Show Me Your Math

Abstract

Since 2007, in the spring of the year, Mi’kmaw students from across Nova Scotia and other parts of Atlantic Canada, have been coming together at the annual Show Me Your Math (SMYM) event to share math fair projects created to demonstrate the results of their own ethnomathematical investigations. In the initial four years of the program, participation at the math fair has ranged from three to five schools, and starting in 2011 all nine schools under the Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey (MK) system participated, and SMYM events have been developed in other jurisdictions including Wolastoqey communities in New Brunswick, and communities in Northern Ontario and Nunavut. Currently in MK schools alone, annual participation includes 200-300 students attending math fairs and thousands of students contributing projects. In this chapter we describe the SMYM event, its origins, and its impact on participating Mi’kmaw schools. We describe the transformative potential of such ethnomathematical activity for both students and their teachers and the enthusiasm of the Mi’kmaw students who, through this work, came to see that mathematical reasoning is part of their own cultural heritage and worldview. Drawing on positioning theory as conceptualized by the social psychology work of Harré and van Langenhove (1999) and its development in the context of mathematics education by Wagner and Herbel-Eisenmann (2009), we describe how this project is challenging traditional storylines in classrooms. We argue that SMYM is contributing to a greater sense of equity by addressing critical questions of identity and power and enabling community voices to be seen as a source of authority. Stories from the communities and the classroom exemplify how this project is lived out in schools and communities. These stories illustrate some of the many benefits of this project and give examples of the impacts on both the students and the communities. We will conclude with strategies and suggestions for how such an event might be enacted in another community.