I chose and developed activities that would not look like the kinds of school math that parents might remember, hoping to avoid emotional carry-overs from past memories. I wanted to give the parents a chance to start fresh, with confidence that they could work with their kids on these activities, even though they might have given up on helping their kids with homework or worksheets. My experience in ABE made me aware that life often gets in the way of parents attending regularly, so I developed activities that could be completed in one session, and not carry over to the next.
I emphasized the importance of play, that there were many ways to do the activities, that there was no “right” answer, that the experience of trying things out and the satisfaction of making something or doing something that had consequences in the real world was the purpose of the activities, and that a good measure of success was to ask how much fun they had.
I wanted my attitude to contribute to the sense of comfort and safety in the group, to the openness about math learning, and I also wanted to model interactions that I hoped the parents would use with their children. I love math. But more than that, I am fascinated by how people approach things, about the various ways their experience brings them to think about math-related problems. I let my fascination show during the group sessions.
I prepared a draft manual, which I called “Parents Teach Math,” before I started to recruit participants and form groups. First I approached Harold Joe, Sr., an elder, artist and carver of the Cowichan Tribes, to ask if he would take on the job of doing the cover art for the manual. I described the project to him, and asked him what he thought might be appropriate for the cover. He thought for a while, and then said that the beaver would be good to represent the project. The art and some of Harold’s explanation appeared in the preface to the draft manual, and remain in the revised manual:
[Harold] chose the beaver because the beaver is a hard worker that never stops caring for the lodge and the family. When the pups are young, the parents start to teach them. The pups learn to be beavers—a way of living and working. Beavers take good care of their cubs, and are good teachers. The beaver stands for family togetherness.