PLANAR at First National Meeting of Racial Justice in Early Mathematics

Today, we’re sharing work from the PLANAR project. PLANAR stands for Black & Latinx Parents Leading chANge & Advancing Racial Justice in Elementary Mathematics. And it is a NSF-funded CAREER grant project led by PI Frances K. Harper.

The main research question of PLANAR aims to understand Black and Latinx’s parents experiences as they build capacity to be leaders for racial justice in elementary math.

During Year 1 of the project, we worked with mothers to explore what math is, who it is for, and what purposes it serves as a way to develop a shared vision for racial justice in elementary math.

During Year 2, individuals and groups of mothers led participatory action research projects designed to advance the groups’ vision for racial justice in early math.

Three mothers are here to share their experiences today. You can view the research posters for all the mothers’ projects on Frances Harper’s website.

Mother: The kids had a negative experience from the beginning of the school year. Teachers (and others) were telling the kids that they would have a test this year, and if they didn’t pass the test, they couldn’t pass 3rd grade.

Even from Kindergarten, they receive messages that the test in 3rd grade is really hard and important. For example, my daughter made notes for 3rd graders taking the tests when she was in Kindergarten.

Parents didn’t know anything about TCAP. So we wanted to do this project to learn more about the test and how it works. If you search online, there are example tests, but no real information about the test.

Mother: As parents who did not go to school in the United States, we don’t always know how children learn math in U.S. Schools. So, having the tutor helped to make sure we were connecting to the way children learned math in school. Also, having a group was important because children were more motivated to learn with others than alone with their mom.

MOTHER
We as moms struggle trying to help our children understand. But when we were in the tutoring, we had this network of support from moms. We shared among ourselves what we did to help our children. So, we could support them in different ways. We’re like the kids — when we have a network of support, we can also improve. When the children first came, they sat with the children that they already knew. But as the sessions went along, they got to know each other better. And they learned that other people had their same struggles. So they felt more supported. It was the same for the moms, to get to know each other, and feel less alone.

Mother
Starting with the TCAP workshops, we felt more empowered. We started not knowing anything about TCAP, but now we know a lot about it. So, moving forward we feel like we can support our children. We also participated in other workshops (led by Francia) about how to navigate the school system. We better understand how to support them in school beyond just the TCAP.

Mother
We observed that a lot of the children did not have support at home because their parents do not know the language of school well. For example, my son understands better in English. But, I can only explain in Spanish. So it does not always help him if I explain because he does not always understand how they explain at school. If you don’t have someone to support at home, then the children are not encouraged at home to study or work on math. Then this creates a challenge for them to succeed at school.

Mother
One of the children had received messages about being a “bad kid”, but as we worked with him, he was able to improve. His mom works a lot, so she isn’t able to provide much support at home. We asked questions about how he felt and could work with him in Spanish. And he was able to express himself and get the support he needed.

We saw that it is important to have time for the kids, as a caregiver, because we realized that one of the moms works in the morning and then she focuses on her child in the afternoon. Her school also sends home a lot of worksheets for families to do. And she shared these worksheets so that we could do them at home, too.

Mother
We read articles about TCAP. We also saw gaps in achievement when students don’t have a chance to go to PreK. We saw this with the children also. The children who went to PreK seemed to struggle less than those who did not have a chance to do the full PreK experience.

Mother
We plan to create tutoring for children from our group and possibly expand the group to include other kids. There are people who came to the United States who were teachers in their home countries. But they have been doing other jobs in the U.S. So, we want to recruit some of these teachers to work with our children. We think this may be more sustainable (once there is no grant funding).

MOTHER made some materials for learning math, using recycled materials. So we also want to teach the moms how to make these materials.

We feel strongly that when you do this type of research, you should be taking action. We want to see how these children are successful in the long term. Our future plans also depending on finding funding.

MOTHER
My son was in honors and advanced classes. But he always felt like he didn’t belong (because he was different). It’s important to create this network so that we can support more of our children to be in those classes.

Mother
We know a lot of the parents have to work. But having this space where we can support both parents and children, locally. We know a lot of tutoring and after school programs are expensive. So it’s important to find time when parents and children can work at the same time. Working with other Hispanic families creates a sense of belonging.