“It’s Awesome Up Here!”: Engaging with Math Outside the Classroom

By Lauren Siegel @mathhappensorg @mathhappensfoundation

This morning was the first time I was able to introduce Vallejo youngsters to the fractals. They loved them! They always enjoy coloring, but were blown away by the idea of using numbers, math, and shapes to create art. I let them imagine, and two little girls teamed up to figure out that they could use various shapes to make one giant shape and were extremely proud of themselves. Older siblings showed younger siblings how to draw and create art, which made the parents very proud. The parents were thrilled with the concept, and many took blank shapes home to work on when they had more time. They have asked that I use them again!

Mychal, librarian

It’s Awesome Up Here!

A young female visitor to the MathHappens space at the Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota.

Connecting with math outside the classroom can mean more than writing contrived contexts for word problems. Imagine a world where visitors who are exploring a natural environment, pausing to look at specimens of animals and plants, could interact simultaneously with tools of mathematics that help them understand and relate specifically to that place, content, and context. Visitors to the Austin Nature and Science Center enjoy precisely that experience. In the gallery next to an exhibit of live bees maintaining their hive is an interactive model that incorporates moving calipers applied to a photograph of those same bees. Nearby, mirrors reverse-etched with the golden rectangle invite the visitor to be a specimen under study: can you find how your body, like that of a zebra, ant, tree, or bee might display the golden ratio? Others partake in assembling pieces of a golden spiral into a picture that demonstrates the growth pattern of that geometric sequence.

I studied math as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, but I wasn’t inspired to teach until I attended the Saturday Morning Math Group at the University of Texas as a way to supplement my son’s fourth grade school mathematics. Those lectures, intended for high school students, were free and delivered by full professors with clarity, enthusiasm and an intellectual energy that welcomed every person and offered an experience in inquiry learning. I was hooked. I earned my teaching credentials through a program dedicated to training math and science majors to teach in K-12 settings with an inquiry approach. After I had been working with children for a number of years, my family and I founded MathHappens Foundation. We saw a need for informal ways to learn mathematics outside of school, like at museums, nature centers, and libraries. Installations like a pythagorean sculpture and a human sun clock; events like the Lewis Carroll Exhibit; field trip programs like the one for La Belle, a recovered ship from the 1600s; and regular outreach and engagement times at the Austin Nature and Science Center were among the early projects. Over time we have become a trusted partner with the cultural institutions in our community.

With supportive partnerships like the UTeach teacher preparation program which provided interns, MathHappens has been able to focus on our outreach work. Our internship program is a positive work experience which includes hands-on opportunities to design and create math models, to create one of the “math ads” we publish weekly in a 4x4 inch space in the Austin Chronicle newspaper to interact with the public, and to present at conferences in the museum and education professional communities. It was very clear even early on that MathHappens Foundation could not simply distribute grants, we needed to develop and do projects, mentor and train staff, find partnerships and collaborators, and build a portfolio of ways to integrate math learning into our cultural landscape that we can share with others. Supporting other individuals and organizations furthers our mission to increase engagement and outreach.

Puzzles for a public mathematical play space for the Lewis Carroll 150th Anniversary Exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center. The Harry Ransom Center is an archive with a collection of rare books, art, and artifacts that include a Guttenburg bible, the first photograph, an extensive Lewis Carroll Collection, rare books and manuscripts, and thousands of film movie posters, many donated as entire collections. The Lewis Carroll 150th anniversary exhibit offered us an opportunity to create physical puzzles to go with the ones on display, to engage with the public by staffing the space, and to experience a high traffic public event, Explore UT.

Along with the other items in this exhibit, the museum planned to display a puzzle handwritten by Lewis Carroll but they did not know what the 64=65 on the small envelope containing 4 pieces of grid paper meant. We recognized this classic puzzle and were able to contribute an understanding of the artifact and also were able to make a wooden version in a frame so that visitors could play with the pieces and explore the puzzle deepening their understanding of the math and connect this playful puzzle to Carroll’s other work in the exhibit. In doing so we added a valuable, tactile, interactive element to this item which was displayed behind glass. (See photo.)

