We end our first podcast season with a topic that is on all of our minds: relationships! How do we search for and cultivate meaningful professional relationships as mentors or mentees? What does it mean to decolonize the mentor/mentee relationship? Briana Rodriguez of Los Angeles, CA was a mathematics high school teacher prior to her move, and is currently a doctoral students and advisee of Dr. Kari Kokka at the University of Pittsburg, PA. They reflect on their advisee/advisor relationship with each other, and what is means to build meaningful relationships with students in high school classrooms.

Links to learn more about the research and activism of Dr. Kokka: www.karikokka.com

https://www.education.pitt.edu/people/KarenKokka

How are you doing right now? What is the moment we are in and what might we reflect on prior to the start of a new school year? Dr. Farima Pour-Khorshid is a teacher, activist, and researcher in healing and wellness. She joined us for a conversation about health, teaching, and learning in pandemic times. Get ready for real talk that is inspirational and deeply reflective.

Check out Farima's work here:

Farima's Collection of Hella COVID-19 Teaching/Learning/Wellness Resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LMJeebStOBVFpey9AnV9OCvU2JuDXXAsTxBfMuhOawY/edit?usp=sharing

Keynote for 2020 3rd Annual Central Coast Social Justice Education Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NchK3Gxuxrg&feature=youtu.be

The Flourish Agenda: https://flourishagenda.com/

Her academic profile can be found here https://usfca.academia.edu/FarimaPourKhorshidPhD

What is meaningful mathematics assessment, particularly for high school and undergraduate mathematics courses? Is our current pandemic a good time to rethinking assessment practices? This episode features audio from the webinar they hosted on April 9, 2020, as well as audio from a conversation they had a few weeks later. Dr. Ruiz and Dr. Nguyen stir up some ideas and share some examples.
Watch the full webinar and access their resources at our TODOS Live webpage: https://www.todos-math.org/todos-live-#April9

Luis Antonio Leyva, Assistant Professor of Education at Vanderbilt University, joins us to share his work on transforming undergraduate mathematics classrooms to be spaces where relationships, identities, and intersectionality matters. From his roots in New Jersey, he tells us everything he's up to in Nashville, Tennessee.

MAA Values blog feature on the COURAGE project: https://www.mathvalues.org/masterblog/challenging-operationalizing-and-understanding-racialized-and-gendered-events-courage-in-undergraduate-mathematics

Check out Luis's published work:
Leyva, L. A. (2018). The counter-storytelling of Latinx men’s co-constructions of masculinities and undergraduate mathematical success. In A. Weinberg, C. Rasmussen, J. Rabin, M. Wawro, & S. Brown (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20thAnnual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (pp. 1031-1040), San Diego, CA.

Leyva, L. A., & Alley, Z. D. (accepted and under revision). “Speaking up more” and “talk[ing] less and less about my goals”: A counter-storytelling on the role of voice in undergraduate Latinx women’s identity constructions as mathematics students and aspiring engineers. Invited book chapter in J. Adams, P. Sengupta, M. Shanahan, & M. Takeuchi (Eds.), Epistemologies in the learning sciences: An emerging portrait.

Carlos Nicolas Gomez is an assistant professor of Mathematics Education at Clemson University. He joined host Maria Zavala for a conversation in early February on the research he is launching on elementary school Latinx students in the south and beyond. He talks about "failing" into teaching, and the journey he is on to bring lessons from young Latinx children to the mathematics teacher education classroom.
You can read more about the National Science Foundation CAREER grant that will help support his team's work: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1941952&HistoricalAwards=false

Marian Dingle is a mathematics teachers with over 21 years of experience teaching elementary school kids how to love themselves and love mathematics. She conversed with host Maria Zavala about schooling, mathematics, identities, and agency. She blogs at https://www.mariandingle.com/ and is on twitter @DingleTeach

Many of us are familiar with techniques to support our multilingual (ie, English learning) students in our classrooms. But is what we are doing helping our students to learn mathematics while also learning English? In many schools, that twin focus on learning math and learning English is raising new questions, reflections, and thoughts for teachers. Myself (Maria), Zandra de Araujo (of U of Missouri), and Griselda, a teacher from southern California, discuss what we know about supporting ELs, and how, in Griselda's words, being the best teacher you can be for your students is "a journey."

Today we focus on the world of mathematics education policy and talk with Pamela Burdman, Executive Director of Just Equations. Learn about the work of https://justequations.org/, and expand your knowledge of what's going on in the arena of policy and mathematics equity.

Mentioned in this episode:
1997 Article from SF Chronicle on the problems of linking test scores to academic performance https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/PAGE-ONE-Worth-of-SAT-Exam-Questioned-Recent-2796341.php

Blog post from Just Equations on shift in California State University changes in math class placement policies
https://justequations.org/news/new-math-policies-pay-off-for-cal-state-students-and-its-about-time/

What are the teacher communities that we build to sustain ourselves and each other? A double-length episode featuring two founders of the Nepantla Teachers Community, who speak to the roles of identity, tensions, and finding your people to sustain yourself in mathematics teaching. More about their work at https://nepantlateachers.wixsite.com/website

This episode we flash back to audio recorded in 2014 at the first ever TODOS Conference. Mathematics education leaders Rochelle Gutierrez and Kathryn Chval cohosted a closing session to reflect on key ideas and themes from the conference. Grab a pen and have a listen! Information about the upcoming TODOS 2020 Conference here: https://www.todos-math.org/todos-2020-conference-