The MOSAIC Lab designs professional learning experiences and materials to support educator proficiencies in seeing and amplifying the brilliances Black and Latinx/é students bring to mathematical classrooms. This professional learning module intentionally weaves together four components, represented below, to build teachers' capacity to notice and act in justice-oriented ways within their instruction.
Understanding the Systems of Mathematics, and Math Education
Expanding Conceptions of EF Skills as Strengths
Recognizing and Amplifying the Brilliance of Students, especially Students of Color
Enacting Liberatory Mathematics Instructional Practices
The range of activities within each lesson will allow teacher learners to dive into each individual component, deepening their understandings through tasks, activities, and reflections. Discussions and projects create opportunities for teacher learners to make connections across the components, weaving them together in actionable ways through applications to practice. The sequence of lessons spirals the content, layering on new concepts over time.
At the end of the three-lesson module, teachers will have the tools to notice the cultural and linguistic executive functioning strengths Black and Latinx/é students bring to mathematics classrooms and the skills to use these strengths in ways that support students with engaging in ambitious mathematics.
Implementing the Module
Each lesson takes approximately 60-90 minutes and is designed to be adapted for use in teacher preparation contexts (added to a mathematics methods or content course) or as professional development for current classroom educators. If you would like support to adapt these materials for your site's needs, or to discuss how to incorporate this module into your existing professional learning structures, please reach out to the MOSAIC Lab.
Each lesson includes an overview document with learning goals, a brief lesson plan, a detailed implementation guide and slide deck with commentary to support facilitation, and any materials needed to support learner engagement in the lesson activities. The module also includes multiple practice-based follow up projects to support participants with applying the big ideas from the lessons in their own classrooms.
As a gift to our educator community, the first lesson is publicly accessible below.
This lesson establishes a foundation for the rest of the modules by introducing the core executive function skills and reframing them as tools for recognizing student mathematical brilliance.
This lesson connects working memory to the study of numbers and operations, using equitable teaching practices to broaden the understanding of students' strengths within these mathematical domains.
This lesson aligns cognitive flexibility with the study of rational numbers, leveraging cultural assets such as translanguaging and code-meshing to help students connect fractions, decimals, and percentages.