real-World Context
The use of bottled water in the United States is steadily increasing, even though it is much more expensive
than tap water and studies repeatedly show that the quality of tap water is higher than that of bottled water. In
the first part of the task, the personal finance aspect is considered, as students learn that the cost of tap water
is about 1% of the cost of bottled water. The second part addresses the environmental impact of bottled water,
in particular the amount of oil used to make the plastic used for the bottles.

I used the two parts of this task in two different courses. The first part of the task did not go as well as expect-
ed because the students, who had had no prior experience paying for water bills, did not know how to compare
the prices of tap and bottled water, whose quantities were so vastly different. Here I have modified the task to
include guidelines for the students. The second part of the task was somewhat difficult, because there were
many conversions to do and the answers were too large to be meaningful. However, the prospective teachers I
work with are always interested in issues related to sustainability and have reacted well to this task.
Extensions
This lesson is directly related to Lesson 6.4: The Cost of Water, which deals with the cost of water in Flint.
One could also consider the amount of water used to produce bottled water, as well as the environmental im-
pact on communities where water-bottling facilities are located. It is also interesting to consider the increase
of bottled water use over the last two decades.
Resources
I used my water bill for the first part of the task.
Chris Jordan is a Seattle-based artist who creates visual representations of large numbers related, primarily, to mass consump-
tion. His series Running the Numbers I and II can be found on his website at http://chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#si-
lent-spring and http://chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn2/#water-bottles.
The numbers of plastic bottles used and recycled are up for debate as there are no official counts. The figure of 50 billion water
bottles per year appears on numerous websites.
The information about the amount of oil used to produce plastic water bottles can be found at http://www.livescience.
com/3406-energy-footprint-bottled-water.html. The article references a scientific study so is hopefully reliable.
The number of registered cars and the average gas mileage were obtained from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States.
The Cost of Bottled Water (Task)

Part 1: Personal Finance
In March 2016, my water bill as a Tacoma resident was $25.99 for 1.92 CCF of water used. This charge in-
cluded water use as well as a monthly customer charge.
Questions:
• How much money would a person who buys 1 bottle of bottled water every day save every month by
switching to filling the bottle with tap water instead of buying it?
• What could you buy with that money?
Some things you need to know:
• 1 CCF = 748 gallons

• 1 gallon = 128 ounces
Some things you need to make assumptions about:
• The size of a water bottle

• The cost of a water bottle
If you are unsure about how to solve the problem, here are some steps that can help you get started (other strategies
are also possible):
• Find the price of city tap water by the ounce;

• Find how much bottled water this person drinks each day and each month.
Part 2: Environmental Impact
1. Using the information given on the following website: http://chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#plas-

tic-bottles, calculate about how many plastic bottles were used in the United States in 2007.
2. Use the number from the previous question to estimate the number of plastic bottles used in the Unit-
ed States in 2016.
3. Use your estimate from the previous question to estimate the number of plastic water bottles used in
the United States in 2016. (Note: Think about what part of all plastic bottle use are water bottles.)
4. It is believed that the actual number of water bottles used annually is about 50 billion. How good was your
estimate?
5. Visualizing large numbers such as the one in Problem 4 is difficult. Let us try to visualize this number in
terms of gas consumption. According to the website LiveScience, “an estimated total of the equivalent
of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil was required to generate the energy to produce the amount of
bottled water consumed in the United States in 2007.” Let’s assume that 32 million barrels of crude oil
are used in the United States every year to manufacture water bottles. It is also known that each barrel of
crude oil makes about 19 gallons of gasoline. How many miles could you drive in your own car on the oil
it takes to manufacture one year’s worth of plastic bottles in the United States? (Note: You will have to use
your car’s gas mileage, or, if you don’t have one, use what you think is the average car’s gas mileage.)
6. Express the distance you got in the previous question in terms of a familiar distance (e.g., from Taco-
ma to New York City, from Earth to the Moon, etc.)
7. There are 250 million registered vehicles in the United States. Let’s say that 200 million of those are on the
road and are cars, trucks, and SUVs, and let’s say that the average gas mileage for them all is around 18 miles
per gallon. How far could each of those cars drive with the amount of gas used to produce all the plastic
water bottles?
8. What are your answers in problems 6 and 7 telling you in practical terms? Is this meaningful to you
mathematically and personally? Explain.
9. Which argument for reducing water bottle use is more compelling to you: the personal finance or the
environmental one? Why?
LESSON
7.7
Water Bottles for Detroit (Introduction)
Mathew Felton-Koestler

Middle School
Tool Modeling
High School
Mathematics
• Nets of 3D objects
• Calculating surface area and volume
• Efficiently packaging 3D objects (depending on the strategy used)
Real-World Context
I originally created this task because one of my prospective teachers in a middle childhood methods course
said they were interested in learning about 3D shapes and surface area. I also knew I wanted to include more
opportunities to engage in mathematical modeling and more uses of mathematics to explore social issues.
Thus this task represents a situation where I began with a rough idea of the mathematical concepts I wanted
to work with and then sought out a context that would be amenable to exploring those concepts. After ex-
tensive brainstorming I was largely at a loss of ideas. My partner and colleague Courtney Koestler suggested I
do something involving water containers for immigrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. I was new to Ohio
University, and not knowing my prospective teachers’ views about immigration, I was concerned that doing a
lesson focused on providing aid to undocumented immigrants would be a hard context to tackle unless we also
explored the broader issues surrounding undocumented immigration to the United States (such as people’s
reasons for doing so, immigrants’ economic contributions once they arrive, the difficulty of immigrating legal-
ly). While those are all important topics to investigate, none of them fit my mathematical goals of focusing on
surface area of 3D shapes, so I changed the context to bringing water to people in Detroit who had their water
shut off because of lack of payment, which had been in the news recently.

I have used this task in a middle childhood methods course and one of my former students, Sarah Stroup,
later modified the lesson for use with her middle school students who engaged well in the mathematics in-
volved in the task. The lesson plan included here includes some of her modifications.
Water Bottle Designs
• The four water bottle designs are included at the end of the task (you may want to enlarge each one
for easier use).
• I intended for these to be created using Polydrons, but they could be cut out and taped/glued togeth-
er. They are made to scale.
• I created Designs 1 and 2 out of Polydrons beforehand for each group (and did not give the students a
printout of the net). I gave them a printout of the net for Designs 3 and 4 and made Polydrons® avail-
able so they could create them if they wanted.
Considerations for Models

When I have used this task most students focused on the ratio between the surface area of the container and
the volume of water it held, seeking to minimize this ratio (thus lowering costs). But there are a number of other
considerations that are generally discussed, whether or not they are actively integrated into the model, such as:
• Ranking the perceived ease of use of the container, which may be influenced by whether the water is
just for drinking or if it will also be used for cooking and bathing.
• How easily and tightly the water bottles can be packed into larger crates for shipping and delivery,
which would be another way of measuring the overall surface area to volume of water held.
You could choose to bring in actual water bottles or look up pictures of a range of water bottles and have
students develop geometric models of those first.
This task can easily be updated for any region experiencing a water crisis.
Resources
This news story on the water crises in Detroit could be assigned as a reading prior to using this lesson: http://america.aljazeera.
com/articles/2014/6/25/detroita-s-disconnectionofwaterservicesviolateshumanrightssaysun.html
Water Bottles for Detroit (Task)

Background Information
The United Nations’ (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25 states that
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including
food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services . . . (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/)
Read the following excerpts from a U.N. News Centre release (June 25, 2014):
“Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human
right to water and other international human rights,” the experts stated in a news release.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has been disconnecting water services from households that have not
paid bills for two months, and has sped up the process since early June, with the number of disconnections rising to
around 3,000 customers per week. As a result, some 30,000 households are expected to be disconnected from water
services over the next few months.
The news release noted that due to high poverty and unemployment rates, relatively expensive water bills in Detroit are
unaffordable for a significant portion of the population.
...
If these water disconnections disproportionately affect African-Americans they may be discriminatory, in violation of
treaties the United States has ratified,” she noted.
Under international human rights law, it is the State’s obligation to provide urgent measures, including financial assis-
tance, to ensure access to essential water and sanitation. (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48129#.
VE5MEvnF9Bk)
Set Up
You work for an aid organization that wants to distribute water to the people of Detroit. You have been asked
to select the best water bottle design for this project out of the four options your instructor has given you.
Task
• Assume all water bottles are made from the same material.
• You will need to make a number of additional assumptions to complete this task. Be careful to be ex-
plicit about the assumptions you are making.
• You are free to look things up (like formulas) or ask the instructor.
1. Each person receives at least one water bottle design. Your group must evaluate all four designs, even if
you only have three people.
2. Each person has 5 minutes (be strict) to think about their design and some ways to decide on the best
design.
3. Each person has 5 minutes (be strict) to share their initial ideas without interruption.
4. Develop a method for selecting the best water bottle out of the four designs.
5. Create a poster that summarizes the following:
a. The assumptions you made and why you felt they were appropriate.
b. At least one early idea that was either abandoned or revised and why.
c. Your final method for choosing the best water bottle (i.e., your mathematical model) and the
water bottle you chose. (You must be able to defend your method to the class.)
d. How your group did (or did not) engage in the various steps in the modeling cycle.
6. You have 1 hour as a group to complete the task and prepare your poster.
Extension
7. Develop a general method for evaluating any water bottle so that if new designs are suggested you can
quickly evaluate them. Your directions should be clear enough that someone who has not worked in
your group could follow them, in case you all leave your organization and someone new has to take
over your job.
Reflection
8. What mathematical concepts did you use on this task? Identify specific Common Core Standards for
this task—consider both the practices and the content standards.
9. Is this an example of using math to explore a social or political issue? Why or why not?
10. What kinds of thinking do you think I had to do to develop this task? What knowledge did I have to
draw on?
11. How do you feel about using mathematics in this way?
Water Bottles for Detroit (Nets)

Notes
1. Voting Rights Act, quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act
2. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHRC] (2011). A year of crises: UNHRC global trends 2011. Page 3.
Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/4fd6f87f9.html
3. Amended Article 1.A.2 from the United Nation’s Convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees. Retrieved
from http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html
4. UNHRC, 2011, p. 3
5. UNHRC, 2011, p. 12
6. Handbook for Emergencies, 2nd Edition (http://www.the-ecentre.net/resources/e_library/doc/han_Em.pdf, p. 137)
7. Epstein, P., J. Buonocore, K. Eckerle, M. Hendryx, B. M. Stout III, R. Heinberg, R. W. Clapp, B. May, N. L. Reinhart, M. M.
Ahern, S. K. Doshi, and L. Glustrom. (2011). Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal. Annals of the New York Academy
of Sciences. 1219, 73–98.
Data Analysis Lessons
8
L ESSON
8.1
Historical Trends in Crime (Introduction)

Providing Insight Proto-Modeling Elementary
Middle School
Mathematics
• Representing data: select appropriate graph and create it
• Interpreting and analyzing data
Real-World Context
It is interesting to note that, while the media downplay some serious issues, they exaggerate the extent of
crime, leading the majority of the population to believe that the United States is more dangerous than ever
before. However, data do not support it. In this task, learners create graphs to examine the trends in crime over
the last 55 years. If they do the assignment correctly, they will conclude that crime has been decreasing, both
in terms of rates and total numbers, since its peak in the early 1990s.
88 ◾ DATA ANALYSIS LESSONS

I use this lesson toward the end of the statistics unit, together with a similar lesson on historical trends in
immigration based on a problem from Bassarear (2012), and discussed in Simic-Muller (2015). Most students
are successful in this assignment, though some occasionally make mistakes when analyzing the graph and
conclude that crime has been increasing. The majority of students use a line graph. Some students use a bar
graph, which is not incorrect, but is more difficult to read. Because both overall crime and crime rates have
been decreasing, both can be used to make a case that crime is decreasing, and therefore there is little need
to draw on proportional reasoning here.