The success of the models, the positive experience of our staff who were University of Texas students, and the positive reception by the visitors inspired us to do more.

Proportional golden ratio calipers for the Austin Nature and Science Center. At our local Nature and Science Center we chose to connect the natural world with mathematical relationships by creating a proportional caliper to create a tool for seeking the golden ratio in a variety of shells, bones, plants, and animals. We also designed, cut, and painted pieces for a golden spiral and prepared an exhibit that has been on display for over six years.

Using the calipers, and also analyzing and understanding how to build them, allows us to pursue explorations and discussion of a variety of concepts including ratio, proportion, geometric proofs, irrational numbers, and more.

Replicas of Mathematical Tools of Navigation at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.

With the installation of La Belle, a wooden ship that sailed with La Salle's last expedition to the new world, in the flagship Texas State History Museum, we had the opportunity to explore and replicate those tools as well as design a field trip program.

A Catalog of Reference Models. As we considered models for teaching and as we listened to educators in our community and at conferences we built our catalog of reference models. Find files and ideas by searching our blog for “Take and Make,” which are posts with links to CAD files that include information about how to make the project. We have also sent thousands of models for free to educators all over the world.

Math crafts that offer the opportunity to make and personalize.

MathHappens Rooms. We staff and supply places to play with math. Period. Interacting with the public is much easier when there is a model to investigate or a project to make. When people engage with math in a physical way, there are no right or wrong answers. The conversations and creativity flow, and everyone participates in the discussion.

Our goal is to create connection, familiarity, informal enthusiasm, and appreciation for mathematics in all people who come in contact with our exhibits. A side benefit is that these experiences also build real mathematical skills whether geometric, computational, reasoning, or logical. Over the past ten years we have shown that we can apply the same approaches to mathematics that we use for recreational sports, art appreciation, theater, and literature: provide places to learn through play, invite families to learn together, and engage the public regardless of age or even interest. We use peer mentoring when we invite a visitor to be a teacher by giving away an optical illusion or magic trick or make-and-take that can be taken home so the learning is shared to a wider circle without us. We can increase access and engagement when we offer a regular “math ad” in the newspaper, and we have earned a loyal and sometimes passionate following. We support entertainments like Matheatre (matheatre.com) for large groups and we engage in “math busking” (performances of small math tricks or puzzles) for small audiences. We follow the example of museums which use storytelling to teach about their collections, and we feature the history of and people in mathematics solely or woven into the history of our culture and community when we facilitate math field trips. We look for opportunities to participate in community events like Nerd Night which is a monthly collection of eclectic twenty-minute presentations, book readings, and even story time at bookstores and libraries. We are supplying libraries with collections of mathematical models and activities in hopes of increasing demand for and attention to math resources in that space, and we are outfitting social and emotional wellness rooms with tiled activities.

Every museum should have some math on their signage, exhibits, or displays. Every community should have an answer to the question “when is the math festival?” Every middle and high school should have at least one math field trip. The Museum of Illusions (museumofillusions.com) is a really nice, if expensive, example of a commercial place to have fun with mathematics. We need more. We can create ways to overcome phobias and insecurities by expanding learning experiences with math to include play, creativity, humor, and human connection.

MathHappens Foundation is seeking opportunities to collaborate with university students, educators, and museums to create more learning spaces like the MathHappens Room. We also offer a micro internship for college and graduate students that pays a stipend and expenses and provides mentoring for people interested in learning to access makerspace resources, create models, and host a math outreach table or event within their community. We can also loan you a table of models, displays, and activities for a pop-up exhibit or you can work with us to set up a permanent or recurring Math Room. We would love to hear from you. Contact us at info@mathhappens.org or through our website at https://www.mathhappens.org//.

Lauren Siegel has been the Executive Director of MathHappens Foundation for ten years, she is also a University of Chicago Graduate, a University of Texas UTeach alumnus and former classroom teacher. She learned how to use a laser cutter as a recreation that would be completely different from teaching and soon found ways to combine the two in pursuit of the foundation’s mission to make math learning more widely available and accessible to the public.