Discussion from OCTM conference 2011

[Katie Hendrickson]

Participants at the "How does social justice fit into a math class?"
session shared some fantastic ideas for teaching social justice
through mathematics. I've listed the ideas shared below, but please
share more information or post your lesson plans or resources to the
group!

-Budget project idea: Christmas shopping budget, in which students use
catalogs and a set amount of money to shop (and each day, a good or
bad random "event" needs to be budgeted in!). Another extension is
having students grocery shop online (leading to a discussion of the
price of healthy food). A budget project can also be a day-long event
in which students are given jobs, etc, and go through various
scenarios making choices.

-Creating a scale map of community gardens, local food pantries, etc.,
including walking directions, and distributing to community centers.

-Create a fundraising event, including business model

-"World of enough"- an experience for college students to experience
living with less for one month.

-World hunger and population growth, looking at population versus
resources.

-Women in mathematics, and history of mathematics: Hypatia of
Alexandria

-Examining advertising for beauty products: what is the message?
(gender stereotypes, etc.) A different version of Gutstein's
advertising lesson.

-a "real life" monopoly game, related to places in their town and
requiring students to make choices (regarding going to jail, etc.)

-Project in which students choose a country to be an immigrant from,
research the country, etc. (cross-disciplinary), and have an event
where students bring in food, costumes, and go through the immigration
process. Could be connected to budgeting- how do you save money to get
to America? What do you do once you're here?. Or connect to recent
legislation and look at history of immigration and numbers over the
years.

-Hunger banquet: examining shared resources and food available for
residents of developing nations. Students do some research, and then
go to a "hunger banquet" for lunch with food donated from local
businesses. Those from developing nations are given 1-2 tokens (can
purchase a small portion of rice and milk), those from more affluent
nations have many tokens. Leads to discussion of resources, waste,
etc.

-National Service Learning Conference (also has a school network)

-Partnerships Make a Difference: Ohio Department of Education will
soon post service learning lessons related to content areas.