To make this lesson more open-ended, the crime and homicide rate columns can be omitted and students
can be encouraged to calculate them on their own. There are many directions one can take when discussing
crime, but to extend this particular lesson, students could compare nationwide, state, and local trends in
crime. It is also valuable to discuss total crime numbers versus crime rates, which I do on different occasions in
my classes before we do this lesson. Also, see Simic-Muller (2015) for other related lessons I have used.
Resources
I downloaded the table from the Disaster Center website (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm). Their data was
obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Bassarear, T. (2011). Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Simic-Muller, K. (2015). Social justice and proportional reasoning. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 21(3), 163–168.
Historical Trends in Crime (Task)

The Table 8.1.1 shows some aspects of crime in the United States since 1960. It includes total numbers of
crimes, crime rates, total numbers of homicides, and the homicide rate for each year.
(This is an excerpt of the table I created for my students, and which is available on the book’s companion web-
site: http://www.infoagepub.com/simic-muller. The website in the Resources section also includes crime and
homicide data until the most recent year available.)
TABLE 8.1.1 Aspects of Crime in the United States Since 1960

Crime Rate Homicide Rate
Year Population Crimes per 100,000 Homicides per 100,000
1960 179323175 3384200 1887.207273 9110 5.080213419
1961 182992000 3488000 1906.094255 8740 4.776165078
1962 185771000 3752200 2019.798569 8530 4.591674696
1963 188483000 4109500 2180.302733 8640 4.583967785
Please answer the following questions:
1. Before looking at Table 8.1.1, do you think that crime in the United States has been increasing or
decreasing? Why do you think that?
2. Now use Table 8.1.1 to create one or more graphs that you think will best represent the crime data.
You may choose only one category, or you may choose more (each will have its own graph). You may
focus on only some years, or you may include all years since 1960. If you choose only some years, make
sure to include some or all of the past ten years—otherwise we cannot discuss recent trends.
DATA ANALYSIS LESSONS ◾ 89
3. Why did you choose this particular type of graph?

4. Describe the trends you see in your graph(s).
5. What did you learn about crime from your graph(s)?
6. Is your answer to Question 1 still the same, or has it changed? If it has changed, why do you think your
perception was different from the actual situation? Write at least two sentences.
L E SSON
8.2
Income Inequality (Introduction)

Mathematics
• Defining and understanding the mathematical mean and median
• Discussing the best measure of center in the context of income
• Finding percentages
Real-World Context
This task explores the extent of income inequality in the United States from several perspectives. The range
of prompts are designed to illustrate how large a share of total income the top 20% and 5% of households have
(but the task itself is not designed to take a particular stance on this inequality).

Setup
This task works best if you have 20 or more students. Students will need to be arranged into 5 different
groups and each group will have 4 households (students can partner up since a household can have more than
one person). However, I have done the task with fewer than 20 students many times—we just had plastic bags
of blocks “stand in” for the missing households.
You will need to prepare 20 bags of blocks corresponding to the values in Table 8.2.2 in the task, where each
block represents $1,000 in annual income.
If time allows I go through the process of giving students bags when they come in (and having people part-
ner up if there are more than 20), lining them up from poorest to richest, breaking into five equal groups and
then sitting in the groups to represent each quintile. If I am crunched for time I just have students come in
and sit down and then give them bags with blocks based on where they are sitting and explain the process we
would have gone through. I clarify that each household (bag of blocks) represents 5% of U.S. households and
that each table represents one quintile (one fifth or 20%) of all U.S. households.
New Data
The values in the lesson can be easily updated with new data by using the links provided. You will have to
adjust the values in Table 8.2.2 to match updated values. Table 8.2.2 is designed to have the same mean income
for each quintile (to the nearest $250) as the actual values. It also conforms to the minimum and maximum
cut-offs for each quintile.

I have taught many versions of this lesson in a variety of contexts. The version presented here includes a
number of prompts I have used with students at different times. I have also sometimes asked students to repre-
sent the data in Table 8.2.3, either in any way they want or specifically with a bar graph and pie chart.
Resources
Slate has an outstanding series on income inequality in the United States by Timothy Noah: http://www.slate.com/articles/
news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/features/2010/the_united_states_of_inequality/introducing_the_great_diver-
gence.html
The Ten Chairs of Inequality is an activity that focuses on the distribution of wealth as opposed to income: http://www.rethinking-
schools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/12_03/wealth.shtml
Income Inequality (Task)

1. Before starting, write down your household income. Imagine that each household in your quintile made
exactly the same amount of money:
a. How much would each household make?
b. Explain how you could use the blocks to find this value.
c. Do you know the mathematical name for the quantity you found?
2. Fill in Table 8.2.1 based on the values collected as a class. Compare to the actual values from 2014
(most recent available).
TABLE 8.2.1 Our Approximations and 2014 Census Data

First Second Third Fourth Fifth
Quintile Quintile Quintile Quintile Quintile Top 5%
If each household earned $11,500 $30,500 $52,250 $83,500 $185,250 $332,000
the same
Actual 2014 Values $11,676 $31,087 $54,041 $87,834 $194,053 $332,347
Source: These values are from Table H-3 All Races at https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/
demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html
Analyzing the Data
TABLE 8.2.2 Our Household Incomes

Quintile “Household” 1 “Household” 2 “Household” 3 “Household” 4
First $4,000 $10,000 $15,000 $18,000
Second $25,000 $28,000 $33,000 $38,000
Third $44,000 $50,000 $58,000 $64,000
Fourth $72,000 $83,000 $93,000 $103,000
Fifth $122,000 $146,000 $176,000 $332,000
Table 8.2.2 shows the household incomes for each person in our class. Use Tables 8.2.1 and 8.2.2 to answer the
following questions.
3. What is a “typical” income?

a. Find the mean household income in our class. Describe how you could use the blocks to find this
value and explain what it tells us in the real-world context.
b. Find the median household income in our class (the value that cuts the data into two halves: the
middle value or the average of the two middle values).
c. Which table would the mean household income be sitting at? Which table would the median
household income be sitting at? Why the difference?1
d. Which value, mean or median, do you think is a better measure of “typical” in this context? Why?
4. Fill out Table 8.2.3. Be careful with the last two columns! Think carefully about who the fifth quintile is,
who the top 5% is, and how they are related to each other. Find a way to represent this information
graphically.
TABLE 8.2.3 Percentages of Total Income

Percentage
3% 8% 14% 23% 51% 22%
of Total Income
5. Starting with the poorest household in class and working our way up . . .
a. How many households will it take to equal the income of the richest household?
b. So fill in the blank: In the United States the richest 5% earns as much as the bottom ___%
Additional Data
6. Find the missing values in Table 8.2.4.2 Explain how you could do this with blocks and/or draw a pic-
ture representing what is happening mathematically.
7. Discuss the trends in Table 8.2.4.
TABLE 8.2.4 Mean Household Quintile Incomes by Race/Ethnicity

Quintile Quintile Quintile Quintile Quintile Mean
White, Not Hispanic $14,000 $35,000 $60,000 $96,000 $208,000
Black $7,000 $20,000 $35,000 $59,000 $136,000
Hispanic $10,000 $26,000 $67,000 $141,000 $57,400
Asian $43,000 $75,000 $118,000 $241,000 $98,200
L ESSON
8.3
Income Then and Now (Introduction)

Provide Insight Proto-Modeling Middle School
Mathematics
• Computing and comparing differences

• Computing and comparing ratios or percentages
• Making meaningful comparisons across data sets
Real-World Context
This lesson extends Lesson 8.2: Income Inequality by comparing the current level of income inequality in
the United States with that of 1968 (one of the lowest years based on the Gini-coefficient), illustrating that
income inequality has been increasing.

This task is quite challenging because it is open-ended and can be analyzed in a number of ways. I generally
do not allow looking up the rate of inflation so that the students have to develop some other method of com-
paring the extent of inequality when the dollar values are not directly comparable across years.
Two reasonable approaches involve finding the percentage share of income of each group and finding the
ratio of each quintile to either the richest or poorest quintile. Students often come up with a number of other
approaches, such as exploring the amount of increase between each quintile. Students also frequently invent
ways of representing the two data sets and/or the relationship between them.
Income Then and Now (Task)
1. Task: Table 8.3.1 shows the household incomes in 1968 and 2014. Your task is to determine which
year had greater inequality in household income distribution or if they had roughly the same level of
inequality.
2. Group Product: Create a poster and/or digital materials that support your point. Your materials should
include:
a. one or more representations of the data that support your argument,
b. a clear argument for which year had greater inequality or why they were the same, and
c. one or more mathematical contributions from each group member.
TABLE 8.3.1 Mean Household Income by Quintile and Top 5% (All Races)
1968 $1,806 $4,842 $7,680 $10,713 $18,616 $28,461
2014 $11,676 $31,087 $54,041 $87,834 $194,053 $332,347
Source: These values are from Table H-3 All Races at https://www.census.gov/data/tables/
time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html
3. Extension: Brainstorm additional questions you have about this topic and data you would want to look
up. Begin researching your data online to see what you can find and begin analyzing it mathematically.
L ESSON
8.4
Income: Teacher Salaries (Introduction)

Providing Insight Proto-Modeling Middle School
Modeling
Mathematics
• Measures of center: mean and median, and the effect that outliers have on them
• Creating graphs, primarily histograms and box-and-whiskers plots for salary data for Washington State
teachers and an extreme outlier, Bill Gates, who also lives in Washington State.
Real-World Context
Income inequality is increasing in the United States and worldwide. What better example for that than the
comparison of the extremely high earnings of Bill Gates, who lives in Washington State where I teach, and the
consistently low teacher salaries?

I often give the problem with generic teacher salaries and Bill Gates’ income to illustrate how the mean is
not always the best measure of center. This longer lesson has resulted from that problem, but I have not yet
implemented it in full. Because the questions are open-ended, there should be a whole-class discussion about
Question 1 in Part 2, which will include calculating the mean with Bill Gates, the mean without Bill Gates, and
the median, and will show that when there is an outlier, the mean is not a good measure of center.

