TODOS 2026 Conference

In this hands-on session, educators will make reflective zines as a creative way to think about their math teaching practices. With collage materials, folded paper, and prompts, we’ll reflect on the past school year and dream forward into the next. Open to early childhood through secondary educators and preservice teachers, this session invites us to challenge oppressive narratives, honor our journeys, and imagine what it means to root mathematics in humanity. As a cohort of Chicago-based mathematics public school teachers and academics, we hope to offer insights in our particular lived experiences during the 25-26 school year as one of the most targeted places in the nation by ICE and the federal government. We particularly invite trans and queer teachers, teachers of color, and disabled teachers and those who occupy the margins to consider coming to this space.

Learn strategies to position students as competent math doers and thinkers. We will begin by framing how our (inter)actions create opportunities for students to be positioned as powerful mathematical thinkers, and then we will do math tasks together and analyze an authentic video of classroom math instruction. Through activities and resources shared, participants will leave ready to design and facilitate productive and just learning environments. Tools and resources-- including 40 freely available online modules, each with a classroom video-- shared will help participants exercise their own curiosity to investigate their teaching with new perspectives and implement new practices.

In this interactive session participants will learn about Social Justice Mathematics considering how to attend to students’ emotions and well-being. The three women of Color facilitators collaborated on a Social Justice Mathematics project and include a mathematics teacher educator, a mathematics coach and doctoral student, and a mathematics middle school teacher and doctoral student. Participants will engage with a Social Justice Mathematics task in small groups, learn about SJM frameworks and resources, and then join grade band specific groups to discuss possible SJM tasks for their specific contexts. Participants will receive a Google Drive folder of sample tasks and resources.

This session explores how co–learning data practices can ground mathematics and statistics in humanity. Drawing from a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) initiative, where youth and adults used CODAP to explore data stories, we invite participants to engage with video excerpts illustrating relational and culturally sustaining approaches to data literacy. Using the Notice, Wonder, Feel, Act, Reimagine (Kahn et al., 2022) framework, participants will reflect on what it means to learn alongside youth and reimagine data exploration as an intergenerational co-learning practice.

Relationship-building with our students is a vital aspect of creating community in our classes. Come learn how to embed yourself into your content through captivating stories. Such sharing about yourself can strengthen your relationships with your students because they will get to know you while your curriculum comes to life. By modeling how we can mathematize our lives, students will recognize mathematizing as a valuable human activity and a useful tool for problem-solving in their own lives.

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.