Latest / Math Therapy / Don’t let math define your entire self-worth w/ Shelby Strong

Transcript

Don’t let math define your entire self-worth w/ Shelby Strong · Math Therapy

• 0:03
  Shelby Strong: if I have predicated my identity on being smart, and if I have predicated being smart on being good at math, then the moment that I'm not good at math, that takes out the linchpin in my entire sense of self.
• 0:15
  Shelby Strong: we can't keep demonizing one or the other.
• 0:18
  Shelby Strong: We can't say, you can only be, a critical thinker in conceptual knowledge, or you can only access mathematics because you've mastered the fundamentals, there has to be a space for everyone, if everyone can be a math person, that means everyone has to show up to mathematics in the way that makes sense to them.
• 0:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hey guys, it's me Vanessa, and welcome back to Math Therapy.
• 0:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so today's guest is my friend, Shelby Strong, math educator, coach, consultant, and just one of my favorite people.
• 0:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thing about Shelby is that she has extremely strong opinions about even the most innocuous of math education topics.
• 0:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: And literally every time we talk on the phone or like via voice note, we both end up screaming, oh my God, we just basically recorded a podcast episode.
• 1:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: And like at a certain point it kind of just got weird that she wasn't on my actual podcast.
• 1:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: So today is the day covered a ton of spicy topics from the whole, our algorithms destroying children debacle to the gatekeeping.
• 1:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: That happens when we define who gets to be a math person.
• 1:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: And we also have an honest and compassionate discussion about the guilt and pressure teachers feel when they just wanna help students, but the rules keep changing on them.
• 1:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're also gonna get into the dangers of building one's entire identity around one thing, and why some people resist more people being invited into that thing.
• 1:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Math, education, gaming culture.
• 1:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is one of those episodes that absolutely everyone needs to listen to.
• 1:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because at its core, it's about the real reason the world can often feel so divided.
• 1:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you're anything like me right now, you're probably wondering why we can't all just stop pointing fingers at one another.
• 1:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: And this episode really reminded me that we are all just humans who want to belong, and sometimes the fear that we don't belong is what leads us to trying to exclude others.
• 2:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if some point during this convo you're like, that is what I've been trying to say, please share this podcast.
• 2:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Send it to a friend, post a clip on your socials or just like throw it in your group chat with 30 exclamation points.
• 2:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if something in this episode lands, text us.
• 2:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can text the podcast by hitting the link in the show notes for this episode.
• 2:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: I really wanna hear from you.
• 2:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay guys, I can't wait for you to hear this conversation.
• 2:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let's get into it.
• 2:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: My first question for you is, because you told me to ask you this, what does Dave Grohl have to do with math?
• 2:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let's hear it.
• 2:42
  Shelby Strong: I was watching an interview with Dave Grohl a couple months ago where he, is an old interview, but he's talking about how he never really received a formal music education, and yet no one's gonna look at him and say, you're not a musician.
• 2:54
  Shelby Strong: Right.
• 2:54
  Shelby Strong: And you could argue that he wouldn't have made the music that he made if he had received a formal music education.
• 3:01
  Shelby Strong: And so there's this guy, Paul Lockhart, who wrote a Mathematician's Lament a couple of years ago.
• 3:06
  Shelby Strong: He talks about how math doesn't get treated the way that art gets treated.
• 3:11
  Shelby Strong: And yet, think about someone who is a musician for, say the Philharmonic or some sort of orchestral musician.
• 3:18
  Shelby Strong: They did receive a formal music education.
• 3:20
  Shelby Strong: They do, you know, read music, and many of them are not original composers.
• 3:26
  Shelby Strong: Are we gonna point at them and say, you're not a musician'cause you don't write your own music and all you do is reproduce someone else's.
• 3:32
  Shelby Strong: And so I think that, you know, we've got this spectrum of musicians, you've got your Dave Grohls and you've got your, you know, first chair cellists.
• 3:40
  Shelby Strong: You've got this spectrum of mathematical ability.
• 3:44
  Shelby Strong: You've got people who are really good at algorithms and really good at following procedures.
• 3:48
  Shelby Strong: And then you have people who are super creative and like to dig in and, and unpack different things.
• 3:53
  Shelby Strong: And I have absolutely been guilty of, you know, kind of giving my students a hard time, who are really good at the algorithms, who are really good at the procedures and bless their heart, couldn't critically think their way out of a wet paper bag.
• 4:05
  Shelby Strong: And that is kind of the shift that has happened in math where we've moved toward this more like creative unpacking.
• 4:13
  Shelby Strong: And I'm not saying we don't need that, but I'm also saying that we can't keep demonizing one or the other.
• 4:19
  Shelby Strong: We can't say, you can only be, you know, a critical thinker in conceptual knowledge, or you can only access mathematics because you've mastered the fundamentals, whatever the hell the fundamentals are, that there has to be a space for everyone, if we're gonna run around saying, everyone can be a math person.
• 4:36
  Shelby Strong: If everyone can be a math person, that means everyone has to show up to mathematics in the way that makes sense to them.
• 4:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, I am so glad you just started with this hot, juicy take.
• 4:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'cause I could not agree, the thing is also with me and Shelby that I've realized is often I'll have a thought, I may express it, I may not.
• 4:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: But no matter what, Shelby will express it in a way more articulate way than I will.
• 5:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm kind of having you on here to just actually make me sound better by translating what I mean into, into a mic drop.
• 5:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: But what
• 5:10
  Shelby Strong: ven, the Vanessa translator, like this
• 5:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: The van.
• 5:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I love that you saw that because as you may or may not know, my debate with Pam Harris actually was about this exact thing.
• 5:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: And now, I mean, no shade, I just had Pam on the pod, we had an amazing conversation.
• 5:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: But part of her, what she talks about is the idea that if you're using an algorithm, it's fake math.
• 5:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I actually take a really big, big issue with that.
• 5:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: And we are, we've already talked about this publicly, so this isn't about her.
• 5:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: A lot of people have that thinking exactly like you said.
• 5:40
  Shelby Strong: And the reason why I started thinking about it is because of this idea that, you know, I do think that we do need to do more of an emphasis on conceptual understanding of math ethics because we have spent so long without it, like algorithms didn't come from nowhere.
• 5:57
  Shelby Strong: Right.
• 5:57
  Shelby Strong: And I think that's where we got it twisted in the last several decades is that we, we hold up, particularly in America, American standard algorithms as the way of doing math and anything else is not acceptable.
• 6:11
  Shelby Strong: But then we went kind of too far in the other direction to say only, you know, thinking about this with 12 steps is the way to, to really understand mathematics.
• 6:21
  Shelby Strong: And I think we have to find a way to kind of come into harmony where, you know, you'll hear critics all the time saying, oh, well, you know, if the students don't know their times tables, what are they gonna do?
• 6:30
  Shelby Strong: Count on their fingers every time they have to do a problem.