Students may be interested in researching nationwide teacher salaries. This could be another homework
assignment.
Resources
Public school teachers’ salaries in Washington State are publicly available. I obtained Washington State data from the Tacoma
daily paper, The News Tribune (http://wwwb.thenewstribune.com/databases/school_pay/).
Individual teacher data may not be available in all states, but average salaries, by district, often are. Average teacher salaries by
state are available on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/
tables/dt13_211.60.asp.
There are some interesting visuals about Bill Gates’ earnings at http://www.salary-money.com/Bill-Gates-salary-3710000000.
php#.VvV_rEZSR_U.
Income: Teacher Salaries (Task)

Part 1
In this spreadsheet you will find 2014–2015 salaries of 79 Washington State elementary public school teachers,
along with the districts they taught in. These teachers are the teachers with the lowest number of years of ex-
perience in the state. More experienced teachers have higher salaries.
Use at least one data analysis tool we have learned in this class (in particular averages and graphs) to draw
some conclusions about the salaries of these teachers. Check in with me when you choose the method for an-
alyzing the data. Write a paragraph summarizing your findings.
Part 2
1. Suppose the 79 teachers from the first part are all at a teacher conference together. Bill Gates, who is
also interested in education, and who earns about $3.7 billion per year, is sitting in the room. What is
the average salary of the people sitting in that room? Explain. Remember that in this class we use the
world “average” in the broader sense than you did in middle school and high school.
2. How long does Bill Gates have to work to earn as much as the average teacher in that room? Assume
he works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (which is not unreasonable since his wealth accumulates con-
stantly).
3. How long would the average teacher have to work to earn what Bill Gates earns in a year?
Homework
Let’s say that Bill Gates wants to help raise all Washington teachers’ salaries. Create a proposal for how to do
this, detailing how much money he will need to spend, and what impact that will have on his overall earnings.
You may need to conduct some additional research to find out how many teachers there are in Washington
State, how much they make on average, etc. You can find individual teachers’ salaries at http://wwwb.thenew-
stribune.com/databases/school_pay/. Decide whether raises are flat sums or percent increases, and if they are
based on years of experience or other factors.
Income: Teacher Salaries (Spreadsheet)

Below is an excerpt of the spreadsheet I created for my students. The website in the Resources section includes
data for all districts, and is also available on the companion website to the book (http://www.infoagepub.com/
simic-muller).
District Salary
Steilacoom Hist. School District $44,930
Tacoma School District $44,852
Everett School District $32,252
Everett School District $27,905
L ESSON
8.5
Messages in Children’s Ads (Introduction)

Mathematics
• Forming categories and counting and recording frequencies
• Creating bar graphs and pie chart as appropriate
• Finding percentages and proportions (finding angles)
Real-World Context
Advertising impacts society in more ways than one. While delivering an explicit message of consuming a
good or service (declared message), the context of the ad also sends signals of what is to be accepted as normal
in the society, shaping individual behaviors, values, and identities (undeclared message). This task helps pro-
spective teachers become cognizant of how children’s view of their world is being affected by those undeclared
messages. This task has been modified from a project in a mass media class I took as an undergraduate student
examining how TV ads represented men and women.
By categorizing undeclared (implicit) messages in commercial ads during children’s television program-
ming, students explore how mass media influences our perception of the world and shapes our values. Even
though the mathematics is quite directed as students have specific tasks to perform, the categories they come
up with and the conclusions students derive may vary greatly as it relates to the real-world context.

A large part of the task is to be done outside the classroom, with preferable one weekend in between Day
One and Day Two, as students need to watch children television shows with emphasis on the commercial
advertisement.
This task works better when done in small groups, at least two students per group. You do not want too
many students in the group because it becomes harder to agree on out-of-school meeting times and come to a
consensus on creating categories. You need two class meetings separated by a weekend. Students need to know
how the basics on making a bar graph and a pie chart (as appropriate).
Day One
At some point during the class meeting, preferable at the end of the session, the task is explained and as-
signed. Allow some time to form groups based on students’ ability to get together (preferably) and for clarifi-
cation on the assignment.
Day Two
This day is for classroom presentation and discussion. Following each group’s presentation, open the
forum for the rest of the students (the audience) to ask questions and to critique the group’s presentation
in terms of the technical aspects of the graphs (praises are encouraged), challenging the method of clas-
sification (if there are overlaps or ambiguity, for example), the mathematics (check for percents to add to
100), and personal realizations (what they learned new from the group’s presentation). You may close up
the task by asking students to summarize the mathematical concepts involved and the social implications of
the findings.

Depending on your goals and time, you may omit the pie chart. If Pareto graphs have been discussed, you
may suggest comparing it with the original bar graph, for example asking: “What new information can be in-
ferred by this new representation?”
Messages in Children’s Ads (Task)

Day One
1. In groups of two or three, agree on the time and place to watch two hours of TV from children’s pro-
gramming (not necessarily all at once). Write down the different undeclared messages you observe on
each ad; identify the ad and the messages.
2. Negotiate how to classify the ads (create categories) based on their undeclared message.
3. Summarize the information in two graphs: A bar graph and a pie chart (one page each; show the com-
putations of the angles for the pie chart). (You may choose to do only a bar graph or substitute the pie
chart for a Pareto graph.)
4. Interpret the information from the graph: What do these graphs tell you about the values our chil-
dren are growing up with, as perpetuated by the media? What do they not tell you? (One page).
5. For your report paper you need:
a. A cover page with your names, an explanation of what this project was about (the research ques-
tion), the description of how you gather your data (days, time slots, shows, cable or TV channels
you watch, etc.), what criteria you used to determine the categories, and a table with the data
(categories and frequencies).
b. The two graphs (two pages or posters; or only one graph if that is what you assigned).
c. The interpretation page.
Day Two
In your presentation you should convey the following information:
1. When (day, time of the day) did you watch the program?
2. What TV channel or Cable did you watch?
3. Tell us two examples of ads you remember were more common. Describe the ad. Do not interpret.
4. Explain which categories you selected and why.
5. Place your bar graph on the overhead projector or the poster on the wall or board (do not explain).
Ask the rest of the class to interpret your graph.
6. Repeat with the pie chart. Are there differences in people’s responses?
7. Give us your interpretation of your data.
L ESSON
8.6
Mortality and Race (Introduction)

Proto-Modeling High School
Mathematics
• Interpreting histograms
• Comparing distributions of data
• Understanding and generating box plots (with non-standard data)
• Comparing representations of data
Real-World Context
This task illustrates differences in mortality rates for White and Black males in the United States. I see this as
a manifestation of the unequal opportunities and services available in our society, but students could interpret
it as resulting from different choices and lifestyles.

Question 3 (creating a box plot using the information given) is quite challenging because the data are not
provided in a typical format. However, by calculating the total percentage of deaths as you increase in age you
can find the needed information.
Extensions
This task could be extended by making comparisons for other groups or for particular states or regions of the
country.
Mortality and Race (Task)

These data are adapted from the CDC, specifically from the 2007 LEWK3 table:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/lewk3.htm
LEWK3 provides values showing the mortality experience of a hypothetical group of [100,000] infants born at the same
time and subject throughout their lifetime to the specific mortality risks of a given year.
1. Be sure you understand the relationship between the table and the histograms. Why does it make
sense to plot these data in a histogram? Assuming that we actually know the exact age of death (like
57.4 years instead of just 57), does a histogram still make sense? Why does it make sense for the bars
to touch?
2. Is one group dying at a younger/older age than the other? What is your evidence?
3. Use the information you have to create a box plot for age of death. Does this add any new insight into the
previous question or is it largely redundant? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of
representing the data.
4. Common Core standard 7.SP.3 is below. Do this for these data.
Informally assess the degree of visual overlap of two numerical data distributions with similar variabilities, mea-
suring the difference between the centers by expressing it as a multiple of a measure of variability. For example,
the mean height of players on the basketball team is 10 cm greater than the mean height of players on the soccer team, about
twice the variability (mean absolute deviation) on either team; on a dot plot, the separation between the two distributions of
heights is noticeable.
5. Reflect on the Data.

a. What does this tell you about the world? What might cause these results? What could be done to
change the results?
b. What additional questions do you have? What data do you want? What would be a good way to
collect these data (assuming they do not already exist)?
Mortality and Race (Handouts)

I created a simplified table based on the data from the LEWK3 table. I simplified the information provided
by only focusing on number of deaths and I showed White males compared to Black males in the same table
(http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/lewk3.htm). Table 8.6.1 shows the first few lines of the for the 2007
data; the entire spreadsheet is available on the companion website: http://www.infoagepub.com/simic-muller. I
included data all the way to “100+”.
Number of Deaths Cumulative Deaths

Age of Death White Black White Black
0 618 1,451 618 1,451
1 46 73 664 1,524
2 30 48 694 1,572
3 23 37 717 1,609
Figure 8.6.1 shows small versions of the histograms I handed out.

Figure 8.6.1 Histograms.
L ESSON
8.7
Youth Poverty and Homelessness (Introduction)

Provide Insight Proto-Modeling Middle School
Mathematics
• Reading and interpreting graphs
• Percent change
• Algebra (linear and exponential growth)
Real-World Context
The public school population is becoming increasingly poor: It is estimated that over 50% of the nation’s
public school students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Children also comprise a large segment of the home-
less population. Is it important for prospective teachers to be aware of the likely presence of homeless students
in their future classrooms and to learn about difficulties these students face as well as protections that the McK-
inney Vento Act affords these students. However, a mathematics content course may not be the proper place
for this conversation, unless an explicit connection is made with mathematics content. This is how this lesson
came into being: It allowed my students to learn about the McKinney Vento Act while also thinking about bar
graphs, pie charts, percentages, and other important concepts.

I have used this lesson multiple times, as a homework assignment. Once I gave it to prepare students for
the visit by the McKinney Vento liaison for the school district, who talked about homelessness in schools and
ways teachers can help homeless students. Because it was used as a homework assignment, during a busy time,
students did not give it their full attention. In particular, they gave little attention to Question 2g, although it
was mathematically the most interesting. Recently, students have been more willing to address the more diffi-
cult questions. Not everybody understands that you cannot find the total number of students in poverty based
on state percentages, and some propose averaging the percentages to obtain the nationwide percentage. To
predict the number of homeless students in the future, some use linear and some use exponential growth, but
all agree that these models are probably not accurate. This is a topic that interests students because it is directly
related to their future career.
Extensions
It would be interesting to expand the last question into a larger modeling problem and investigate trends
in youth homelessness. It may also be worthwhile to assign only one of the two parts in order for the students
to spend more time on each of the questions. If students are presented with a table, they can create their own
graphs. For example, I have had students create histograms from state poverty data.
Resources
The graphs were both found on the Education Week website, at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2013/
10/theres_no_place_you_can_get_aw.html and http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/infographics/homeless-students-a
-statistical-profile.html.
The first graph is cut off in the middle, so students cannot see percentages for all the states. Instead, one can either look directly
at the NCES website for years between 2000 and 2013, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_204.10.
asp, or can look at the Southern Education Foundation’s report at http://www.southerneducation.org/getattach-
ment/817a35f1-abb9-4d6a-8c2e-5514d4a6d7d9/Test-Publication-4.aspx.
Youth Poverty and Homelessness (Task)
1. Look at the graphs in the following article: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-re-

search/2013/10/theres_no_place_you_can_get_aw.html (you have to click on the appropriate year to
switch graphs). Note that you can only look at the states up to New York.
a. How does the article define students living in poverty?
b. Write three qualitative (i.e., not number-based) observations that you are able to make from these two
graphs.
c. Write three quantitative (i.e., number-based) observations that you are able to make from these
two graphs. Try to be as specific as possible. Use some mathematical reasoning beyond looking at
numbers (e.g., comparisons and calculations).
d. What type of graph are the two given graphs?
e. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using this particular type of graph to display these
particular data? Give concrete examples (e.g., something that was easy to comprehend or some-
thing that was misleading).
f. What other visual(s) may represent the data better?
g. Could you use this graph to find the total percentage of students living in poverty in 2011 in the
United States (assuming you had the percentages for every state)? Explain.
h. In 2000, 36.5% of the student population qualified for free or reduced lunch. In 2011, that per-
centage was 40.7. What was the percent change between the two years? How does this percent
change compare to some other states given in the graph, for example Alabama or Alaska?
2. Look at the graphs in the following article: http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/infographics/home-

