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Students chose a STEM figure in Black History and created a presentation detailing their contributions to society.

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Students learned about Offense of Line Football Player and his passion over math, John Urschel

Students talked in their groups about the videos that they watched and thing that they learned from John Urschel.

Video #1
https://youtu.be/DFawuH2mSDE
Video #2
https://youtu.be/G5FNHE_EcRA

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Black History Month: John Urschel, Mathematician | Penn State

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Students chose a black mathematician from a list they could research for the first 10 minutes of 5 blocks in Feb. After writing a personal note, asking questions and giving their thoughts, we sent out messages to them or families of those who had passed.

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We learned about African fractals, drew our own version of fractals in our notebook and then searched up other fractals in real life that we may/ may have not known about.

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The Challenge: Create a self-repeating pattern - a fractal. You may choose your own design, or perhaps you recreate some of the ones from Ron Eglash's survey studying the fractal formation of African villages. I did both of these looking at the applet at his website.

Materials Needed: paper and pencil, likely, but you can probably get more creative than that, too! Maybe using sculptural materials?
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, fractals

The History: Ron Eglash noticed aerial footage, in 1988, showing that the layout of African villages built in fractal formations. He got a grant to travel the continent for a year studying these fractal formations, and wrote a book (a PDF available here). This article does a nice job of outlining what he discovered, and his TED talk is below:

I really love the depth with which he's studying how the creators of these villages consider them and their structure. I must admit, I have not yet read his entire book - just passages here and there. It is certainly on my "currently reading shelf".

His conclusions are fascinating, and raise all sorts of new questions for me. For example, he hypothesized that all (or most) indigenous cultures would replicate these fractal patterns, but found that to not be the case. These fractals are largely unique to Africa.

"But if fractal architecture is simply the automatic result of a non-state social organization, then we should see fractal settlement patterns in the indigenous societies of many parts of the world...we will examine the settlement patterns found in the indigenous societies of the Americas and the South Pacific, but our search will turn up very few fractals. Rather than dividing the world between a Euclidean West and fractal non-West, we will find that each society makes use of its particular design themes in organizing its built environment." (Eglash, p. 39)

Chicago's WBEZ has a great piece (~50 minutes) about this from last year that led me to Eglash's fantastic computing website https://csdt.org/ There, you can play with fractals, read some about the history of various ethnomathematical concepts and explore how and where mathematics appears in culture. I made this using an applet on the website:

The website and WBEZ piece go into bit about African hairstyles and pulls in Nnedi Okorafor's brilliant book Binti, which is an Afrofuturistic novel about an African girl who is a mathematical genius. The mathematics behind cornrows also appears in Dr. Shelly Jones's book, Women Who Count .

In sum, I'm grateful for the depth of Eglash's work highlighting these structures, although I do take issue with at least one of his premises:

"Unconscious structures do not count as mathematical knowledge, even though we can use mathematics to describe them." (p. 12)

I think of these "unconscious structures" as the foundation of human mathematical knowledge. I want to celebrate my student's inborn mathematical tendencies as the first layer of mathematical understanding. To honor the idea that teachers should never be the sole "knowers of things" in a classroom we need to celebrate the inborn mathematics our students bring to our classrooms. We want to invite and encourage our students to build upon their inherent mathematical tendencies. That said, I do appreciate the distinction Eglash makes between those structures built mathematically without conscious effort and those that are built conscious of mathematical structures. They are worth studying differently.

So, go, explore the website, read the book, and play with fractals. And ABSOLUTELY, when you bring fractals up in class, make sure that if you're sharing that Mandelbrot "discovered" them in the 1970's, share that he definitely wasn't the first. Let our Black students revel in and explore their mathematical history.
Depending on how you use this activity, you may engage with different mathematical standards. I've listed possible connected math content above. Here are a few suggestions for how you might integrate the 8 mathematical practices. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!
3.) Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. What is a fractal? How do we recognize them in society?