• 6:33
  Shelby Strong: No, I don't want a kid counting on their fingers every time they have to do a problem.
• 6:37
  Shelby Strong: And I also want them to be able to self-select the method that makes for the, the most sense for them in the moment, not the most sense ever.
• 6:45
  Shelby Strong: I think that some people like tend to go, oh, the algorithm is the only way, or, oh, partial products is the only way.
• 6:50
  Shelby Strong: Or, oh, this other method is the only way.
• 6:53
  Shelby Strong: But having an arsenal of strategies is about being responsive to the moment in front of you.
• 6:59
  Shelby Strong: So I'm not gonna use standard algorithm if it's a thousand minus 998 because that's stupid, but I am going to use it in another case where I don't wanna think that hard and this thing works.
• 7:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sometimes I think like, literally like take math out of it for a second, this happens with so many things in life, is like we're all like gung-ho about this one way of doing things.
• 7:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: All of a sudden, as a society or group of people or educators or whatever, we're like, oh my god.
• 7:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, it's like eating, you know what I mean?
• 7:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's like, I've been eating sugar my entire life and all of a sudden I have this moment of like, wait, everyone's saying sugar's bad.
• 7:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: And instead of being like, oh, you know what?
• 7:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I'll have sugar when it makes sense, but maybe not all the time.
• 7:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, I'm going to eat zero sugar.
• 7:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna do none of it.
• 7:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: And then my quality of life decreases in another sense because now like.
• 7:45
  Shelby Strong: I'm gonna stop eating candy.
• 7:46
  Shelby Strong: I'm going to eat fruit instead.
• 7:47
  Shelby Strong: And someone's like, well, you know, fruit's got sugar too.
• 7:49
  Shelby Strong: And it's like, fuck you.
• 7:50
  Shelby Strong: Do you want me to make a better
• 7:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: A hundred and contextual it's like, oh, maybe I'll have some candy.
• 7:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Maybe not for breakfast.
• 7:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know what I mean?
• 7:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, or maybe around Halloween, like it's like it's, doesn't have to be, I really agree.
• 8:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think it's like the pen.
• 8:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's what happens.
• 8:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I really think it's because we just tend towards black and white thinking.
• 8:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 8:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's so much easier,
• 8:11
  Shelby Strong: It's human nature.,
• 8:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: well, and also what requires more thinking than to actually discern which strategy to use.
• 8:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's easier to not think.
• 8:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you also, just for our listeners, and actually for me,'cause I'm curious what, where you'll go with this.
• 8:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you briefly just define algorithm so we all know what we're talking about?
• 8:30
  Shelby Strong: I'm thinking standard algorithm, I'm thinking what I learned in second, third, fourth grade, the rules that my teacher said, this is how you add, this is how you subtract, this is how you multiply, this is how you divide.
• 8:41
  Shelby Strong: So long division is your standard algorithm where you've got the little house and you've got the, put the number on the outside into the number on the big side.
• 8:48
  Shelby Strong: And there's some sort of goofy acronym for what to do after you've like,'cause you have to use all the operations when you're doing long division.
• 8:57
  Shelby Strong: Actually, this reminds me of a story I wanted to tell you.
• 9:00
  Shelby Strong: So, uh, I moved to Massachusetts three years ago and when I first moved up here, I went and did a job kind of a little far away from where I ended up living and got there No problem.
• 9:12
  Shelby Strong: a great time with the teachers and it's time to go home.
• 9:15
  Shelby Strong: I'm leaving Boston and no one had told me that the Sumner Tunnel was gonna be closed, which is this big tunnel around Boston.
• 9:22
  Shelby Strong: But more importantly, no one had told Google Maps that the Sumner Tunnel was gonna be closed.
• 9:27
  Shelby Strong: And so kept trying to direct me into this tunnel that I couldn't take.
• 9:32
  Shelby Strong: So I end up like just driving in circles surrounding Logan Airport because I don't know how to get home, I just moved here.
• 9:39
  Shelby Strong: And what I thought about was if I had been back home in New Orleans and the Crescent City connection had been closed and I couldn't take that bridge, it's fine.
• 9:46
  Shelby Strong: I could have taken the HU EP.
• 9:47
  Shelby Strong: I have other ways to get there.
• 9:48
  Shelby Strong: Is that the option I'm gonna choose every day?
• 9:50
  Shelby Strong: No, but it's the option.
• 9:52
  Shelby Strong: I'm gonna choose when the way that I want to go is closed to me.
• 9:55
  Shelby Strong: And in the same way, that's what we are really trying to accomplish with mathematics now, is not to say, only take this path, or, you know, this path is wrong.
• 10:04
  Shelby Strong: Take the path that you're comfortable with and when you run into a situation where that path is blocked to you for whatever reason, you know the landscape well enough to be able to not panic when it comes time to take another path instead of just three times.
• 10:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: So let's just take a step back here.
• 10:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: We are kind of vilifying the algorithms and that way I would also like to say, there was a time when, you know, people keep saying, well, you don't need it anymore.
• 10:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: We don't need people to punch things into calculators.
• 10:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: We don't need algorithms.
• 10:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Calculators can do that.
• 10:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: We need people to think.
• 10:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: And like, let's be fair, there was a time where that was a skill that was way more necessary than it was now, let's say, however, it doesn't mean that an algorithm is not useful.
• 10:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: But now we've vilified it to the point of being like, if you're using an algorithm, if you're just following rules, you're mimicking, you're not thinking.
• 10:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's so much about this.
• 10:56
  Shelby Strong: Let's go back to the musician example, right?
• 10:58
  Shelby Strong: There's a difference between like playing a piece of music from like reading the music and playing it and really feeling it.
• 11:06
  Shelby Strong: Like there's a reason some people are first chair, right?
• 11:09
  Shelby Strong: Because like, yes, they're playing music that someone else wrote, but they are dialed into it.
• 11:15
  Shelby Strong: The problem is, is when all you know is an algorithm and you don't understand why the algorithm works and it goes wrong, then how do you get yourself out of it, right?
• 11:23
  Shelby Strong: How do you stop circling the airport?
• 11:26
  Shelby Strong: And that's where I think that we had we gotten it wrong for so long, is that, because the adults didn't understand why the algorithm worked, they couldn't answer student questions about, well, why do I do that?
• 11:39
  Shelby Strong: And what if I, what if I didn't wanna use that?
• 11:41
  Shelby Strong: I was talking about addition with someone the other day and we were adding two three digit numbers and I started from the left.
• 11:47
  Shelby Strong: I started with the hundreds place and I was, I was
• 11:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Whoa.
• 11:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: What?
• 11:50
  Shelby Strong: In the role of a student and they were like, no, no, no, you have to start with the ones place.
• 11:54
  Shelby Strong: And I was like, actually, I don't.
• 11:56
  Shelby Strong: That's a convention.
• 11:57
  Shelby Strong: That's not something that I have to do.
• 11:59
  Shelby Strong: That's why I think algorithms are being vilified because we're saying, you have to do it this way.