less-students-a-statistical-profile.html
a. Write three qualitative (i.e., not number-based) observations that you are able to make from these
graphs.
b. Write three quantitative (i.e., number-based) observations that you are able to make from these graphs.
Try to be as specific as possible. Use some mathematical reasoning beyond looking at numbers.
c. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using these particular types of graphs to display
these particular data? Give concrete examples (for example something that was easy to compre-
hend or something that was misleading).
d. What other visual(s) may represent the data better?
e. Look at the “Academic Progress” portion of the graphs.
i. On the graph for the 3–8 grade population, the arm for 2011–2012 is longer than the arm for
2010–2011. Does that mean that math performance for homeless 3–8 grade students is improving?
Explain.
ii. Why do you think the numbers for the high school students are so much lower than the num-
bers for 3–8 grade students?
f. What has been the percent growth in homeless students between 2009–10 and 2011–12?
g. If this trend continues, how many homeless students (approximately) will there be in 2020? Do
you think that this is a good estimate? Why or why not? (Note: This question is more complex, so
please address is accordingly.)
h. What questions do you have about the different data representations related to this article?
Notes
1. The U.S. Census reports the 2013 median household income as $52,250 (http://www.census.gov/library/publications/2014/
acs/acsbr13-02.html) and they reported the mean household income as $72,641, which can be found using the values in Ta-
ble 2 or in Table A-1 here: http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf
2. These are values are rounded from Table H-3 at https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/
historical-income-households.html
Probability Lessons
9
L ESSON
9.1
Income Mobility (Introduction)

Providing Insight Directed Middle School
Mathematics
• Creating games to model/simulate real-world probabilities
Real-World Context
One justification sometimes given for the level of income inequality in the United States is that we live in a
meritocracy where anyone can get ahead. This task is intended to counter that perspective by highlighting the
fact that the United States actually has lower levels of income mobility than other wealthy countries.

I have used this task as one way to return to the theme of income inequality in the United States. I see it as
a continuation of the themes found in Lesson 8.2: Income Inequality, but it is not a direct extension of that
104 ◾ PROBABILITY LESSONS
lesson and it could be used on its own. I have taught this lesson with prospective teachers in content and meth-
ods courses.
Most prospective teachers respond to question one with a flat 20% across the board (i.e., a random chance
of ending up in any quintile regardless of where you were born). A follow-up question to consider is whether
they would want to live in this kind of world, and if so what policies might be needed to make this possible.
I teach this lesson after having introduced basic probability games, such as spinners, pulling blocks from a
bag, and rolling dice—including basic games with compound outcomes (such as spinning two spinners). For
Question 2 in the task they are expected to use one of these types of games to model where a son would end
up. For instance, in Country A they might make a spinner that has 42% of the area labeled “bottom,” 20% of
the area labeled “lower middle,” and so on.
Regarding Question 5 in the task (possible causes for lower or higher rates of income mobility), the New York
Times article referenced in the task provides a valuable analysis of these issues.
Resources
In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters by David Leonhardt
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?pagewanted=all
The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up by Gregor Aisch, Eric Buth, Matthew Bloch, Amanda Cox, & Kevin Quealy
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-and-worst-places-to-grow-up-how-your-area-compares.
html?abt=0002&abg=0
It’s Not the Inequality; It’s the Immobility by Anthony Russo
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/upshot/its-not-the-inequality-its-the-immobility.html?abt=0002&abg=0
Income Mobility (Task)

The data in this lesson come from a study titled American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of In-
tergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which can be
found here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp1938.pdf and is discussed in this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.
com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html.
Recall that household incomes are often divided into five equal groups (called quintiles). The average in-
comes of each quintile in the United States are shown in Table 9.1.1.
TABLE 9.1.1 Average Quintile Levels From 2013

Bottom Lower Middle Middle Upper Middle Top
Mean Income $11,651 $30,509 $52,322 $83,519 $185,206
1. In a fair world (which is up to you to define), if your parents started out in the bottom quintile, what do
you think the probabilities should be that you will end up in the bottom, lower middle, middle, upper
middle, or top quintile once you are out on your own? Why?
2. Tables 9.1.2 and 9.1.3 show the actual data for two different countries looking at where fathers
started out and where their sons ended up.1 Create a separate probability game for each of the four
prompts below:
a. A game that models where sons will end up if their fathers were in the bottom quintile . . .
• in Country A
• in Country B
b. A game that models where sons will end up if their fathers were in the top quintile . . .
• in Country A
• in Country B
PROBABILITY LESSONS ◾ 105
TABLE 9.1.2 Country A: Mobility Data

Son Ended Up In
Bottom 42% 25% 15% 10% 8%
Father Was In
Lower Middle 20% 28% 21% 17% 14%

Middle 19% 19% 26% 20% 16%
Upper Middle 13% 18% 20% 25% 24%
Top 10% 12% 19% 23% 36%
TABLE 9.1.3 Country B: Mobility Data

Son Ended Up In
Bottom 25% 23% 19% 19% 14%
Father Was In
Lower Middle 21% 25% 22% 19% 13%

Middle 19% 21% 22% 21% 17%
Upper Middle 17% 18% 20% 22% 23%
Top 15% 12% 16% 21% 36%
Discuss
3. Would you rather live in Country A or B? Why?
4. The data for countries A and B are from Denmark and the United States. Which country do you think
is which? Why?
5. What are some possible causes for lower or higher rates of income mobility?
6. Thinking about the What, How, Who framework from the reflection assignments:
a. What messages, if any, did this lesson send to you?
b. What would you say was more “in charge” of the direction of this lesson, the real world context
or the mathematical concepts? Why?
c. In what ways, if any, was this lesson a mirror for you? Why?
d. In what ways, if any, was this lesson a window for you? Why?
7. What seventh grade Common Core State Standards does this task draw on?
9.2
L ESSON
Marijuana Arrests (Introduction)

Mathew D. Felton-Koeslter

Providing Insight Proto-Modeling Middle School
Mathematics
• Calculating probabilities
• Connections to percentages and fractions
Real-World Context and Implementing the Task

I have used this task in a middle childhood mathematics methods course. I created this task following the
2014 shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, MO. I felt I should include some-
thing to highlight the racial disparities in interactions with the police. However, at the time I did not have the
time, resources, or appropriate space within the context of my course to investigate the topic in a meaningful
way, so instead I included this task as one activity in a day focused on probability. One prospective teacher
expressed surprise that I did not do a lesson specifically on Ferguson, and in response I highlighted the fact
that surveys of people’s views about Ferguson highlighted a deep racial divide (e.g., http://www.people-press.
org/2014/08/18/stark-racial-divisions-in-reactions-to-ferguson-police-shooting/), and that one possible ex-
planation for this was that different groups in our society have profoundly different interactions with the po-
lice, as illustrated by this task. (I had originally tried to include this as part of the task, but I was unable to work
out how to create a mathematical task out of these data.)
There are two mathematical models that have come up when I have used this task. Model 1: Calculate the
percentage based on usage within the last year:
• 14% of Blacks said they used marijuana in 2010.

• They had an arrest rate (for marijuana) of 716 per 100,000.
• So 14,000 of every 100,000 used marijuana, and 716/14,000 = 5.1%
• The similar calculation for Whites is 1.6%
Model 2: Calculate the percentage based on having ever used the drug. This follows the same calculations as
Model 1, but begins with 27% and 34%, respectively, resulting in a 2.65% chance of being arrested if Black and
0.56% chance if White. This includes the following assumptions:
• People may underreport their marijuana usage, so using the large value of the number of people
who have ever used it, as opposed to the people who used it in the last year is probably more accurate
(Model 2 only).
• The data are accurate.
• Only people who have used marijuana are arrested.
One explanation that is sometimes given for the disparities seen in this lesson is that White people are more
likely to buy and sell drugs in private places, thus leading to lower visibility to police. In addition higher levels
of police presence in neighborhoods combined with a higher likelihood to detain non-White suspects, increas-
es the chances of Black people being caught with marijuana.
Resources
https://www.aclu.org/report/war-marijuana-black-and-white?redirect=criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black
-and-white-report
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/marijuana-arrests-four-times-as-likely-for-blacks.html?src=rechp&_r=0
Marijuana Arrests (Task)

The following information comes from an ACLU report, The War on Marijuana in Black and White (https://
www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white-report):2
In 2010, 14% of Blacks and 12% of Whites reported using marijuana in the past year; in 2001, the figure was 10%
of Whites and 9% of Blacks . . . In 2010, 34% of Whites and 27% of Blacks reported having last used marijuana more
than one year ago—a constant trend over the past decade. In the same year, 59% of Blacks and 54% of Whites report-
ed having never used marijuana. (Finding #4, p. 21)
In 2010, nationwide the White arrest rate [for marijuana possession] was 192 per 100,000 Whites, and the Black
arrest rate was 716 per 100,000 Blacks. (Finding #2, p. 17)
1. Use the information above to determine the probability that you would be arrested for possession of
marijuana if you had used it for each race.
a. What assumptions did you make in approaching this problem?
b. What additional information might you want to research?
2. What seventh grade Common Core State Standards does this problem draw on?
L ESSON
9.3
Money Cube (Introduction)
Mathew Felton-Koestler

Backdoor Directed Middle School
Mathematics
• Calculating probabilities
• Finding nearby fractions
Real-World Context
This task is intended to help illustrate how instead of the United States being a fair playing field, the deck
is stacked against African Americans. Looking at data for children helps focus on how people get their start in
lives as opposed to possibly blaming people for the choices they have made (as a substantial investigation into
the causes of poverty and the historical oppression of African Americans would take substantially more time).
This also connects to the themes from Lesson 8.7: Youth, Poverty, and Homelessness.

I have used this task in a mathematics content course for prospective teachers and in a middle childhood
mathematics methods course. In this task students are given some “hypothetical” data generated by a game
they had designed, but then forgot the details of. Their task is to recreate the game based on the data. It is then
revealed that the data actually show the number of White and Black low-income children in the United States.
Some possible questions one might ask for Question 3 are:
• If you limit yourself to only White and Black children and then you choose one at random, what is the
chance they will be White? Black?
• If you were a White child in 2010, what is the probability that you were living in a low-income family?
• If you were a Black child in 2010, what is the probability that you were living in a low-income family?
• If I round up all Black and White children who are not low-income and pick one at random, then what
is the chance they are White? Black?
• If I round up all Black and White children who are low-income and pick one at random, then what is
the chance they are White? Black?
• How do the last two questions relate to the first one?

