Des-blog

Meet Audrey McLaren, one of our Desmos Fellows. Audrey worked in classrooms like many of you. Four walls and a door. Gum under the desks. Then she joined the non-profit LearnQuebec, which supports the education of students in remote areas of her province in Canada.

In towns and villages with very few students and even fewer teachers, the local school system can’t afford to hire teachers for advanced math and science classes where there might only be one student. So Audrey and a small team of teachers have been teaching for the last 12 years exclusively online. We interviewed her this week hoping to share with you some of the secrets to her success.

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To the math teachers and students in our community:

As the threat of pandemic forces schools and districts to close, the world is realizing in real-time all the vital functions served by schools and teachers: shelter, health care, social-emotional support, food security, community, and of course, education.

Schools and districts are currently making an enormous request of teachers to switch modalities and start developing relationships and ideas virtually. We have reservations about this form of instruction and know it is often least helpful for students who need the most help. But we realize that some help is likely better than none, and we want to use our resources to help you make the best of a very challenging situation.

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Our mission at Desmos is to help every student learn math and love learning math. We know that every student is capable of advanced mathematical thought regardless of their race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or other aspects of their identity. At the same time, we know that many math learners experience oppression both inside and outside of schools because of their identities.

We want our work to help address these unjust learning conditions. However, our efforts to date have lacked direction, coherence, and accountability, all of which has made it possible that we are harming students rather than helping.

As a start, we have created a set of Equity Principles.

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