• 12:04
  Shelby Strong: Yeah, you do have to do it that way, if you're using the algorithm.
• 12:07
  Shelby Strong: If you're not, then there is a way to still approach mathematics.
• 12:11
  Shelby Strong: And we have to be comfortable and confident enough ourselves with not being scared of someone doing something that doesn't look like what we're used to.
• 12:20
  Shelby Strong: And I have seen a lot fear in classrooms where teachers will cut students off before letting them finish their thought.
• 12:27
  Shelby Strong: Because what they're hearing so far doesn't sound like what they're expecting.
• 12:31
  Shelby Strong: And instead of letting them finish the thought, there, there's this fear of, oh, if, if that makes sense to that student.
• 12:36
  Shelby Strong: But if they start talking and other kids are gonna hear it, and then they're gonna get confused and, and I have to save the children from being confused.
• 12:42
  Shelby Strong: Like, you don't have to save the children from being confused.
• 12:44
  Shelby Strong: You can just let them be confused and ask their questions.
• 12:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Teaching an algorithm without context and reason, I think, and I'm curious what you think is different than, okay, like let's say, I wanna show you the algorithm rhythm as a teacher.
• 12:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'cause that's what I'm comfortable with right now, but I can explain to you why it works.
• 13:02
  Shelby Strong: Great.
• 13:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: that different?
• 13:04
  Shelby Strong: I think
• 13:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, that's fine, right?
• 13:06
  Shelby Strong: I taught high.
• 13:07
  Shelby Strong: I taught a lot of things.
• 13:08
  Shelby Strong: So when I taught algebra one, uh, the thing that a lot of people remember, at least the name of, if you, even if they don't remember what it actually is, is the quadratic formula, right?
• 13:17
  Shelby Strong: For solving things like, they may not remember
• 13:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've just,
• 13:20
  Shelby Strong: is, but they remember hearing
• 13:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love the quadratic formula guys.
• 13:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know it, so many songs,
• 13:26
  Shelby Strong: But,
• 13:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: you know.
• 13:27
  Shelby Strong: Glad that you said songs because I spent years telling kids to memorize this thing.
• 13:31
  Shelby Strong: And they were like, Ugh, why?
• 13:32
  Shelby Strong: And I was like, because it makes your life easier.
• 13:34
  Shelby Strong: And that's all I had for them.
• 13:35
  Shelby Strong: And then what I started doing instead was I started with completing the square instead, literally visualize a square and and solve that way.
• 13:44
  Shelby Strong: And then I made them solve a X squared plus BX plus C equals zero, and gave them an hour, gave the whole class period to just go solve this thing, figure it out, off you go.
• 13:53
  Shelby Strong: And by the end of it, they had X equals blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 13:57
  Shelby Strong: And I said, do you feel like doing that every time?
• 13:59
  Shelby Strong: And they were like, Ugh, no.
• 14:00
  Shelby Strong: 'Cause they're teenagers, of course they don't want to.
• 14:02
  Shelby Strong: And I said, well, what if I told you you could just memorize this thing instead?
• 14:06
  Shelby Strong: And they were like, we can do that.
• 14:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: So here's the thing that's, this is bringing up for me.
• 14:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: This idea of who we call math people and who we don't.
• 14:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: We used to call those who could just do the algorithms, get the answer.
• 14:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: They were the math people, those people identified as math people.
• 14:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now all of a sudden, you know, this is actually crazy'cause this is almost like reverse gatekeeping or something, because now we're like, what?
• 14:29
  Shelby Strong: I just remembered something when you were saying that.
• 14:32
  Shelby Strong: I was thinking about how wrong I was to judge a child for only being able to use algorithms and not being able to, you know, critically think and not being able to engage with more conceptual understanding.
• 14:46
  Shelby Strong: When, if every year up until the point that they met to me, that is what was valued, was rules, was following an algorithm, was being able to follow the steps, then now I'm gonna punish them for meeting the expectations that were set before they came to me.
• 15:01
  Shelby Strong: And that is, I think, where we end up having a big issue.
• 15:05
  Shelby Strong: I'm always open to the idea, like I have a lot of opinions, I have a lot of strong feelings on things, and I am open to the idea that I could be wrong.
• 15:14
  Shelby Strong: And, and I think that's where, like, that's not very profitable, because if you're open to the idea that you could be wrong, then, uh, you just went around the country and sold your ideas to all these people and, and, you know, profited very heavily off of it.
• 15:29
  Shelby Strong: And that doesn't work for certain voices in this space.
• 15:34
  Shelby Strong: Uh, to be able to be willing to say, I held this idea.
• 15:39
  Shelby Strong: I, I genuinely believed it at the time.
• 15:41
  Shelby Strong: I've heard something new or I've considered something else, and now I wanna reflect on that.
• 15:44
  Shelby Strong: We're expecting that from the students, but when the adults do it, we call them two-faced and we call them grifters and we call them whatever else.
• 15:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am actually stunned by how well you've put this.
• 15:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: As always, you honestly always blow my mind because you are so right.
• 15:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I was just saying to someone the other day, oh my god, fucking Dr.
• 16:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Raj Shah, he asked me what my superpowers were and I said one of them was that I can see both sides of everything.
• 16:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I can, I can have a very strong opinion.
• 16:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can see the other side.
• 16:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you are so right that, you know, there are those people who talk, this is exactly what you, who you're talking about, there are people who talk in this way where it's like, I found the solution.
• 16:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like all you've gotta do is this thing and this is the way to do it.
• 16:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And we both get it because you just used the word profitable and whether you mean that monetarily or just people buying into you and your idea, you're right.
• 16:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 16:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like when you look at these self help coaches and stuff, the reason I'm so un, it's like I wanna be a self-help cult leader, but I would never be able to say, I've got the answer like, do this and you, I wouldn't be able to do it because I'm so aware like you are that right now this is what I think and I'm so open to being wrong because I want to always be learning and growing.
• 16:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: And it would be insane to think that like I for sure know something we, none of us for sure know anything,
• 17:00
  Shelby Strong: I think part of why it's so scary to say I could be wrong is because it's not just you and I, you know, two adults sitting at and talking into microphones on a podcast.
• 17:11
  Shelby Strong: There's children's futures at stake, and
• 17:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 17:14
  Shelby Strong: Idea of being, of getting it wrong, the stakes are very, very high if we're getting it wrong in front of children and we're, we're getting it wrong for the children.
• 17:24
  Shelby Strong: And I think that's where you see all of these science of whatever wars is because, we are so locked into this way of thinking that teaching is a helping profession and we're doing it for the children, so and so and so forth.
• 17:37
  Shelby Strong: And we forget that children are malleable.
• 17:42
  Shelby Strong: We forget that children are capable of complex thought, that they are capable of evolving in their mindset and their perspective, and it is really hard to overwrite a first impression.
