Me and Matheamtics: "Doing What You're Talking About": In Dialogue With My Family

This paper is a philosophically oriented accompaniment to my audio project. Working together, the paper and audio collages form a call to action and a resource. My primary finding is the importance of doing what you’re talking about or exploring and implementing your ideas experientially. Doing what you’re talking about is important for effective teaching/learning and feeling in line with oneself. This working concept came to my attention during my research conversation with my oldest living relative, and then, again, with my youngest (non-baby) relative. This doing what you’re talking about is a way of being that is particularly useful for math teachers and teacher educators but is useful for many others as well. I believe that everyone is unique, with their own unique abilities and unique learning styles. Despite learning differences, there may be ways that math education could be better for everyone. I hope this project can act as a catalyst towards finding ways that math educational experiences could be improved for both teachers and learners. I have a positive and unique relationship with, and positionality towards mathematics. My aim is to share some of my personal educational and mathematical perspectives, as someone diagnosed with a “learning disability,” “dyslexia.”

I don’t really think of myself as “disabled,” so understanding myself as someone with a learning disability can be confusing. Lambert and Harriss explain that “it is the social effects of difference that disable rather than the differences themselves,” which really resonates with me. I love the way they “avoid a deficit approach to disability” (Lambert & Harriss, 2022, p.90–91). Throughout this project, I aimed to use my abilities and do things I like, allowing me to feel like I am being me. I took this master’s capstone project as an opportunity to engage in dialogue with my family and to use my artistic ear to create audio collages. The audio collages are about me, mathematics, philosophies of teaching/learning, and my methods of reflectively incorporating myself into what I do. My hope is that teachers and teacher educators might be able use my project and findings to help them in their imagination and creation of better educational experiences for everyone, especially within the field of mathematics. Furthermore, I hope that the audio collages stimulate the ears and minds of all who listen.

I find myself personally engaging with these questions in this paper, and I invite you to join me:

• When do you feel “your-self?”

• How do you learn?