As I prepared for my second interview recently at a school where I would very much like to teach math, I was reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for a Basic Income, and his comment that “social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 22.). I hope I have made this mini-lesson, and all of my teaching, relevant to both the current and future lives of my students.
Here are some of the interesting resources I came across while planning my lesson on Slope, which I called “Rice and Riots” to illustrate that a line can tell you a lot.
“ancient egypt 3-4-5” gives this: Google image search for 345 Right Triangle
and this Rosicrucian paper seems to have been copied with cuter images across several different websites, while quotes from the Rhind Papyrus make me want to spend all of my time just studying ancient works, and this fascinating proposal to rename the Pythagorean Theorem actually cites interesting sources.
And from an EduTopia article on “6 Ways to Help Students Understand Math” (too bad the pdf is no longer online): now we can teach the way I wanted to teach back in 2002!! Ahem:
“2. Introduce topics using multiple representations.
The more types of representations that you can present to students addressing their different learning styles, the more likely they will truly understand the concept being presented. Different representations could include using manipulatives, showing a picture, drawing out the problem, and offering a symbolic representation. For example, when presenting linear relationships with one unknown, illustrate to students the same problem as an equation, on a number line, in words, and with pictures. Students who are exposed to and can recognize the same relationship posed in the different representational modes are more likely to have conceptual understanding of the relationship and perform better on assessments (PDF).”
Ranger Mayann 
My original point had been that the point of that lesson plan was to get across to students that the slope, the line showing how fast the price of rice had risen and how steeply, could predict riots, given that rice was a basic food most people needed to live on, and that most people were already barely able to buy rice to begin with. But clearly, the maths overshadowed the message.
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