• 17:56
  Shelby Strong: If children come to mathematics, come to ELA, come to science, come to social studies, and shape their worldview and their perspective around this is what it means to do this subject, this is what it means to do school.
• 18:10
  Shelby Strong: It takes so much more work to overwrite that first impression.
• 18:15
  Shelby Strong: And so it is a little terrifying.
• 18:19
  Shelby Strong: I, I experienced it myself in the classroom where I had been trained on teach the algorithms, have them, you know, I do, we do, you do whatever.
• 18:26
  Shelby Strong: And then all of a sudden here's these new standards and it's like, oh, by the way, everything that you've been doing, you've been damaging the children, so fix everything about yourself.
• 18:35
  Shelby Strong: But we're not gonna give you the time or the space to figure out how to do this new thing.
• 18:40
  Shelby Strong: And we're not gonna train you on it.
• 18:41
  Shelby Strong: We're just going to once again, put it on your shoulders and good luck.
• 18:44
  Shelby Strong: Figure it out.
• 18:45
  Shelby Strong: We're gonna blame you when it goes wrong.
• 18:46
  Shelby Strong: And that's a very scary place to be in.
• 18:50
  Shelby Strong: I think teachers feel a lot of pressure to constantly get it right, because that has been the perception forever.
• 18:58
  Shelby Strong: When, when it was, you know, one house, school, Mars, that's always been, you are the one responsible.
• 19:03
  Shelby Strong: And so we are gonna hold you accountable for everything, but we're not gonna give you any space to grow and develop.
• 19:09
  Shelby Strong: We're just going to, you know, we're gonna make decisions and hold you accountable for the results of them.
• 19:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, it's so real, like what you're saying, and I know so many people listening are probably like, it's, it's hitting where it hurts, but I, I wonder something, you know, I wonder if part of it is the way we frame it as, you know, we're saying something like, oh, now we've learned that things we've been doing for decades have damaged children.
• 19:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'd like to actually pause at that statement for a second.
• 19:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's so much pressure there.
• 19:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: First of all, when you know better, you do better.
• 19:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sometimes we just don't know things.
• 19:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know what I mean?
• 19:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we think about how every week a new food, it's like, oh, strawberries are actually, they cause fucking cardiac arrests.
• 19:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like they've been good for you up till now.
• 19:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you're not gonna, you know, the strawberry farmers aren't like, fuck, we've been, okay.
• 19:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: First of all, that's not a sign.
• 19:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's nothing wrong with strawberries, but you know what I mean?
• 19:57
  Shelby Strong: Pale people, don't drink orange juice and go in the sun because it'll burn your skin from the inside.
• 20:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right, like whatever.
• 20:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's always some new thing.
• 20:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's like wine is good for you, then it's not, the sun was good for us.
• 20:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Remember how good the sun was?
• 20:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now it's gonna burn us to a, it's not like the, it's not like, like think about it.
• 20:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Think, let's just go back to my strawberry example, which isn't a true example, but the strawberry farmer or whatever isn't like, shit, I spent years poisoning people and I've, you know, I've done wrong.
• 20:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: They didn't know.
• 20:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: They literally didn't know.
• 20:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: So we're always doing the best we can in the moment.
• 20:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I'd also like to argue, but I'm curious what you think, let's say, okay, something, I'm trying to think of something we can agree on is not a great practice maybe that a lot of people could agree on.
• 20:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, let's say doing mad minutes, getting students to get up in front of the entire class and being timed.
• 20:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So let's say it's a harmful practice, okay?
• 20:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Which let's, a lot of us can agree that it is, some may not, whatever.
• 20:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: There are many of us, okay, who grew up in that time with that practice, who actually developed a very healthy relationship with math.
• 21:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I would argue it's because regardless of the pedagogy and the curriculum, the teacher believed in, like, let's just say for me, I mean the Mad Minutes was, I remember doing them, but I remember my teacher was so lovely and believed in me and there was all this other stuff going on under the, under the covers of the practice.
• 21:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: She was just doing what she thought was a good practice'cause she was told to.
• 21:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Could we just not say even though some of the practices, like maybe teaching through the algorithm, maybe not, people debate on their, the benefit of that practice that you're not actually necessarily damaging students.
• 21:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know what I'm saying?
• 21:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm just trying to like take the pressure off.
• 21:40
  Shelby Strong: so I think that's, I think it's twofold, right?
• 21:43
  Shelby Strong: Part of it is I would say that you thrived in spite of the practice, not because of it.
• 21:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
• 21:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Fair.
• 21:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
• 21:48
  Shelby Strong: The thing that was, you know, that in spite of was because you had someone who was lovely and who was validating.
• 21:54
  Shelby Strong: And I would say, I mentioned earlier, my son did mad minutes in first grade for his edition facts.
• 21:58
  Shelby Strong: Now my son.
• 22:00
  Shelby Strong: Has me for a mom, right?
• 22:02
  Shelby Strong: Like we, we, we do math at home together on a regular basis.
• 22:05
  Shelby Strong: And so he's not a slouch when it comes to his mathematical ability so far.
• 22:09
  Shelby Strong: Like he, he's been doing really interesting thinking for a long time.
• 22:14
  Shelby Strong: And because he was a COVID kid, he did not do a whole lot of writing.
• 22:19
  Shelby Strong: Like he didn't go to preschool.
• 22:21
  Shelby Strong: His kindergarten year was the first year back, uh, post pandemic, you know, whatever post pandemic means.
• 22:27
  Shelby Strong: Um, and I told his kindergarten teacher, I was like, look, the content standards that you guys are covering this year, we took care of them at home already.
• 22:33
  Shelby Strong: Like, he's got it.
• 22:34
  Shelby Strong: I need him to kind of learn how to function as a student.
• 22:38
  Shelby Strong: And so I need to work on, you know, his handwriting and listening and staying seated and like the things that we've unfortunately determined make you good at school.
• 22:45
  Shelby Strong: Right.
• 22:46
  Shelby Strong: I was less focused on his academic learning so much as his social learning that year.
• 22:51
  Shelby Strong: Then he gets to first grade and he's still not a super proficient writer.
• 22:55
  Shelby Strong: And so he comes outta school one day stomping, crying, like, so upset.
• 23:01
  Shelby Strong: And I'm like, what's going on?
• 23:03
  Shelby Strong: And it was the mad minutes because when I verbally asked him all the questions on that page, he did it in 20 seconds.
• 23:09
  Shelby Strong: But because his handwriting had not developed to the same ability, he was getting
• 23:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, wow.
• 23:15
  Shelby Strong: On these assignments because he couldn't write down as quickly as he could think.
• 23:18
  Shelby Strong: So we were assessing like, his assessment wasn't assessing the thing that they thought they were assessing that happens all the time.
• 23:27
  Shelby Strong: Right.
• 23:27
  Shelby Strong: And so he doesn't know that that's why he's frustrated.
• 23:30
  Shelby Strong: I know.
• 23:31
  Shelby Strong: Mom and,'cause I'm a grown adult.
