For the Week 4 reading on using trigonometry to model figure skating spins, I wasn’t able to open the Geometer’s Sketchpad link to actually play around with the model. I did try to work through some of the questions shown, though, and I can see how this would be a really engaging way to bring math concepts to life, especially right now with the Olympics just starting.
This reading also brought back a strong memory from high school physics. My physics teacher, who truly made me love the subject, had a tall spinning stool in the classroom. He had us sit on it with our arms out and then pull our arms in to feel how the spin sped up. Even 30+ years later, I still remember that lesson. It was embodied math and science before I had language for it.
I’ve often been disappointed that my daughter, who loves math, doesn’t enjoy physics. I remember telling her, but physics is math, it's useful math. In physics, the answers meant something. With quadratics, for example, you don’t just find roots; you figure out how far something traveled, how high it went, or how long it stayed in the air. Looking back, I think this difference comes from how I learned math versus physics. Math often felt like a puzzle where the reward was the correct answer but didn't really understand what it was I was solving and more importantly why. While physics was tied to real experiences, things I could see, feel, and imagine.
Connecting this reading to the Bridges work and the Vi Hart videos from this week really helped things click for me. Bridges shows how mathematics can live in movement, art, and the body, and Vi Hart’s work reminds us that math can be playful, sensory, and deeply human. Together, they emphasized how much of the math–arts divide is something we’ve created through schooling, rather than something that needs to exist at all. As I said in my activity post, on a podcast I listened to this week, one of the people said that we don't need to re-humanize math, we just need to stop de-humanizing it.
Question for the group: Was your experience with math similar (disconnected from the rest of the world)? And how do you think we can stop de-humanizing math?
Link to podcast (the part about humanizing math starts at about 21 minutes in, trigger warning for language and sensitive subject matter):
https://www.maththerapypodcast.com/1734392/episodes/15012873-math-doesn-t-cause-trauma-people-do-w-sean-nank
Hi Nicole,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I want to share in the love of physics. My Grade 12 physics class was one of my favourite classes - university physics kind of made me loose a bit of love for the subject, but I still appreciate the subject a lot.
I think you are correct. Physics is like an embodied form of mathematics. It brings a sense of meaning to the mathematics, something tangible, and a way to actually see why we need math. It reminds me of how all science sort of blends together when you get to an extremely high level - they don't but they kind of do to me.
In a weird way, I like how math was sort of disconnected from the world. It gave me an "out" that blocked out the world for a bit. But just because of math was like this, didn't mean that I didn't appreciate when it was connected to the world (physics). I also liked how school was school, and outside of school was not connected. I remember distinctly liking how my life outside of school wasn't "ruined" by what I learnt in school - almost like I didn't have to bother over analysing my life because of what we learnt in school.
I am not sure if it is possible to re-humanize mathematics in an easy or simple way. Perhaps as education starts to change slowly, students won't be as accustomed to de-humanized math and the process will be slightly easier. But as math education is right now, I think taking small opportunities to invite students to engage in real life connections to the curriculum is the way I would approach it. For example, teaching linear equations, let students budget out a phone plan with different data limits to see which might be the most cost effective - and use real numbers, real companies, so students see the value of the activity.
Everett,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate this way of thinking about math as both a bit of a refuge and something that can connect to the real world when it’s done thoughtfully. I also agree that re-humanizing math probably isn’t something we can (or should) force, and that small, intentional connections make the most sense.
Your example of budgeting phone plans is a great idea. I have used a similar idea in grade 9 math where students compare cell phone plans and student banking plans in our finance unit. Using real companies and real numbers makes the math feel relevant, but it also naturally raises questions about access and choice. Students can start noticing who has options and who doesn’t just by working through the math. To me, that kind of real-world connection feels like a really meaningful way to humanize math while still respecting what it offers as a space on its own.
Nicole and Everett,
ReplyDeleteI think you’ve really found a meaningful way to re-humanize mathematics through real-world applications. I see a similar shift in my own classroom when we compare decimals by looking at the long-jump distances of Olympic athletes—students are immediately more engaged and invested. Situating mathematics within authentic contexts helps students see it not just as a set of abstract procedures, but as something connected to human experience, performance, and story. These kinds of connections invite students to participate more fully and position mathematics as a sense-making tool rather than something to simply get through.
It's very interesting to notice that math can be a refuge and escape from the world when 'the world is too much with us', when things get overwhelming and we need a beautiful world of patterns and problems that we know we can solve. That is very valuable too.
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