TODOS 2026 Conference

This session explores how high school math teachers shifted from deficit to asset-based positioning of emergent bilinguals (EBs) through a year-long collaborative professional development focused on mathematical modeling. Using positioning theory as an analytical lens, we examine how classroom discourse shapes student agency and access to mathematics. Participants will engage in interactive activities, including sorting excerpts and reflective discussions, to analyze how language and context influence perceptions of EBs’ capabilities. We share findings from seven teachers working with linguistically diverse students and offer actionable strategies for fostering equity and transforming institutional structures in mathematics education.

Being a new teacher is exciting and challenging. How can new teachers, especially those committed to teaching in equitable and humanizing ways, be supported to thrive (instead of just survive)? Join us as we share how one group of new teachers and their former math education professor supported each other through critical friendship in a monthly community of practice. What are early-career teachers grappling with as they strive to teach in equitable ways? How can you support early career teachers? Come find out and connect with us!

Many people feel unwelcome in mathematics – a regrettable, but not inevitable, circumstance. In this session, I will share the goals and videos from a project documenting adults’ lived experiences of mathematics. In these videos, participants share how they engage in mathematics in their lives and how these experiences relate – or do not easily relate – to their memories of school “mathematics”. Many participants are members of historically marginalized groups. Session attendees will be invited to reflect on their own experiences and to consider how these stories could help to catalyze collaborative and sustained work to center humanity in school mathematics.

This session is led by three Latine high school mathematics teachers who reimagine care as central to rooting mathematics in humanity. Co-authored with a mathematics education researcher who formerly taught high school mathematics, the session bridges classroom practice and research to highlight teachers’ lived expertise. Guided by Keeling’s (2014) framing of an ethic of care and Gutiérrez’s (2018) call to rehumanize mathematics, we share how care manifests through language, relational trust, and student brilliance. Using pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), participants will collectively reflect on how care disrupts deficit framings and cultivates belonging and shared humanity in mathematics spaces.

What stories do we and our PK-12 students tell about who belongs in mathematics? Let’s break the mold for our students and for ourselves! In this interactive workshop, we will uncover our own math identities so we can help our students uncover theirs, and explore how unproductive beliefs and implicit biases shape pedagogy and assessment. Together, we’ll reimagine teaching practices that center belonging, disrupt inequities, and empower all learners to thrive in mathematics in PK-12 classrooms.