There are any number of ways this topic can be investigated in greater depth. You might investigate the
effects of poverty on children’s long-term outcomes, such as measures of health, academic success, and future
earnings. You could also investigate the potential costs of addressing this issue more systematically, how that
compares to governmental spending on other programs, and how our social safety net compares to those of
other wealthy nations.
Resources
The National Center for Children in Poverty (www.nccp.org) offers a variety of resources for exploring rates of child poverty.
The U.S. Census Bureau includes a section specifically focused on poverty, which includes access to reports and data (www.cen-
sus.gov/hhes/www/poverty/).
There is disagreement about the way the federal poverty line is defined. See, for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/us/poverty-gets-new-measure-at-census-bureau.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/economy/01jobs.html
Money Cube (Task)

You designed a game for people to play, but you forgot the details. Here is the basic idea:
• First you spin a spinner. The spinner is part white and part black.
• If the spinner lands on white then you draw a cube from the white bag. If the spinner lands on black
then you draw a cube from the black bag.
• If you draw a cube that has a dollar sign ($) then you get a small cash prize. If you get a blank cube (no
$) then you get nothing.
Your friends liked playing Money Cube, so you created an Internet version and tons of people started playing
it. Table 9.3.1 shows the number times each result occurred after many people played the game many times.
TABLE 9.3.1 Results of Money Cube

no $ $
White 12,069,017 26,908,227
Black 6,504,913 3,643,096
1. Based on this information recreate the original money cube game. Keep in mind that when you made
the game you used fewer than 50 white cubes and fewer than 50 black cubes.
2. Imagine that instead of spinning the spinner, you could just choose if you wanted to draw from the
white bag or the black bag. Which bag would you choose and why? How much of an advantage does
that bag have?
3. The Money Cube game is actually a simulation of the number of Black and White children (under age
18) living in low-income families in the United States. The data in Table 9.3.1 are the actual number
of children from 2010 from the National Center for Children in Poverty (www.nccp.org).4 Ask and
answer several probability questions about this data set.
4. Discuss the following:
a. What messages, if any, did this lesson send to you about what it means to do math?
b. What would you say was more “in charge” of the direction of this lesson, the real-world context or
the mathematical concepts? Why?
c. In what ways, if any, was this lesson a mirror for you? Why?
d. In what ways, if any, was this lesson a window for you? Why?
5. What seventh grade Common Core State Standards does this problem draw on?
Notes
1. These data are from Table 12 of the American Exceptionalism study. I rounded to the nearest percent and in some cases I
adjusted by one percentage point to make each row total to 100% after my rounding threw it off. They also have data for
fathers and daughters, but I believe they focus on males because they are still the primary wage earners in most countries.
2. Similar trends have been found for drug use and selling drugs more generally: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/05/04/
targeting-blacks-0
3. Low income families earn less than twice the federal poverty threshold. The federal poverty threshold for a family of two
adults and two children was $22,350 in 2011, $22,050 in 2010, and $22,050 in 2009. A number of groups and researchers
consider the federal poverty line to be outdated and too low at this point in time. See these links for examples: http://
nccp.org/publications/pub_825.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/economy/01jobs.html
4. From the site: “National data were calculated from the 2010 American Community Survey, representing information
from 2010.”
10 Projects
L ESSON
10.1
Paper Cup Use (Introduction)

Provide Insight Modeling Elementary
Middle School
Mathematics
• Whole number operations
• Graphing data
Real-World Context
This assignment is related to the other sustainability lessons in this volume, but is a project rather than in-
class activity or homework assignment. While bottled water use gets much attention in the media and on col-
lege campuses, the use of paper cups is not as widely discussed, yet has a negative impact on the environment
even though paper cups do not take as long to decompose as do plastic bottles.
112 ◾ PROJECTS

I have implemented this task twice and plan to continue to do so. I worked closely with campus Dining Services
to obtain actual campus data that students had to grapple with. The data included invoices for the purchases of
paper cups, paper cup sleeves, and lids over a 30-day period, and information about the number of cups sold
and the number of cup credits awarded during that period. The wording of the task is site-specific, but is easy to
modify for any other university or high school. The first time I assigned the project, students complained about
lack of clear direction on the project, but enjoyed it otherwise. Some groups especially enjoyed creating the visual
representations of their findings. The second time I implemented the task, I dedicate more class time to discuss-
ing the project, which eliminated the complaints.
Extensions
After analyzing the data and creating the infographics, students can take action, educating others about the
wastefulness of paper cups, and on the savings that bringing your own cup results in. On my campus, we will
likely organize an exhibit of visuals that students created for the project.
Paper Cup Use (Task)

Project Introduction
As you can probably guess, paper cups are not the best environmental choice. Americans, especially those
living in the Northwest, love their coffee: They buy multiple cups, usually to go, often doubling cups for hot
beverages, and likely throwing them in the landfill when they are finished.
Recent initiatives have looked at the alternatives to using single-use cups for coffee and other hot beverages.
For example, if you bring your own cup to any of the cafés on campus, you will get 25 cents off the price of
your beverage.
We will be working with Dining Services to gain a better understanding of the use of paper coffee cups at
PLU, and to potentially make some policy recommendations. We will brainstorm ideas for the project in class,
after which you will follow the following project guidelines.
Project Description
1. Find a group to work with.1 You will work in a group of 2–4 on this project. I know that some of you
are commuter students and cannot meet in the evenings or on the weekends, but if you are unable to
meet in person, you can always collaborate through Google docs, Skype, GChat, or another form of
virtual communication. I am also structuring this assignment in such a way that each student can do
her/his part individually. See the last part of the document.
2. Look at the data that has been provided to us by dining services, and come up with one aspect of
paper cup use you want to investigate mathematically. For example, you may consider financial costs
(Are you saving money if you bring your own cup? Is the university saving money if you bring your
own cup?); energy use (How much energy is used to produce, transport, recycle, etc. the cups?); waste
production (How much waste is produced by paper cups? How much is that really? Can you visualize
it?); or any topic that makes sense to you.
3. Think about the mathematics that you might want to use to investigate your topic. It should be K–8
mathematical content, and especially content addressed in this course, though we may not have ad-
dressed yet: operations on whole numbers, fractions, and integers; percents and ratios; or equations.
Then think about the following: What mathematical question(s) do you want to answer (I suggest
focusing on one of a few closely related questions)? How will you answer it/them? The question(s)
should be answered with calculations that are neither trivial nor impossible, and the answer(s) should
be meaningful, teaching the reader of your report something new or surprising about the issue.
PROJECTS ◾ 113
4. Do additional research online if necessary. Make sure to use reliable sources, and to cross-check your
numbers with at least two different websites. You may use the Internet to help get ideas for your ques-
tions, but you cannot just copy an infographic from somewhere else—It is really easy for me to check
if your work is original or not.
5. Turn in a one-page proposal that will give a brief outline of items 2–4: What are you going to investi-
gate, what information are you using, and what math will you use to answer your question?
6. I will give you feedback on your proposal, with suggestions for next steps and possible other sources of
information.
7. Using my feedback, create a brief report of your findings. The report should be 1–2 pages long and
should be an expansion of your outline. It should include all calculations you performed to get your
answer, and all additional information you used. In particular, list all your resources. I do not have a
preference about the citation style, as long as the resources are listed somehow.
8. I will give you feedback on your report, and will in particular check the correctness of your mathemat-
ical work.
9. You will turn in the final draft of your report and a visual to go with it. The visual is your chance to
have fun. It can be a sign, poster, or picture that could be displayed, for example, at a campus café, to
encourage customers to bring their own coffee cups.
You have to use your mathematical conclusions rather than copy numbers you retrieved from the PLU
dataset or the Internet.
10. We will share the visuals with dining services, with the hope that some will be displayed around cam-
pus. You may also be invited to present your findings to the Sustainability Committee.
Summary of Information
Between 9/14/2015 and 10/18/2015, the university ordered 2280 cup jackets for $78.59, 7000 16 oz. paper
cups for $113.89, and 14,000 lids for $35.43. A total of 4267 16oz drinks were sold during that time, though
some were cold beverages, and 179 customers received a 25 cent cup credit.
L E SSON
10.2
Tunnel of Oppression (Introduction)

Provide Insight Modeling Elementary
Middle school
Mathematics
• Varies
Real-World Context
Tunnel of Oppression is an interactive experience that seeks to educate visitors about various forms of
oppression nationally and globally. Visitors to the Tunnel walk through a virtual tunnel that features scenes
that deal with topics such as racism, sexual assault, violence against LGBTQ youth, mental illness, access to
114 ◾ PROJECTS
education, or immigration. For this assignment, students attend Tunnel of Oppression, and write reflections
and mathematics reports based on one of the featured scenes and additional research.

I have implemented this project three times and intend to continue implementing it. I am presenting the
form in which I used it last, though I will probably be making modifications in the future to replace or supple-
ment the written report with a shorter infographic as in Project 10.1: Paper Cup Use. Students usually pick a
topic to investigate that is personally relevant to them or one that they are already knowledgeable about. They
generally find the event powerful and impactful, but find writing a report difficult. They have never written a
mathematical report before and are not sure what a mathematical argument should look like, which is why I
include examples of past work in the guidelines for the project, and have included them here as well. I have
also written about this project in Simic-Muller (2015a) and Simic-Muller (2015b). The task presented here was
given in a content course that addressed probability, statistics, geometry, and measurement. In the content
course that focuses on number and algebraic sense the mathematical content requirements are different,
while other parts of the task remain the same.
Extensions
Students should present their reports to the organizers. I have shared student reports with university staff
who help organize Tunnel. Note that, while Tunnel of Oppression is an ideal event for a project such as this
one, other campus events can provide backgrounds for similar projects.
Resources
Information about PLU’s Tunnel of Oppression in 2015 can be found at https://www.plu.edu/dcenter/programs-involvement/
tunnel-of-oppression/
Simic-Muller, K. (2015). From “eye-opening” to mathematical: Helping preservice teachers look for mathematics in stories of
oppression. Teaching for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics 6(1), 33–40.
Simic-Muller, K. (2015). Mathematizing perceptions: Preservice teachers use of mathematics to investigate their relationship with
the community. REDIMAT 4(1), 30–51, http://www.hipatiapress.info/hpjournals/index.php/redimat/issue/view/131.
Tunnel of Oppression (Task)

Introduction
In this assignment you will write a mathematical report based on the Tunnel of Oppression, which will take
place on campus this semester. You may work alone or with a partner on this activity. Detailed instructions are
given below.
To learn more about Tunnel of Oppression, you can watch the following videos:
• http://www.plu.edu/dcenter/tunnel-of-oppression/home.php
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EVrTJY9wYM
Timeline and Guidelines:2