• 23:33
  Shelby Strong: And so what, what Ben, is he going to say?
• 23:35
  Shelby Strong: He's going to say I'm bad at math.
• 23:37
  Shelby Strong: F it's not his mathematical ability that's causing the frustration, but he's seven.
• 23:43
  Shelby Strong: He doesn't know that.
• 23:44
  Shelby Strong: I think that we do need to offer humans a lot of grace'cause we make the best decisions we can with the information we, and that doesn't mean that we double down and get defensive.
• 23:55
  Shelby Strong: And I think that that's where, that's the hardest part is that we spend a lot of time being defensive as educators because we feel like we're getting it from all sides and we feel constantly attack.
• 24:05
  Shelby Strong: 'cause we're not perfect and we're not doing everything for your sweet baby angel when there are 31 other sweet baby angels who also need our time and love and, and so it's hard to sort of put that defensiveness aside and truly engage with, okay, is this just someone being mad at me and blowing off steam?
• 24:23
  Shelby Strong: Or is this something I genuinely need to, to examine?
• 24:27
  Shelby Strong: And trying to determine that when you're drowning in paperwork and responsibilities.
• 24:33
  Shelby Strong: It, it's very, it's hard.
• 24:37
  Shelby Strong: Really hard.
• 24:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's really hard.
• 24:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you know, you're, I think you're such a wonderful,'cause you're a coach, right?
• 24:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: You work with teachers a lot and you understand their plate because you've been a teacher, you've been in a variety of classrooms.
• 24:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: I feel like we are in this very interesting place, like you've just said, where all of a sudden everything shifted to, we need to be teaching, thinking.
• 24:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: If you're not doing that, you're potentially damaging kids by teaching them to mimic, as you've just said, there is so much to do.
• 25:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: So someone might be listening to this thinking, yeah, I get it.
• 25:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have examined it and I'm not being defensive and I get that it would be better if I taught in this different way and I don't have the bandwidth for it at this moment.
• 25:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I don't wanna feel like I'm damaging kids anytime I walk into the classroom.
• 25:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what can I do?
• 25:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or like, do you have any, anything to say to those teachers who are like, you know what I mean?
• 25:28
  Shelby Strong: I think Zak Champagne talks about this really beautifully when he talks about listen to kids, and recognizing the humanity of the kid in front of you first.
• 25:38
  Shelby Strong: Like, yes, we have to teach content.
• 25:40
  Shelby Strong: Yes, we have a lot of responsibilities, but the humanity the children in front of us and the humanity of our coworkers has to come first because otherwise, what are we doing?
• 25:51
  Shelby Strong: You know, when we really stop to consider the humanity of the people in front of us, it becomes a little bit easier to assume the most generous interpretation of someone's actions.
• 26:06
  Shelby Strong: Once they have proven to you that, that's not this is about, like, like I, I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but I like to do it once.
• 26:14
  Shelby Strong: Once you've shown that that's not what's actually happening here, then we're having a different conversation.
• 26:22
  Shelby Strong: I would rather be generous with my interpretation and generous with someone's motivations and be proven wrong, then think too harshly of someone because if they were, if they were coming from a place of generosity of spirit, and I assume the worst of them, just made it harder.
• 26:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 26:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 26:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, I love it.
• 26:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think I'm particularly sensitive, to be honest, to never wanting, just'cause I've been in this, this scene for a few years now and I've heard the way math eds talked about, and what you said about when we are just like, this is the way to do it and if you're not doing it this way, I've seen so much of that, and I understand it for the reasons you said, you know, like A, I understand it because as people we wanna simplify things down to, it's right and wrong.
• 27:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's no gray area, just pick one.
• 27:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: As, you know, we wanna be really convicted in our own ideas so we, we have the confidence in them so we can get buy-in from people.
• 27:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I get it.
• 27:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: But what I've seen happen is so many teachers feeling like shit, walking out of a session, being like, fuck, I'm still using the algorithm and now this person says I'm damaging children.
• 27:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that I hate because no one, like, that's all.
• 27:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think I'm very sensitive to hearing that and then hearing from teachers who already are carrying math trauma, who already have their own baggage around math, now feeling that shit, because I don't, I learned through the algorithm and I finally mastered teaching the way I was taught.
• 27:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now I'm being told to teach a whole different way.
• 27:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Otherwise now I'm apparently damaging children, not only with my math trauma, that's apparently contagious, but now because I'm teaching math the wrong way, like I just wanna prevent that.
• 28:01
  Shelby Strong: We shouldn't go around finger wagging at teachers and saying, you're damaging children.
• 28:04
  Shelby Strong: I don't think that that's helpful to anyone ever.
• 28:06
  Shelby Strong: If someone has gone to a session and all they've taken away from it is a feeling of guilt, then that presenter didn't, maybe didn't do a great job.
• 28:14
  Shelby Strong: Because I do present on occasionally, like on different ways without an algorithm or ways to build up towards an algorithm and I don't often hear, now, maybe they're not saying it to my face, so who knows, but what I often hear is I hadn't considered that approach.
• 28:31
  Shelby Strong: I wanna go try it and see what happens.
• 28:33
  Shelby Strong: So I don't want anyone to ever walk away saying like, oh, I need to change everything about my practice.
• 28:37
  Shelby Strong: But instead, if we inspire people to consider something that they hadn't considered before, and then they go, oh, well what if I went back and showed that to my students?
• 28:45
  Shelby Strong: Like how would that solve a problem that I'm having?
• 28:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So, the thing that I was gonna ask you about 20 minutes ago, but it actually ties in perfectly, is we kind of started this conversation by saying you were like, I'm kind of having beef with the whole idea that now all of a sudden we're saying people who like, thrive on the algorithm, that algorithm life, are no longer real mathematicians.
• 29:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 29:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: You started with your be this started with Dave fucking Grohl.
• 29:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, I forgot.
• 29:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
• 29:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: When the ADHD takes
• 29:11
  Shelby Strong: over, there's no stopping it.
• 29:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 29:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 29:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is beautiful.
• 29:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: So yes, we started with who would we call a real musician or not.
• 29:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now we moved on to who would we call a real mathematician.
• 29:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's shifted from the algorithm people to the creative thinking people, and now we're gonna double up on all of that and say, what is the risk for those who consider themselves math people and those who don't.
• 29:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: You brought up a point during one of our talks where you said, I actually think the idea of a math person is not only harmful for those who don't consider themselves falling into that camp, but even more so for those who do
• 29:49
  Shelby Strong: I think about it the same way, that part, that the patriarchy is not only harmful for women, but it's also harmful for men.
• 29:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Go off
• 29:58
  Shelby Strong: Men are just as damaged by the patriarchy because they, if they do not conform to this idea of what it means to be a man, then they're not a real man, and then they are punished for not to the standards of patriarchy.
• 30:10
  Shelby Strong: And in the same way we find that with mathematics, where if we are defining being a math person by being fast, by not, by never asking questions, by, uh, always getting the answer right by, you know, following the algorithms, like what, however we're defining it.
