Equity in the math classroom with José Vilson

This Math Awareness Month, we are bringing you José Vilson’s thoughts on equity in the math classroom. 

Back at the start of this school year we hosted a keynote with José Vilson, a math educator, blogger, speaker and activist in New York City, NY. José has written and spoken about education, math and race for a number of organizations and publications, such as The New York Times, Education Week and Huffington Post to name a few. 


José shared what he thinks it means to be a math teacher working with students from diverse backgrounds. 

"A lot of people are still figuring out how we can use math as a practice for us to have this conversation. And so I would implore everybody to get a good look as to what it means to be a person who both discusses math and race, and then how we can be more thoughtful about what's happening across the country and the world.” 

We were also joined by sketchnote artist Tom Hanicak who produced the sketch below during the session.

José continues “once you attend to our kids' cultures, our kids' understandings, our kids' ability to do this work, then you are attending to race, you are attending to culture, you're attending to abilities and disability”.

Just click on the image below to watch the video.

You can also access a transcript if you prefer.