In Deborah Peart’s recent essay on Edutopia, she makes the following points about kids’ development of math identity:
- Math experiences need to be about more than just numbers.
- Math needs to be a positive experience for kids.
- Children should be the agents of their own learning.
To which I would say–sound familiar ? MC2 is an organization that promotes (1) Allowing kids to experience novel mathematics to (2) build a life long love of math where (3) they may ultimately participate in QED, our math symposium, and present research on a problem they themselves created!
Those interested in MC2 should also check out Hilde Kahn’s post, “Closing the Excellence Gap,” on FutureEd. “If we’re really serious about increasing the number of low-income students and students from underrepresented groups who are learning math at the level required to contribute to our increasingly computational world, we should take a page from the playbook of those who are already successful: We should provide high-quality math enrichment for many more kids, as early in their educational lives as possible.”
Exactly!
So, if you haven’t signed up already, it’s time to register your 3rd to 8th grader for our June 2nd Julia Robinson Math Festival. Our friend and colleague Eugenia Cheng just let us know she’ll be there to run a table! (And you should check out the new book, Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics by Talithia Williams, featuring none other than Dr Cheng herself!)
Free, high quality, for all kids. Sounds like they may be talking about us.