6.) Attend to precision. How do we describe fractals? How do we decide who is the "discoverer" of a piece of mathematics? Who should get credit for mathematic structures?

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Two different fractal images based on Ron Eglash's study of fractals in African culture. The Challenge: Create a self-repeating pattern - a fractal. You may choose your own design, or perhaps you recreate some of the ones from Ron Eglash's survey studying the fractal formation of African villages.

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Every day the students were introduced to a Black Inventor and how they have shaped our lives today. We recognized Inventors like, Fredrick McKinley Jones, George Crum/ Speck, Henry Boyd, and Shirley Jackson. And MANY more!

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Ray: Hidden Figures Movie with Review Questions

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Ray: Hidden Figures Movie with Review Questions

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Students watched the movie and answered a series of questions as the watched and then at the end we discussed how Nasa changed based off different struggles students saw throughout the movie.

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Our US History team taught an introductory lesson around Civil Rights using The PBS Austin Revealed series - featuring entirely black voices across the last 100 years of Austin, including the story of the original LC Anderson HS

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Our US History team taught an introductory lesson around Civil Rights using The PBS Austin Revealed series - featuring entirely black voices across the last 100 years of Austin, including the story of the original LC Anderson HS

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US History - Miller -  I also used the Katherine G Johnson clips from Hidden Figures to teach the Space Race period of the Cold War, and continue our look at segregation/integration.   Of course, it's a great example of black excellence and resilience.   

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US History - Miller -  I also used the Katherine G Johnson clips from Hidden Figures to teach the Space Race period of the Cold War, and continue our look at segregation/integration.   Of course, it's a great example of black excellence and resilience.   

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Students analyzed how the American Dream affected Black people throughout history. Many of them knew the basics of Black history, but most did not understand its impact throughout the years. Students reported learning more how people actually lived in those situations.

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Art I: Deborah Roberts Collages

We analyzed and studied the work of local black artist Deborah Roberts. Students are learning how to draw facial features and then incorporate those into a collage, similar to Ms. Robert's style of art.

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HIDDEN FIGURES DISCUSSION/FILM

The film 'Hidden Figures' follows 3 black women working at NASA during the 1950's. They include: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. Each day we watched videos detailing their lives/careers and the impact they had on the mathematical, technological, and social advancement of the United States.  I also showcased clips from the movie that showcase a pivotal moment in their careers. Below are some of the videos I used:
MARY JACKSON HIGHLIGHT

DOROTHY VAUGHAN HIGHLIGHT

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NASA Trailblazer: Katherine Johnson | National Geographic

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Draw like Lois Mailou Jones

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Graphic Design 1&2, Digital Design & Media Production, and

Principles of Art AV Tech classes created:

Black History Month Poster

Digital Design & Media Production and Principles of Art AV Tech classes:

Black History in Film analysis

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Cosmo will participate in tomorrow's black history month festival at Crockett doing braids and polish change

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Watching video

Pioneers of African-American Cinema.

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Preserving the history of America’s first black filmmakers

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Celebrating Black History Month | Poetry Foundation

We explored poetry from black authors today! Everyone selected a poem to analyze and appreciate. Next class, we will dig deeper into a specific poet and her work.

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Celebrating Black History Month | Poetry Foundation

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Poems, articles, and podcasts that explore African American history and culture.

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-Everyday look into Black sociologists and psychologists (profiles)
-Researching and presenting on the contributions and areas of thought/perspective of WEB DuBois, James E. Blackwell, William Julius Wilson, Joyce Ladner, Audre Lorde, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin and August Wilson
-Culture Unit: Black Excellence and Influence within American culture over time and in the modern eras

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Smith is right- we’ve got a daily profile of Black excellence that we share as a warm up or close out each day this month.

And our US history classes are making explicit connections with black history in our Cold War, 1950s, and Civil Rights lessons

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We as a department all chose a person to make a slide over for the month. Each day we are going over each one and sharing their story.