1. Attend the event. Allow yourself at least 45 minutes (most people take 50 minutes to an hour) to walk
through it. If possible, go to a debriefing session available when you finish walking through the tunnel.
Be warned that some of the scenes may make you uncomfortable. If you believe you will not be able to
handle the emotional stress of going through the tunnel, please speak to me beforehand.
PROJECTS ◾ 115
2. Write a 1/2–1 page reflection on the event. Describe what you saw and your reaction to the scenes. In
addition, respond to the following questions:
–– How, if at all, did mathematics come up in the scenes?
–– How, if at all, did mathematics come up in the debriefing session (if applicable)?
–– Were there any situations in which mathematics was absent but would have been beneficial for un-
derstanding the issue?
3. Do some additional research about one of the scenes. Do some fact checking and data collection
on the content of the scene(s). Then write a 1–2 page report to the Tunnel organizers. Your report
should contain the following components:
–– At least three mathematical facts that were not in the Tunnel, from at least two different outside
sources (websites are okay, just make sure you cite them in your report);
–– At least one statistical graph;
–– At least one use of mean, median, or mode;
–– At least one mention of probability;
–– At least one mathematical argument combining the numbers you found, as in the examples given
at the end of the document; and
–– An explanation to the organizers about how more mathematics could have strengthened their argu-
ment, with concrete examples of mathematics that could have been used.
4. I will give you feedback on your report and give you an opportunity to revise it. In particular, it may be
difficult for you to create a mathematical argument from the research, so I will offer you a suggestion
for how to make your arguments more mathematical.
5. Turn in revised reports.
Additional Notes
I would like to share your reports with the students who created the Tunnel scenes, as well as with the
Tunnel organizers. In the past years, the Tunnel organizers have taken into consideration feedback given by
students in MATH 123 and 124, and in particular have included more mathematical data in the scenes as a
consequence.
This assignment is somewhat open-ended, and there is no one right way to do it. One of my primary objec-
tives is to show you how mathematics can strengthen ethical and philosophical arguments, and to teach you to
“mathematize” the world around you. The main thing to keep in mind is that the assignment needs to be as
mathematical as possible, while also keeping in mind the issues addressed in the Tunnel.
Previous Students’ Work

Here are excerpts from some of the more successful reports from last year, to give you a sense of what I am
looking for.
“Let us take a look at one statistic and expand on it, that the more than half a billion bottles of water are purchased in
the United States every year can circle the globe more than five times. If the average height of a water bottle is 9 inch-
es, or approximately 0.75 feet, and the circumference of the globe is 24,900 miles, then the approximate 600,000,000
bottles times 0.75 feet is 450,000,000 feet or, divided by 5,280 feet in a mile, 85,227.27 miles, which is the distance of the
bottles purchased in the United States. Divide 85,227.27 miles by the circumference of the earth and you get the bottles
circling the earth 3.42 times. Now, this does not match up to the originally stated amount of five times, but perhaps they
were calculating with a different bottle height and more exact number of bottles, as I have to work with generalizations
and approximations.”
“Out of the 57.73 million [people living with depression], only 4 million will receive any treatment for their anxiety, and
only 400,000 receive the proper treatment for their illness. Using math to find the percentage that is only 6.9% of the
total who will receive any treatment at all and only .07% of people who will receive the correct treatment for their par-
ticular illness. By using those percentages we can figure out that 93.1% of the 57.7 million go without any treatment at
all and 99.93% go without the proper treatment. This leaves many untreated individuals vulnerable and even suicidal.”
116 ◾ PROJECTS
“According to the tunnel, Americans consume an average of 23 pounds of pizza each year, which is about 46 slices.
I think I definitely exceed that amount. With the Unites States population currently at 313,286,647, an average of
7,205,592,881 pounds of pizza is consumed each year. This got me thinking. With all of the pizza being consumed,
where are all of the pizza boxes going. Although the pizza boxes are recyclable, you can’t recycle the parts of the box
that have been soiled by the food. That is at least half of the box. So, most people just end up throwing the whole box
away. According to the company Good News Reuse, enough pizza boxes are thrown away each year to circle the earth
26 times (goodnewsreuse.com).”
“I was most upset by the statistics concerning the trafficking of children. The fact that the mean age of girls coerced into
the sex industry is 13, according to law-enforcement leaders is extremely disturbing (Seattle Times, citation). This means
that while there are girls both older and younger in the industry, 13 is the average age. The total estimated amount of
children in the sex trade each year in the United States is 300,000. That’s roughly 100 times the amount of students
enrolled at PLU. If the aforementioned number of people estimated to be trafficked into the United States per year is
17,500, this is only 5.83% of the annual amount of child prostitutes in the United States. Furthermore, there are 39 total
counties in Washington, and trafficking has taken place in at least 18 of them. This means that the probability of living in
a Washington county where trafficking occurs is 46.15%—almost half. It is my personal belief that if this particular scene
had utilized more mathematical applications, it would have been even more effective. In my own research, I found a
variety of discrepancies in statistics—for example, some sources said there are 100,000 children in the U.S. sex trade
annually, while others said 300,000. This shows the crucial importance of fact checking (these statistics are all estimates
because it is impossible to acquire exact numbers).”
Notes
1. In the document I give to the students, I provide due dates for each part of the assignment.
2. Actual dates have been omitted.
3. http://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-statistics-information.shtml
11
Additional Materials
Excerpts From Syllabus (Middle Childhood Methods)

Course Themes
Welcome to EDMC3300/EDTE5300, Teaching Middle Childhood Mathematics. This course will focus on
teaching mathematics in grades 4–9. We cannot possibly address everything you need to know about teach-
ing mathematics; there is simply too much content. But beyond that, you can never know everything about
teaching (mathematics). All great teachers continue to learn, grow, and improve throughout their careers.
Therefore, this course will go in-depth with a few big ideas and will focus on developing the tools and dispositions
you need to continually improve your mathematics teaching. To that end, this course emphasizes four interrelated
themes, discussed below.
Theme 1: Student-Centered Teaching

We will consider what it means for students (and teachers) to truly understand mathematics, as opposed to
simply memorizing procedures. In short, we will approach mathematics with the idea that everything in mathe-
matics makes sense and that you and your future students are capable of understanding all of the mathematics you will be
expected to teach. This will build off of research about how children learn mathematics, especially as exemplified
in the Process Standards from the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics published by the National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in 2000 and the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) in
the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), which came out in 2010 and were adopted in Ohio
as part of Ohio’s New Learning Standards.
Central to teaching for understanding is taking a student-centered approach. This generally involves engaging
the students in genuine problem solving by using carefully chosen problems, allowing students to develop their
own strategies (without being taught a strategy by the teacher), and thoughtfully orchestrating a conversation
that highlights important mathematical concepts.
118 ◾ ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
You will need a specialized form of mathematical knowledge to teach in this way. You not only have to under-
stand mathematics yourself, but you must also be able to (a) understand children’s ways of thinking (regardless
of whether they are correct or not), (b) listen to and make sense of new and unexpected ideas that children
come up with, and (c) determine how to move forward in a meaningful way. This is a profoundly challenging
way to teach, but it leads to much deeper understanding in students. One of the key ways to improve at this
form of teaching is to listen to your students—all students come to school with mathematical ideas that you (and
other students) can build on and learn from.
Theme 2: Supporting All Learners

While the student-centered approach to teaching mathematics is better than traditional, teacher-centered
approaches, there are additional things a teacher can do to ensure that all students learn and engage in the
mathematics classroom. Complex Instruction (CI) is a set of pedagogical strategies for getting all students
engaged in the classroom. CI focuses on supporting students in working in groups effectively, and how to max-
imize the benefits of group work (such as student independence and the ability to work on challenging tasks)
while minimizing the drawbacks (such as one student doing all the work). We will be learning about CI in the
context of mathematics, but it can be used in any content area.
Theme 3: Mathematics and the Real World

There are frequent calls to make stronger connections between school mathematics and real-world con-
texts, including in the CCSSM, which have been adopted in Ohio (as Ohio’s New Learning Standards) and
most states in the United States. The fourth SMP in the Common Core calls for students to model with mathematics
across grades K–12. Essentially, this involves using mathematics to analyze, answer questions about, and/or
learn about real-world contexts. Modeling goes beyond the typical word/story problems many of you likely
experienced when you were in school; in modeling tasks the real-world context is generally “messy” and the
student has to do a significant amount of work in deciding how to approach the context mathematically. We
will consider different ways that mathematics can be connected to the real world, with a particular focus on
mathematical modeling and how it can be taught in grades 4–9.
Theme 4: Meaningful Contexts

In addition to focusing on the real world in general, we will focus on meaningful contexts. One kind of mean-
ingful context involves drawing on students’ funds of knowledge—the expertise of students, their families, and
the community in a way that values and honors this knowledge and students’ lives outside the classroom.
The second kind of meaningful context involves using mathematics to analyze issues of social justice—which
involves using mathematics to develop a deeper understanding of pressing social and political issues, and in
particular different forms of injustice. A social justice perspective asks questions like the following of the world:
• Who benefits from and who is hurt by the status quo (the current state of affairs)?
• What is the perspective of those who are hurt or oppressed by the status quo? Of those who have the
least power (money, political influence, social standing, ability to shape things, ability to have their
voice/story heard, etc.) in a situation?
• Why are things like this? (Especially considering laws, governmental policies, corporate practices, and
taken-for-granted assumptions in our society.)
• How could things be different? In particular, how could things be changed to help the hurt or oppressed?
Summary of Assignments
You should check Blackboard after class each week to see what is due for the following class. This is the best way
of ensuring that you do not miss any assignments. There are additional handouts describing several of the
assignments below in greater detail.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS ◾ 119
Weekly Assignments and Participation

In addition to the major assignments below, you will generally have readings or other tasks to complete
most weeks. You are expected to come to class having thoroughly read any assigned readings and prepared to
discuss them. All readings are posted on Blackboard.
Reflections
You will complete two reflection assignments (at the beginning and end of the semester) on your views
about the nature of mathematics and the teaching and learning of mathematics.
Funds of Knowledge Assignment

You will learn about your students, their families, and the school community. Early in the semester you will
(a) conduct a class discussion focused on issues or concerns your students have about their community or the
world, and (b) conduct one-on-one interviews with three students to learn about their lives, families, and the
community (approximately 15 minutes each). You will then write up a summary of what you learned through
this process.
Small Group Activity

You will do a mathematics activity with a group of 3–5 students in your placement. You will select from two
activities I have prepared. We will do the activities in our class before you use them with students. You will then
teach them in your placement, reflect on the process, and we will discuss them in class.
Whole Class Lesson

You will (a) select a problem solving, student-centered mathematics lesson, (b) video record yourself teach-
ing the lesson, (c) present your work in class (15 minutes), and (d) reflect on what you learned and how you
would improve in the future.
Real-World Lesson Plan

You are encouraged to work in pairs on this assignment. You will select a real-world topic that came up in
your Funds of Knowledge assignment and design a lesson that uses mathematics to investigate this topic. Your
lesson must be interdisciplinary (it must connect to at least one other content area). You will teach a 15–20
minute introduction of your lesson/unit to in our class (to your classmates). You will then outline where the
lesson/unit would go from there.
Excerpt From Syllabus (Modern Elementary Mathematics)

In keeping with my emphasis on normalizing the use of social justice contexts in mathematics, I do not draw
particular attention to it in my syllabus. However, I do include my institution’s mission statement to position
this class as a continuation of the themes my students will explore throughout their college coursework:
Alignment with PLU’s mission statement: You may be familiar with PLU’s mission statement: “PLU seeks to educate
students for lives of thoughtful inquiry, service, leadership and care—for other people, for their communities, and for
the earth.” The University’s mission statement is highly relevant to this class: Not only is inquiry of primary importance
in approaching the course material, but the real-life applications of mathematics we will look at, such as access to water,
high school graduation rates, sweatshop labor, or national debt, are founded in care for other people, their communi-
ties, and for the earth.
Readings (Various Content and Methods Courses)