• 30:26
  Shelby Strong: If that is what if we set the standard and say, this is what it means to be a math person, then the first time that your perception.
• 30:35
  Shelby Strong: altered the first time that you encounter something that rocks that a little bit, it kind of shatters your confidence.
• 30:41
  Shelby Strong: I personally, like didn't care one way or the other about math.
• 30:44
  Shelby Strong: Like, I guess I was good at it.
• 30:46
  Shelby Strong: Geek in high school, certified nerd, science Olympiad, you know, took more math classes than I needed to graduate, whatever.
• 30:53
  Shelby Strong: Like, I, I didn't feel any type of way about it.
• 30:56
  Shelby Strong: I certainly did not anticipate that this was going to be my life growing up, like this was, and so I get to college and I go, I take my first two, like kind of pre-req math classes and they're fine.
• 31:10
  Shelby Strong: I take calculus and I face plant hard.
• 31:14
  Shelby Strong: Like when I tell you I had to withdraw'cause I was gonna fail, and then I did it again and I got a D and then I barely managed to get a C, the third go around.
• 31:22
  Shelby Strong: And it rattled my identity.
• 31:25
  Shelby Strong: It rattled who I was as a person because prior to this I hadn't really thought about math one way or the other, but other people had acknowledged I was good at math, therefore I must be smart.
• 31:36
  Shelby Strong: And the first time that I encountered some mathematics that wasn't, that didn't come to me easily.
• 31:42
  Shelby Strong: That wasn't intuitive for me.
• 31:45
  Shelby Strong: one of two options.
• 31:46
  Shelby Strong: Either the math is stupid or I am or I am.
• 31:52
  Shelby Strong: And that for a long well that's the professor's fault.
• 31:56
  Shelby Strong: Like he didn't a good job teaching me, or, or she didn't show me enough examples or what.
• 32:00
  Shelby Strong: Like, because if I have predicated my identity on being smart, and if I have predicated being smart on being good at math, then the moment that I'm not good at math, that takes out sort of the linchpin in my entire sense of self.
• 32:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 32:16
  Shelby Strong: and so, when people like you and I come along and say, actually math should be accessible to everyone, then if you've built your identity around being good at this thing that other people aren't good at, and like I'm setting myself apart because I'm good at math and that makes me special and that makes me better than other people because this is something that not everyone has access to.
• 32:38
  Shelby Strong: When someone comes along and says, actually, we're gonna redefine that thing, then you feel attacked because you're taking, because now we're taking away the thing that makes them special.
• 32:49
  Shelby Strong: Should that have been the thing that made them feel special in the first place?
• 32:52
  Shelby Strong: Well, I would argue no, because the, the practice itself was exclusionary as mathematics has often been to women, has often been to people who do not fit a certain mold, as mathematics has often been to folks who do mathematics in a non Eurocentric way.
• 33:11
  Shelby Strong: Think about Pascal's Triangle and the fact that we call it Pascal's Triangle when it existed in other cultures for centuries before Pascal.
• 33:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: It did?
• 33:19
  Shelby Strong: Oh my God.
• 33:20
  Shelby Strong: Yeah.
• 33:21
  Shelby Strong: There are so many things mathematically that we ascribe to white European men that existed in other cultures.
• 33:28
  Shelby Strong: And so if you have built
• 33:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: So whose fucking triangle is it?
• 33:33
  Shelby Strong: Girl, I don't know, I should know if I, I'll, need a producer's note from David.
• 33:39
  Shelby Strong: Where did Pascal's Triangle come
• 33:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: David's on it.
• 33:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: He's on it.
• 33:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: He's already on it.
• 33:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Don't worry.
• 33:44
  Shelby Strong: It's the triangle.
• 33:46
  Shelby Strong: Well, and that's why you, you hear some people refer to the right triangle theorem instead of the Pythagorean Theorem because the right triangle theorem was known prior to the Greeks.
• 33:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: Fuck me up.
• 33:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 33:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hold on.
• 34:00
  Shelby Strong: All of that is to say if you have built a sense of self around being good at math and therefore you're smart and therefore you're better than other people, then the idea that anyone could be good at math threatens your position at the top of the pecking order.
• 34:16
  Shelby Strong: So that's for some people.
• 34:17
  Shelby Strong: And then for other people, it threatens their sense of self and their sense of who they are and their sense of, well, if I'm not good at math, then who am I?
• 34:26
  Shelby Strong: And I think we see that a lot with teachers as well, particularly when they leave the classroom because they make being a teacher part of their identity.
• 34:33
  Shelby Strong: It's who they are, not what they do.
• 34:35
  Shelby Strong: And so once they don't have that anymore, well then who I am, who am I without that?
• 34:38
  Shelby Strong: And it causes this sort of like crisis of character that I think sometimes we dismiss a little too easily.
• 34:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I think, I mean this is the whole thing with labels in general, but what's interesting is, I'm gonna take this a step further and well, you've just segued this so nicely into like the final juicy thing I wanted to talk to you about.
• 34:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was like, how am I gonna tie this all together?
• 34:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you just did it for me.
• 35:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're actually here coming at us from your husband's streaming studio where he plays video games, I believe.
• 35:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 35:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: One of the things we were talking about that's completely tangential to what you're saying now is there is this whole rift in what you call geek culture, specifically about this quote unquote identity crisis.
• 35:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Take this a little further into what's happening right now
• 35:24
  Shelby Strong: Okay.
• 35:25
  Shelby Strong: So,
• 35:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: In your world, in your geek world.
• 35:28
  Shelby Strong: so I think that this sense of self is something that we.
• 35:35
  Shelby Strong: Equally don't pay enough attention to, and sometimes we pay a little bit too much attention to, which is weird because it's a matter of who gets the attention and who gets the moment, right?
• 35:45
  Shelby Strong: And so when we think about, you know, math can be accessible to everyone in the same way that like, oh, if m math is acceptable to everyone, then I don't get to be a gatekeeper anymore.
• 35:54
  Shelby Strong: And game culture has been dealing with this since fricking, I would say, since Gamer Gate, but honestly, it's been longer than that.
• 36:01
  Shelby Strong: It's been, I mean, since I was a child for sure, where women and certain, like folks, like people of color, there's just been this sort of idea of who is a geek.
• 36:14
  Shelby Strong: So, you know, remember that, that time when everyone was like, oh, draw a mathematician, and then they all, all the pictures
• 36:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
• 36:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
• 36:20
  Shelby Strong: If you ask someone, draw a gamer or draw a nerd or draw, you know, a geek or whatever.
• 36:26
  Shelby Strong: I'm sure you would get very similar drawings of this stereotype of what it means to be a geek, what it means to be a gamer, what it means to be whatever.
• 36:35
  Shelby Strong: And my pet theory is that, humans just want to belong somewhere like that is, is the core of everything.
• 36:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: The core.
