{"id":14709,"date":"2017-01-31T08:01:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T13:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=14709"},"modified":"2025-05-27T14:02:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T18:02:25","slug":"math-as-a-tool-for-giving-youth-a-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/math-as-a-tool-for-giving-youth-a-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Math as a Tool for Giving Youth a Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the election, many of us in the profession have been asking ourselves the same question: \u201cWhat can I do to help young people find their voice in today\u2019s world?\u201d Now more than ever before, I feel compelled to help young people feel appreciated and important to our community, but how can I do that in a way that is authentic to me?<\/p>\n

Math.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a scream-it-from-the-rooftops kind of girl. I sincerely admire those that organize large events, marches, protests, or other community forums. Sadly, that is not a skill-set I possess. I\u2019m the kind of girl you would find in the back of the school library reading the latest banned book or hiding in the physics lab trying to break the gender-norms of small town society before STEM made female scientists cool. My form of protest, and therefore how I use my voice, is more understated.<\/p>\n

The library is a place for discourse. It\u2019s a place where we can encourage youth to express themselves. An unconventional way to help kids find their voice and express themselves is with mathematics. Try putting up an interactive bulletin board asking students to add their opinions to a graph of some kind. Beginning with Kindergarten Common Core Mathematics Standards, students are asked to begin classifying objects and sorting them into categories. This analysis of data continues throughout the grades increasing in complexity each year. By asking a simple question such as \u201cWhat is your Favorite Color?\u201d or \u201cWhat is your Favorite Sport?\u201d and giving students the opportunity to add their choice to the board (using a sticker, sticky-note, cut-out shape, etc) you are providing youth with the opportunity to express themselves, showing them that everyone\u2019s opinions are allowed, and reinforcing the idea that every single person in the community can contribute to the whole. You are also teaching math (data analysis and graphing) in an authentic way.<\/p>\n

While the example above is a passive program, you can also use these concepts in a story time setting. Every time I share Don\u2019t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!<\/em> By Mo Willems with preschoolers I extend the story by having children decide whether they would let the pigeon drive the bus and then vote their answer on a piece of chart paper. We discuss the idea of voting (popular vote\u2026 not the electoral college!), the pros and cons of specific actions (\u201cif we let the pigeon drive the bus he\u2019ll run over my toes because he can\u2019t see over the steering wheel!\u201d\u2014my daughter, Amelia Jane, after we read the story), and how we cast a vote. After everyone adds their stickers to our two-column chart, we count the votes as a group and create a bar graph.<\/p>\n