I generally assign a number of readings focused on issues of equity and social justice in my courses. This has
been true in content courses, methods courses, and when facilitating professional development experiences.
Some semesters, especially in the past, I created a series of formal reflection assignments that accompanied
the readings. For instance, I might assign a set of readings focused on race in mathematics education and
write a series of prompts related to the readings. Some semesters I would give substantial feedback on these
reflections and require that the student then respond to my feedback before the assignment was considered
complete. Other semesters I have used prompts for online discussion forums to begin the conversation, which
we can then follow up on in class.
The readings below are sorted into general categories that reflect the way I have often used them. However,
many readings touch on multiple issues and this list could easily be organized differently.
Overviews and Frameworks

Felton, M. D. (2014). Bringing in the real world [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/Publications/
Mathematics-Teaching-in-Middle-School/Blog/Bringing-in-the-Real-World/
Felton, M. D. (2014). Why teach mathematics? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/Publications/
Mathematics-Teaching-in-Middle-School/Blog/Why-Teach-Mathematics_/
Felton, M. D. (2014). Mathematics and the real world [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/Publications/
Mathematics-Teaching-in-Middle-School/Blog/Mathematics-and-the-Real-World/
Gutstein, E., & Peterson, B. (2005). Introduction. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice
by the numbers (pp. 1–6). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Stocker, D. (2008). Introduction. In Math that matters: A teacher resource linking math and social justice (2nd ed., pp. 10–18). Ottawa,
ON: Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives.
Culture, Ethnomathematics, and Funds of Knowledge

Amanti, C. (2005). Beyond a beads and feathers approach. In N. González, L. C. Moll, & C. Amanti (Eds.), Funds of knowledge:
Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms (pp. 131–141). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Barkley, C. A., & Cruz, S. (2001). Geometry through beadwork designs. Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(6), 362–367.
Barta, J., Sánchez, L., & Barta, J. (2009). Math in the milpa. Teaching Children Mathematics, 16(2), 90–97.
Civil, M., & Kahn, L. (2001). Mathematics instruction developed from a garden theme. Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(7),
400–405.
D’Ambrosio, U. (2001). What is Ethnomathematics, and how can it help children in school? Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(6),
308–310.
Hunt, W. B., & Burshears, J. F. (1951). American Indian beadwork. New York, NY: Bruce Publishing Company.
Joseph, G. G. (1997). Foundations of Eurocentrism in mathematics. In A. B. Powell & M. Frankenstein (Eds.), Ethnomathematics:
Challenging Eurocentrism in mathematics education (pp. 61–81). Albany, NY: SUNY. (Revised from Race and Class, 28(3), 13-28,
1987).
Leonard, J., & Guha, S. (2002). Creating cultural relevance in teaching and learning mathematics. Teaching Children Mathematics,
9(2), 114–118.
McCoy, L. P., Buckner, S., & Munley, J. (2007). Probability games from diverse cultures. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School,
12(7), 394–400.
Neumann, M. D. (2003). The mathematics of Native American star quilts. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 9(4), 230–236.
Perkins, I., & Flores, A. (2002). Mathematical notations and procedures of recent immigrant students. Mathematics Teaching in the
Middle School, 7(6), 346–351.
Philipp, R. A. (1996). Multicultural mathematics and alternative algorithms. Teaching Children Mathematics, 3(3), 128–133.
Powell, A. B., & Temple, O. L. (2001). Seeding Ethnomathematics with Oware: Sankofa. Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(6),
369–375.
Stevens, A. C., Sharp, J. M., & Nelson, B. (2001). The intersection of two unlikely worlds: Ratios and drums. Teaching Children
Mathematics, 7(6), 376–383.
Termin, S. (1997). To honor and comfort: Native quilting traditions. National Museum of the American Indian–Smithsonian Institu-
tion’s (NMAI-SI) Education Department.
Zaslavsky, C. (2001). Developing number sense: What can other cultures tell us? Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(6), 312–319.
Gender
Becker, J. R. (2003). Gender and mathematics: An issue for the twenty-first century. Teaching Children Mathematics, 9(8), 470–473.
Harris, M. (1997). An example of traditional women’s work as a mathematics resource. In A. B. Powell & M. Frankenstein (Eds.),
Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in mathematics education (pp. 251–222). Albany, NY: SUNY. (Reprinted from For
the Learning of Mathematics, 7(3), 26-28, 1987).
Vedantam, S. (2011, March). Psych-out sexism: The innocent, unconscious bias that discourages girls from math and science.
Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_hidden_brain/2011/03/psychout_sexism.
single.html
Race
Martin, D. B. (2009). Does race matter? Teaching Children Mathematics, 16(3), 134–139.
Tate, W. F. (1994). Race, retrenchment, and the reform of school mathematics. The Phi Delta Kappan, 75(6), 477–480.
Social Justice
Brantlinger, A. (2005). The geometry of inequality. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social
justice by the numbers (pp. 97–100). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Frankenstein, M. (1998). Reading the world with math: Goals for a critical mathematical literacy curriculum. In E. Lee, D. Men-
kart, & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays: A practical guide to K–12 anti-racist, multicultural education and staff
development (pp. 306–313). Washington, DC: Network of Educators on the Americas.
Gutstein, E. (2005). Math, maps, and misrepresentation. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching
social justice by the numbers (pp. 111–116). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Gutstein, E. (2005). South Central Los Angeles: Ratios and density in urban areas. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking
mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (pp. 101–102). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Gutstein, E. (2013). Whose community is this? Mathematics of neighborhood displacement. Rethinking Schools, 27(3). Retrieved
from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/27_03/27_03_gutstein.shtml
Hendrickson, K. A. (2015). Fracking: Drilling into math and social justice. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 20(6),
366–371.
Simic-Muller, K., Turner, E. E., & Varley, M. C. (2009). Math club problem posing. Teaching Children Mathematics, 16(4), 206–212.
Turner, E. E., & Font Strawhun, B. T. (2007). Posing problems that matter: Investigating school overcrowding. Teaching Children
Mathematics, 13(9), 457–463.
Varley Gutiérrez, M. (2009). “I thought this U.S. place was supposed to be about freedom”: Young Latinas engage in mathematics
and social change to save their school. Rethinking Schools, 24(2), 36–39.
Readings and Reflections (Math for Social Analysis)

In the Mathematics for Social Analysis course at Radford we assigned a set of readings to expose students
to ideas such as culturally relevant teaching, social justice, and community and family knowledge, while mak-
ing a connection to the mathematics content being covered in the course at that time. The structure of these
reading assignments tended to be very simple, with only a few points for the students (prospective teachers)
to address. For other readings, students are asked only to write a one-page summary (or comparison between
two readings) and one-page reflection (critique of the reading, relevance to teaching and learning or using
mathematics, understanding the world around us, etc.). Unless specific directions follow the bibliographical
reference, the reader may assume it was a summary-reflection type of assignment.
Lo Cicero, Fuson, & Allexsaht-Sneider (1999)

Lo Cicero, A. M., Fuson, K. C., Allexsaht-Sneider, M. (1999). Mathematizing children’s stories, helping children solve word
problems, and supporting parental involvement. In W. G. Secada, L. Ortiz-Franco, N. G. Hernandez, Y. De La Cruz (Eds.),
Changing the Faces of mathematics: Perspectives on Latinos (pp. 59–70). Reston, VA: NCTM.
1. Read the title and the introduction (first two paragraphs) of the article in Chapter 7 of the Changing
Faces of Mathematics book. What do you expect from this article?
2. In the first section, “Using Children Stories in Mathematics Class,” the word “mathematizing” appears.
What does this word mean in the context of this article and how this practice is related to the aspect
of teaching mathematics for the social analysis (in the context of our class, you may think of issues of
language and culture)?
3. Pay attention to Figure 7.1. On the left hand side, the authors explore the development of under-
standing and language; on the right hand side, they specify the elements that correspond to the devel-
opment of mathematical concepts. In the middle, the two of them are combined. I want you to focus
on the problem posing aspect of it; in particular, think of how the problems are co-constructed in the
classroom. Explain how this is done in the context of the problem brought in by Guillermo.
4. Briefly share your experience with family involvement in teaching and learning mathematics. If you
have not had any experience with school children’s parents, think on your own family involvement in
your education process (elementary or secondary).
5. Talk about of some of the possible reasons parents may have not to get involved in their children’s
learning of mathematics. Choose three of those and discuss how a teacher can help to overcome those
obstacles.
Steele (2006)
Steele, L. (2006). Sweatshop accounting. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the
numbers (pp. 53–61). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
1. In this chapter the word “sweatshop” comes up several times. Explain what a sweatshop is and what
are the social implications of sweatshops.
2. What is “Full-Cost” accounting? What kinds of costs are included in this type of accounting (give spe-
cific examples)? Why is it important to consider the “extra” costs?
3. Look at the cartoon in page 59 about the “Income Distribution Souvenir Champagne Glasses.” Con-
sider that the world population in 2007 was 6.6 billion people and the world gross domestic product
(GDP) was $65.51 trillion.
a. Compute the amount of money (in dollars) corresponding to each horizontal band (show how
you compute each amount).
b. Compute how many people there are in each horizontal band (notice that it is the same number
in each band, so you only need to show one computation).
c. Compute how much money corresponds to each person in each band (show your operations).
d. What do YOU conclude? (Please do not answer this question with the help of ANYONE. All an-
swers should be different or no grade will be given to the parties involved in too-similar answers.)
4. The world population was about 6.8 billion people by the end of 2010, and the world GDP was approx-
imately $61.96 trillion.
a. What is the percentage increase of the world population with respect to 2007?
b. What is the percentage increase of the world GDP with respect to 2007?
c. Personally (do not use somebody else’s analysis, conclusion, or answer), what do YOU think the
relationship of these two numbers means?
Gutstein (2006)
Gutstein, E. (2006). Driving while Black or Brown. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social
justice by the numbers (pp. 16–18). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
1. Write down three ideas that caught your attention from the reading. Quote the sentence or sentences
from the reading and explain why you chose those quotations.
2. Based on that reading, compute the approximate ethnic distribution of Chicago. (What are the per-
centages of each of the groups described? Show your operations.)
3. Find out what the ethnic composition of Virginia is (White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian,
Others?). Cite your sources. I recommend using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Díez-Palomar, Simic, & Varley (2006) and Turner, Font Strawhun (2006)
Díez-Palomar, J., Simic, K., Varley, M. (2006). “Math is Everywhere”: Connecting mathematics to students’ lives. The Journal of
Mathematics and Culture 6(2): 20–36.
Turner, E. E., & Font Strawhun, B. T. (2006). “With math, it’s like you have more defense.” In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds.),
Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (pp. 81–87). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
1. Compare and contrast these two readings. Identify at least two elements that are similar and two ele-
ments that are different (1 page).
2. Type up a one page reaction to both readings together.
Khadjavi (2006)
Khadjavi, L. S. (2006). “Driving while Black in the City of Angels.” Chance 19(2): 43–46.
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Introduction)