• 36:46
  Shelby Strong: That doesn't mean that they want to belong to everyone, but it does mean they want to belong somewhere.
• 36:50
  Shelby Strong: And so if they are being excluded in certain avenues of life, then they're going to go where they feel welcome and where they feel accepted.
• 36:58
  Shelby Strong: But there's, I think that, for folks like geeks and gamers and folks who maybe didn't fit a certain definition of cool, is a little bit of resentment.
• 37:09
  Shelby Strong: There's a little bit of harboring of that sense of being excluded.
• 37:14
  Shelby Strong: And so when tables turn, and they get to be the gatekeeper, some folks jump on that opportunity.
• 37:23
  Shelby Strong: And you know, you get the stereotype of the, the guy who, you know, sees an, uh, someone and quizzes them on obscure Star Wars characters because they're gonna prove their nerd mettle.
• 37:36
  Shelby Strong: They're gonna prove their geek mettle.
• 37:38
  Shelby Strong: They're gonna, you know, I'm going, I'm gonna test whether or not you actually belong here.
• 37:42
  Shelby Strong: And I think in the same way, folks who have self-identified as math people, because of being good at the things that we used to define as being good at math, there is that sense of gatekeeping, that sense of, well, how do I know you actually belong here?
• 38:01
  Shelby Strong: I can't tell you how many students would ask me to multiply two seven digit numbers together to prove that I was good at math.
• 38:07
  Shelby Strong: And I was like, babe, that's
• 38:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I got it all the time.
• 38:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: I got it all the time.
• 38:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: You said something earlier about paying the price.
• 38:14
  Shelby Strong: So if I got called to gaming like I, because I was, I am obsessed with video games and that meant that sometimes that I was not first kid picked in the sports at PE.
• 38:30
  Shelby Strong: Like I, I had to sort of the, the price of popularity for the things that I love.
• 38:37
  Shelby Strong: And I don't know that it's the same way for the kids now.
• 38:40
  Shelby Strong: I think kids have gotten
• 38:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think it's a bit different.
• 38:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's a bit different, but I don't think it's non-existent.
• 38:47
  Shelby Strong: But adults are just tall, hurt kids.
• 38:49
  Shelby Strong: And so don't think that
• 38:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, for sure.
• 38:51
  Shelby Strong: we let go of the things that hurt us when we were younger.
• 38:54
  Shelby Strong: We might say we do
• 38:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: A hundred percent.
• 38:56
  Shelby Strong: There's always that like, like it, it sort of shapes and forms who you are.
• 39:00
  Shelby Strong: And so if I felt like I belonged to mathematics, and belonging to mathematics meant that I was excluded elsewhere, then, if someone else gets to just be good at math, but they didn't have to pay for it with their popularity.
• 39:14
  Shelby Strong: They didn't have pay with their time.
• 39:16
  Shelby Strong: They didn't have to pay for it with who they got to hang out with.
• 39:18
  Shelby Strong: Then they haven't paid the price of admission.
• 39:21
  Shelby Strong: They haven't paid the cost of, you know, like you can enjoy anime and, but it means that you're not going to be cool.
• 39:29
  Shelby Strong: You can enjoy video games, but it means you're not gonna be cool.
• 39:33
  Shelby Strong: And so then if someone else comes along and likes anime and is cool and who likes War Hammer and is cool Henry Cavill, like there's, I think some folks have a sense of resentment towards those folks because how dare you like those things And you didn't have to pay you, you didn't have to to
• 39:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: total sense.
• 39:53
  Shelby Strong: Go in and so it's something that I think the children are a lot better about now, but I wonder if that's because the parameters have shifted and they've got their own thing that like, if you like this thing, then you can't be cool.
• 40:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: yes, I think you're right.
• 40:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think, I think that's a very, very good point.
• 40:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: You just said at the end, maybe they have a new thing that you can't like this and be cool.
• 40:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like what, what, what it is to be cool has changed.
• 40:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like there's a lot there.
• 40:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: I also am wondering, I don't know who Henry, whatever is, I don't know what warheads, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
• 40:26
  Shelby Strong: a Superman, and I'm gonna have to send you a picture of him because he is a,
• 40:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is he a hottie?
• 40:32
  Shelby Strong: man, like.
• 40:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, the reason I bring this up is, is I'm curious if in, uh, gaming culture, because for those,'cause some people listening might have no idea what gamer gate is, by the way.
• 40:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: So can you summarize, can you just in a couple of sentences, because I wanna like say something.
• 40:47
  Shelby Strong: Claimed to be about ethics in journalism that, uh, women who were making video games got favorable coverage and some man children got their undies in a wad over it.
• 41:00
  Shelby Strong: Um, and then it turned into online harassment campaigns, threats of violence, threats of sexual assault, threats of death, and it became this sort of linchpin moment of"we get to set the parameters for whether or not you are allowed to exist in the space that we've claimed as our own".
• 41:21
  Shelby Strong: And that, that has sort of rippled out into anti-war culture into like a lot of, a lot of what we're seeing in modern discourse and the, you know, so-called manosphere and all of these things.
• 41:33
  Shelby Strong: You can sort of trace it back to that moment in time of defining, we set the standard for what it means to be a gamer, we set the standard for what it means to this moment.
• 41:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: And, and and truly, we, one of those standards were that you had to be a man, right?
• 41:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, and, and so now my question is now with what Henry Cavill was that his name with whatever, Superman hottie, who's a gamer?
• 41:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, my, my question is to you,'cause I have no idea.
• 41:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is it gendered or is it like anyone who is traditionally cool and good looking, can't be in?
• 42:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like do the men, are they getting the same bullshit treatment that the women got?
• 42:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is he getting death threats?
• 42:10
  Shelby Strong: I would sincerely doubt if he's getting death threats.
• 42:12
  Shelby Strong: Um, I don't know him personally, so I can't ask, but I
• 42:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna get him on the podcast.
• 42:18
  Shelby Strong: Call his agent, see what happens.
• 42:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, I talk about this so much and you and I talk about it so much.
• 42:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're at such an interesting time where it's like, yeah, things have shifted.
• 42:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're seeing intelligent female characters in teen movies and stuff, but there's still no cheerleader that's good at math.
• 42:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think there's still boundaries around their, these characters like, you know, Ginny and Georgia, like Ginny's pretty and smart and cool, but it's in English.
• 42:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like math is still never brought up.
• 42:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I just think we're still, there's still this very interesting,
• 42:45
  Shelby Strong: did want to ask you about this actually.
• 42:47
  Shelby Strong: Have you seen Mean Girls?
• 42:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Of course.
• 42:50
  Shelby Strong: What do you feel about the character of Cady?
• 42:52
  Shelby Strong: Because does end up having to sacrifice being cool for going to be a athlete?
• 43:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, this is, but this is the most controversial, I think example, because you could say both.
• 43:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: I still think it is a movie personally, where the trope is the cheerleader.
• 43:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Popular girls.
