Reimagining Early Math Education
Join us virtually on May 17 and 18, 2022 for two days of engaging speakers and facilitated events! Together, we will address the commitments in the RJEM Call to Action by:
● Framing the ways that racial oppression and white supremacy affect early mathematics education;
● Examining our individual and collective responsibilities to address racial oppression and injustice in early math; and
● Contributing to new thinking around early math education that is worthy of children and families who have been historically underserved.
We welcome scholars, community leaders, teachers, activists, policymakers, and parents from all walks of life – everyone who cares about early math education can contribute something essential to this event.
We will dive deeply into problems of systemic racism and the ways they injure our youngest math learners. We will think collectively about how these systems manifest in the environments in which we live and work. And we will work together to develop new approaches to ensuring that historically marginalized children have every opportunity to make mathematics their own.
As part of the event, we will hear from educators, parents, scholars, and community members who have developed creative and inspiring ways of providing mathematics education opportunities that circumvent or disrupt the systemic racial injustices embedded in our educational systems. There will be several opportunities to connect with others who care about this work, building new relationships with like-minded colleagues.
2022 Plenary Speakers
Amy Parks is a Professor at the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her current projects include investigations of the role of play in mathematical learning, the resources parents draw on when supporting their children in mathematics, connections between emotional relationships and content learning in primary classrooms, and the mathematical engagements that are possible in informal spaces. She is author of Exploring Mathematics through Play In the Early Childhood Classroom (2014).
Tambra Jackson is Dean of the School of Education at Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis. She considers herself to be a scholar-activist and is committed to social justice issues pertaining to the historical and contemporary oppression, miseducation, and liberation of children of Color in U.S. schools. She is author of Black Mother Educators: Advancing Praxis for Access, Equity and Achievement (2021).