This assignment is informed by the work on children’s funds of knowledge (Civil & Andrade, 2002; Civil & Kahn,
2001; González, Andrade, Civil, & Moll, 2001; González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonza-
lez, 1992). It is meant to serve as a simple and accessible introduction to the idea that all children have assets
that can be built on in the classroom.
• Most recently, I have introduced this assignment by using it as an ice-breaker/getting to know you
activity during our first class meeting:
• The students pair up and interview each other using the prompts from the assignment. But they use
their real names and I suggest that they answer as though it were their senior year in high school (so
they can share details about their home town).
• They take notes on the answers and submit them to me so I can also learn a little bit about the students
as well.
• They introduce each other to the class by sharing something interesting they learned about their part-
ner during the interview.
• I also do the class discussion part of the assignment with my students. We brainstorm things they are
interested in and concerns they have about the world. When possible I integrate these into my teach-
ing during the semester.
Then, for homework, the students must read the entire assignment, and often one or more other readings—
such as Amanti (2005) and Civil & Kahn (2001)—and respond on a discussion board. Most recently I gave the
following prompt:
Respond to the Background section on the Funds of Knowledge (FOK) directions in some way. For example: Do these
ideas resonate with your experiences as a student in some way? Have you noticed teachers or administrators with a
deficit perspective? Have you had experiences where your out-of-school knowledge was actively integrated into the
classroom and/or when you had to ignore it to succeed mathematically? etc.
References
Civil, M., & Andrade, R. (2002). Transitions between home and school mathematics: Rays of hope amidst the passing clouds.
In G. de Abreu & N. C. Presmeg (Eds.), Transitions between contexts of mathematical practices (pp. 149–169). Dordrecth, The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Civil, M., & Kahn, L. (2001). Mathematics instruction developed from a garden theme. Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(7),
400–405.
González, N., Andrade, R., Civil, M., & Moll, L. (2001). Bridging funds of distributed knowledge: Creating zones of practices in
mathematics. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 6(1&2), 115–132.
González, N., Moll, L., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mah-
wah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to con-
nect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132–141.
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Directions)

Background
One major challenge in education is that many teachers fall into the trap of taking a deficit perspective of stu-
dents, families, and the community (often on a subconscious level). A teacher might think or say, “Matt doesn’t
even know his basic math facts” or “I wish more families would come to conferences and help with homework”
or “this community doesn’t seem to value education.” These are all ways of looking at students, families, and
communities in terms of what they lack (their deficits). This happens for several reasons.
One reason it happens is that teachers and families/communities are often essentially speaking a different
language (in the sense that they often come from different backgrounds, have different life experiences, and
different ideas about how to interact with each other). The fact is that across all groups (races, economic back-
grounds, different cultures, etc.) we find that the vast majority of families are committed to their children’s
education and well being. However, the way they express this (and their ability to express this) may be very
different from what teachers and school officials are expecting. For example, some cultures think it is rude for
family members to take on too active a role (because it is infringing on the teacher’s expertise). In other cases
family members may not have the resources (time, money, or transportation) to participate in activities that
teachers see as important.
The divide between the school/teacher perspective and that of families/communities can also be found in
the school curriculum. School emphasizes a certain kind of knowledge. For instance, in mathematics the em-
phasis tends to be on decontextualized mathematical concepts (like understanding the distributive property,
understanding the properties of geometric figures, or solving a problem involving only algebraic symbols).
Many families and communities may have forms of mathematical knowledge and expertise that are not valued
in the classroom. Imagine the baker who has to measure ingredients, keep her kitchen well stocked, and figure
out how to price her products; the gardener who has to arrange his plants so as to maximize growth while still
allowing access for pruning; or the contractor who has to account for waste/loss when buying materials, pay
her workers, and make appropriate and competitive bids for jobs.
This assignment is intended to address these concerns by taking an assets perspective on your students,
their families, and the school community. An assets perspective emphasizes the knowledge and strengths that
students, families, and communities do have. Because the educational culture in the United States often has
such a narrow conception of what it means for a student to be smart or for families and communities to be
supportive, it can often be difficult to see people’s assets unless you actively look for them and learn to value
broader forms of knowledge and expertise. For instance, if I believe the only way to be good at math is to be
able to compute quickly, then it will be hard for me to notice that one of my students is actually really good
at drawing pictures to show their thinking. Similarly, if I think the only knowledge that matters is traditional
forms of school knowledge, then I may not recognize all the kinds of smarts my students’ families and com-
munity members have that I can draw on in the classroom, such as the baker, gardener, and contractor above.
Overview of Assignment
You will (a) run a full class discussion and (b) interview three students to learn about their lives, interests
and concerns, and the strengths of their families and the community. You will then reflect on what you learned
about your students in general and how you could build on this in your mathematics instruction. In particular,
you are encouraged to focus on students who are traditionally underserved by our school system and/or voices
from the community that the school system may not be particularly good at listening to.
Some of the kinds of resources you might hope to uncover are:
• students’ interests and hobbies, including after-school and out-of-school activities they participate in;
• important community events and/or practices;
• locally-owned businesses, major industries in the area, and common jobs that family and community
members are likely to have;
• knowledge and skills that family members have (e.g., sewing, carpentry, gardening, farming);
• what your students’ lives and homes are like; and
• culturally significant activities that your students and their families participate in.
Requirements
Class Discussion
You will complete a whole class discussion/brainstorming session focused on the question: What are some
things going on in your community or in the world that you are interested in or concerned about? Alternative or follow-up
questions you can ask to spur more ideas are:
• What are some important things going on around here? . . . in the country?
• If you could change something about our school what would it be? . . . What about our communi-
ty? . . . What about the country?
As students suggest ideas you should ask follow-up and clarifying questions, such as:
• Can you say more about that?

• Can you give an example?
• Is anyone else interested in or concerned about this issue?
• Does anyone have a different way of looking at this?
Record notes on the board or chart paper as students share. List students’ names next to their ideas. Copy
down the notes and any additional thoughts you have into a notebook or computer as soon as you can after
completing the class discussion.
Student Interviews
You will conduct three one-on-one interviews (approximately 15 minutes each) with students from your
class. You are encouraged to select students whom you do not know that much about. The interview questions
are on the last page. You should take detailed notes during the interview and there is a table for you to fill out in the
template provided (either during or after the interview).
Write Up
Complete the Template file provided, which has a table for you to fill out to summarize students’ responses
and other prompts that you must respond to. Upload this file.
Respectful Language
In light of the concerns with deficit perspective raised in the Background section, you will discuss your
students, families, and community in respectful terms. The purpose of this assignment is to uncover their
strengths, not to complain about areas where you think they are lacking. By taking this approach you will
discover other smartnesses and strengths that the students, families, and community have that you can learn
from.
That is not to say that you cannot raise concerns in your write up. If you have concerns about some of the
things you learned you can (and should) write about them. But you must write about them from a place of
respect. Write about them with the goal of understanding why things are this way (and I can help you unpack
that) as opposed to assuming fault with the child, family, or community.
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Interview Questions)

In the questions below:
• The main questions are numbered. Lettered questions that come underneath can be asked to help get
more detailed responses.
• “ . . . ” means you should wait until they respond before moving on.
Read to the student:

This is a way for me to learn about you, your family, and the community. In this interview you are the expert.
I want to learn as much about you as I can because it will help me be a better teacher. I am going to share some
of this information in a class I am taking at Ohio University, but I will not use your real name.
1. Do you want to pick a fake name for me to use when I write about this?
2. What are some things you like to do when you’re not at school?
a. Anything else? [ask a few times to try to get three ideas]
b. Do you have any hobbies . . . skills . . . talents . . . chores/responsibilities?
3. Are you in any clubs or on any teams? . . . Which ones?
4. Who do you live with? . . . Which of those people are kids and which are adults?
5. What kinds of things do you do with your family?
6. What are some things that some of the people in your family like to do? . . . What are some things they
are good at?
a. What does ___ like to do? [repeat with several of the names from #3]
7. Does your family celebrate any holidays? . . . How about any special events?
8. What are some things your friends like to do? . . . What are some things they are good at?
9. Do you know anyone with a job? . . . Where do they work? . . . What do they do there?
10. Are there any other kinds of jobs people have around here?
11. Imagine someone just moved to this town and they asked you what something fun to do around here
was. What would you tell them? . . . Are there any places they should visit? . . . Are there any fun or im-
portant events they should go to?
12. What are some things going on around here that you are interested in? . . . What about things going on
in the world that you are interested in? . . . Are there any things that you are concerned about?
a. What are some things you care a lot about?
b. If you could change something about our school, what would it be?
c. If you could change something about our town, what would it be?
d. Are there any things you are worried about?
13. Is there anything else you want me to know?
Funds of Knowledge Assignment (Reflection Prompts)

1. Write a list of the topics that came up during the class discussion/brainstorm.
2. Identify one or more funds of knowledge (strengths, skills, knowledge, resources, interests, etc.) that the
students/families/community have that you learned about through this interview.
3. What else did you learn from this experience? About these students in particular? About the families
and community surrounding your school? More generally?
4. Describe some ways you could integrate some of the students’/families’/community’s funds of knowl-
edge (strengths, skills, knowledge, resources, interests, etc.) into future mathematics instruction. Be
specific and give examples where the mathematics helps provide insight into the context (do not just use
the context in a superficial way).
5. Reflect on how this experience will (or will not) inform your practice as a classroom teacher and why.

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INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Names: Felton-Koestler, Mathew D., author. | Simic-Muller, Ksenija, author.

Copyright © 2017 Information Age Publishing Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

4 Whole Number Lessons....................................................................................................................... 23

5 Rational Number Lessons.................................................................................................................... 35

7 Geometry and Measurement Lessons.................................................................................................. 65

8 Data Analysis Lessons.......................................................................................................................... 87

8.5 Messages in Children’s Ads (Introduction)......................................................................................95

9 Probability Lessons............................................................................................................................ 103

Why Real-World Problems?

What We Mean by “Real-World” Contexts

Our Settings, Philosophies, Successes, and Challenges

Stepping Stone Tasks

Providing Insight Tasks

The Structure of the Inquiry

Summary of Types of Tasks

TABLE 2.1 Summary of Types of Tasks

Where Do I Start? Do I Have to Redesign My Entire Course?

How Does This Fit With What I Have to Teach?

How Do I Decide What Real-World Topics to Investigate?

Should I Only Investigate Issues My Students Know and Care About?

Are There Any Topics to Avoid?

Where Can I Get My Ideas?

How Do You Create the Lessons?

How Do You Come Up With Projects?

What Are Some Counter-Resistance Strategies Instructors Can Use?

Connection Structure Grade Band

Chapter 4: Whole Number

Connection Structure Grade Band

Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Implementing the Task

A Living Wage (Task)

• What (if any) other essential costs do you want to include?

A Living Wage (Data)

Athens County, Ohio

Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Implementing the Task

Cost of Healthy Food (Task)

According to Calorie Count (http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-peaches-i9236), medium peaches (about

Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Implementing the Task

Cost of the War on Terror (Task)

The Cost of War website is: http://costsofwar.org/

Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Implementing the Task

Example for 791 ÷ 25 = 31 remainder 16

791 25 Step 1: Figure out that 25 goes into 79 three times,

791 25 Step 2: Bring down the 1.

791 25 Step 3: Figure out that 25 goes into 41 once,

• How did you feel today?

Culture Quiz (Bell Work)

Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Implementing the Task

Difficulties With Problem Types

Poor Versus Low-Income

Poverty Problem Types (Task)

These data are from:

Poverty Problem Types (Answers)

Problem Problem Type

Connection Structure Grade Level(s)

Copyright © 2017 Information Age Publishing Inc.