• 43:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: She had to, she was pretending she was dumb in front of them, otherwise she wouldn't be included.
• 43:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: She was dumbing herself down to get the guy.
• 43:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: In the end, she's like, fuck all of that, and she perseveres and she joins the mathletes and everything's good, she decides to be true to herself and go for math.
• 43:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now, the plastics and the cheerleaders sucked, but it was still the divide, right?
• 43:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: She had to choose one or the other,
• 43:34
  Shelby Strong: I mean, quite frankly, I don't know if the plastics are what you aspire to be in life, but,
• 43:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: you don't it.
• 43:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: But that's not the, they, they were also a trope, right?
• 43:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like cheerleaders could be pissed off too and be like, oh my God, why are you painting us like that?
• 43:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, it's always this, it, it's the idea of the dichotomy of the divides of like, there's this group and that group, and the other group, I think, I mean,
• 43:54
  Shelby Strong: I think those tropes only exist in movies sometimes.
• 43:57
  Shelby Strong: 'Cause when I think about my own high school experience, like, yeah, there were athletes, but there were also like, there were athletes who were theater kids.
• 44:05
  Shelby Strong: There were cheerleaders who were not super popular.
• 44:09
  Shelby Strong: I think that we categorize people into like, you must belong to this group, uh, you are an element of this set, and therefore you cannot belong somewhere else.
• 44:19
  Shelby Strong: And yet, a square can also be a rectangle.
• 44:22
  Shelby Strong: If we feel as though we need to belong to one thing, then yes.
• 44:27
  Shelby Strong: If we are cognizant of the fact that humans are just complex, then I think it becomes a little bit easier to be like, okay, you can, you can exist in multitudes.
• 44:38
  Shelby Strong: But I do think that if that's all you have going for you, then you're going to defend that very fiercely.
• 44:44
  Shelby Strong: And I think that some have mistaken a hobby for a personality and don't then realize that they have more work to do on becoming a full, a fully complete human
• 44:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: A lot there.
• 44:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: So much to think about, honestly, I mean there, there's so much that we've gone all over the place here, but I, you're just one of my favorite people to talk to and we have to wrap up.
• 45:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have to wrap up with the final two questions that I ask every single person.
• 45:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Question number one, what, if you could change one thing about the way math is done in schools, what would it be?
• 45:19
  Shelby Strong: I would change the perspective that math is a solo activity, because my favourite memories in college were sitting around on the third floor of the math building with staring up at a whiteboard, trying to solve a problem together, and like throwing different things literally at the wall to see what would stick.
• 45:35
  Shelby Strong: And I think we overemphasize this idea of math as an individual accomplishment when most papers are co-written.
• 45:41
  Shelby Strong: When something like an Erdős number exists, that you know, Erdős number is like a Kevin Bacon number, but for math writers.
• 45:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: We don't have time for this.
• 45:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: David's doing this in his mind, but now I need to know what, just tell me what it is.
• 45:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need to know what it's, no, just tell me,
• 45:55
  Shelby Strong: like how, like if you co-wrote with Paul Erdős a mathematician, you have a number of one.
• 45:59
  Shelby Strong: If you wrote with someone who wrote with Paul Erdős, you have a number of two.
• 46:02
  Shelby Strong: So it's a Kevin
• 46:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: oh, who is this guy?
• 46:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 46:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: That is so fucking nerdy.
• 46:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love Next question.
• 46:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: If somebody was listening to all this and they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Cool, cool.
• 46:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm just not a math person, what would you say?
• 46:15
  Shelby Strong: I'm married to that person, quite frankly, uh, that's my husband.
• 46:18
  Shelby Strong: So I do this for a
• 46:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: The gamer, the geek, huh?
• 46:23
  Shelby Strong: Married to that person.
• 46:23
  Shelby Strong: And what I would say is, okay.
• 46:25
  Shelby Strong: Just like with algorithms where we swung too hard, the other way, we swung too hard into this idea that everyone can be a math person, therefore everyone should be a math person.
• 46:34
  Shelby Strong: And in
• 46:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Love it.
• 46:35
  Shelby Strong: That I am allowed to not like poetry, in the same way that I'm allowed to not like thrillers and like horror movies, I'm allowed to, to not like every aspect of mathematics.
• 46:45
  Shelby Strong: But I do think that that perspective doesn't shift until we open up the meaning of what mathematics is.
• 46:50
  Shelby Strong: Because if you say the word math, and I say the word math and we hold different definitions of that word, we're never gonna be in agreement on what it means to be a math person and whether or not it's okay to be one or not.
• 47:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love it.
• 47:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love everything you said.
• 47:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: I loved having you on.
• 47:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: I could talk to you for 10 more hours.
• 47:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're amazing.
• 47:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're such an inspiration.
• 47:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm so glad, we will leave you with Shelby's favorite question, which is, is a hot dog a sandwich?
• 47:13
  Shelby Strong: You tell us, go to social media and let us know whether or not you think a hot dog is a sandwich.
• 47:18
  Shelby Strong: I'm not wearing my hot dog shirt today, sorry
• 47:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 47:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: You rock.
• 47:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: See you on our our, yeah, bye.
• 47:26
  Shelby Strong: Vanessa.
• 47:27
  Shelby Strong: goodbye.
• 47:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 47:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Goodbye.
• 47:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 47:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, come on, where do I even begin to summarize all of that?
• 47:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, I think one of my favorite things about Shelby is she doesn't hold back.
• 47:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like she doesn't sugarcoat, she just says it like it is, and she's fearless when it comes to holding both institutions and individuals accountable for their role in shaping not just our education system, but our entire world.
• 47:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: And she does all that while holding compassion for all the teachers out there who are literally trying their best within a completely chaotic timeline.
• 47:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: If something in our talk made you like spit out your coffee or react in a far less dramatic but still excited manner to text me, I wanna hear from you.
• 48:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can find the link to text the podcast in your show notes.
• 48:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can email me, you can DM me on Instagram@themathguru.
• 48:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: But also please rate the podcast on your app.
• 48:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Write a quick review if you can, and most importantly, share this episode with one person who needs to hear it.
• 48:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: A reminder that this episode would not exist without the amazing David Kochberg, AKA, our producer and sound engineer, that I'm your host, Vanessa Vakharia, and that the song soundtrack music you're listening to right now is by our band, Goodnight Sunrise.
• 48:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you so much for being here.
• 48:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can't wait to see you next Thursday.
• 48:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: the thing about Shelby guys is Shelby has an opinion on everything, right?
• 48:53
  Shelby Strong: It's true.
• 48:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: And not only that, like, sure, you know what a friend I have says opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.
• 48:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: But the thing is, and I'm not saying this to be demeaning to anyone else, Shelby's opinions are so fascinating to me.
• 49:06
  Shelby Strong: I'm so glad that I have fascinating asshole!
• 49:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 49:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 49:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, we are at a hot start here.
• 49:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let me just say, and that was not, that was not a pun in any way.
• 49:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: That was not related.