Teaching Math: September 2020

On March 24, 2020, everything stopped. Well, not everything, people were still walking (that is pretty much all they could do.) Covid 19 hijacked our normal routines, school was closed, gatherings canceled, and going to the store was a delicate act of trying to get toilet paper, while remaining 6ft away from everyone else.

As I walked down our neighborhood street (trying to escape the Zoombie feeling from too many online meetings), I saw a mom and her 2 kids doing “PE” on a walk. “Go to the corner and do 5 jumping jacks. Now 3 windmills.” This ignited a spark of bringing math to daily walks!

Public problem solving had intrigued me since I read about Sara VanDerWerf’s “Can you Solve This?” a few years earlier. I posted Sara’s generously shared problems outside my classroom the past few years and watched with delight as students (not just mine), parents on campus, and teachers problem solved. I also vaguely remembered seeing Math Graffiti on a Twitter post a year or so ago.

If I could leave a little bit of math on daily walks, I could not only give parents a way to incorporate some math, but maybe I could try and change math into curiosity, wonder and problem solving, even just a little.

I set out with my leftover chalk from an activity I did with my past math classes on my first math walk based on Which one Doesn’t Belong problem. I posted this on Twitter.

The next day, I saw a couple taking a picture and heard them talking across the street. What really delighted me was a student created “Which one Doesn’t Belong” one just a block past mine.

I decided to share this with other teachers in my district, and a few began to put these in their neighborhood too!

I was invigorated by how people responded. I began to take daily #mathwalks, highlighting some of my favorite ways of accessing math problems I learned from different math educators. I bought more chalk, lots of chalk. During this time, I found others who had also posted chalk problems for people through Twitter connections. In 2016 (I think) Leslie University incorporated math and movement with chalk for the earliest learners with a focus on counting. Twitter even had a hashtag for #publicmath and #sidewalkmath which I started to use in my tweets as well to connect with more people.

I was thrilled to see other people duplicating drawings or creating their own. It was suddenly not just my neighborhood! Although watching my neighbors take pictures and problem solve as family was equally interesting, since almost every time I walked down my street I could see problem solving in action. I got several texts and a few emails asking “Is that you leaving math everywhere?” I guess I have a reputation.

When the translations started coming in French and German I was very tickled. Someone even asked if they could duplicate a similar site in French!

I love seeing the responses, especially when they involve excitement or creating. What I didn’t realize was the connections I would make when people stopped to share. I have been touched by people sharing that this is what motivated them to talk a walk, diverted their mind from a loved one passing, and was the topic of their dinner time conversation.

Young mathematician an coder was inspired by a math walk to create a video on how to explore the chalk picture in Python.

The excitement from this little girl made my day of someone replicating a maze from

I absolutely love when someone expresses that they are inspired by math in a chalk drawing.

This is an email thread I received shortly after I started.

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 3:24 PM Jim Sullivan wrote:

Elena,

Wonderful. I did pretty good on the series but am struggling with the maze. I can see how it has to end but I guess I will just have to try reverse engineering from there.

I am glad she is not on my walking route. I might never get home.

Jim

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 8:35 AM Elena Sullivan wrote:

My friend Traci Jackson is a math teacher here in the Poway Unified schools. During the quarantine, she is leaving math problems on the sidewalk for people to solve as they go out their (frequent) daily walks. I must confess that I have not actually stopped to solve any of these math problems, but whenever I happen upon one of them I think to myself, I bet Jim would enjoy this!

She has a website where she posts them all. You can look at it here:

https://sites.google.com/powayusd.com/math-walks/home

Other teachers bringing math walks

https://twitter.com/mmelynnwallace/status/1251826694886961154?s=20

https://twitter.com/5BMT5B/status/1251570175289237506?s=20

https://twitter.com/5BMT5B/status/1250135181442383872?s=20

https://twitter.com/shammanteach/status/1250161928510398465?s=20

Math Walk Event

Pictures of my math walk in action: