[00:00:00] Crystal Watson:

Nobody walks into a room and says, "I can't read y'all!" Like, but everybody says, I'm not a math person. And I say, we are all math people. We just do it differently.

Show intro

[00:00:12] Vanessa Vakharia: Hi, I'm Vanessa Vakharia, aka The Math Guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that explores the root causes of math trauma, and the empowering ways we can heal from it.

Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist. But the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry, no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast

Intro

[00:00:39] Vanessa Vakharia: I knew I would love today's guest when we instantly bonded over our love of crystals, astrology, and of course, making math education relevant to the kids we teach. There is no one else like Crystal Watson; she's a math educator who truly walks the walk when it comes to student-centered learning, and I've never met anyone more invested in making sure that their students see themselves in the math they're not only doing, but creating as a collective in the classroom. 

Today we talk about how to go about centering students in the classroom, how to truly teach math with social justice in mind, what critical race theory is and what it definitely isn't, and finally, why liking both math and astrology shouldn't be weird. 

Making math personal

[00:01:21] Vanessa Vakharia: Crystal, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:26] Crystal Watson: Hey, Vanessa V.

[00:01:29] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. So I knew we'd be best friends from the moment we met and discovered that we were both into like astrology and witchiness and math. And I know this might seem like why, but I've been meaning to ask you this in a public forum, ever since that moment: why do you think that people are so blown away that we're like into astrology and math? Like why is that like a weird thing? Do you get that? Is it just me or does that happen to you?

[00:01:52] Crystal Watson: No, you know what, full transparency, like astrology, I think there's a huge spectrum on how into it you are. 

[00:02:00] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. 

[00:02:01] Crystal Watson: So me, I'm like a dibbler and dabbler. Some of my besties are like real into it. I know you are, you're gonna read my birth chart, I'm gonna send you my information. But, I think it's hard for folks to wrap their minds around believing in something and science. Right? 

So like you can believe in something and also honor the sciences. And I'd also argue that math is a language too, so if you want to like, get into the humanities piece of it too, I think math kind of straddles that fence, but I think that's what it is, it's closed mindedness. It'sfolks that can't fathom the fact that we can believe in something and also situate ourselves in the sciences.

[00:02:46] Vanessa Vakharia: Well, yeah, like I had people, when I was posting about astrology when I first started learning it, I had people messaging me being like, no one's gonna take you seriously. This is like dumbing down, or this is negating your expertise in math. And I was like, what?

[00:02:59] Crystal Watson: Think about the ways in which we make sense of astrology, we make sense of music, we make sense of the world around us. It's all mathematical. So astrology, how do you think that they came up with all of these constellations and things like that? You needed some geometry. know what I mean? To understand how far they are away from us you needed your mathematics. 

Music. Music is a huge part of me as a math teacher and educator. And, I allow space for my students to really explore music through mathematics. You know, beats per minute and cadence of your voice and fluctuations between your tone and things like that, it's all mathematical. Once you realize that, it's like, yo, okay, math isn't just, you know, two plus two.

[00:03:47] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, totally. And also like this kind of leads to what I think you're all about, which is enabling student voice, like allowing students to bring their whole selves. And so like I always think of this as, sure if you want to put me into a category and say to me, you either need to pick between math and astrology because the two can't coexist, what am I gonna choose? Obviously astrology,

[00:04:10] Crystal Watson: Yeah. Whatever gives you joy,

[00:04:12] Vanessa Vakharia: Whatever gives you joy, exactly! Like, why do we have to split? And it's like, that actually is part of the problem, those comments I got are part of the problem of being like, how are you defining somebody who quote unquote believes in math or is good at math? Do they have to sacrifice other parts of their identity? So like, tell me about how you like, do it.

[00:04:29] Crystal Watson: First of all, I do it by not giving a shit what other people think. Right? So if, um, you know, it, it, well it's, it's hard. Because it depends on what space you're in, who you're around, what's at stake. And I'm thinking about, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad and talking about her newest book, Unearthing Joy, or I'm thinking about her, her approach to black and brown children as genius, right? And situating everything in joy. How do we do that if we're not authentic? If you are not authentic and you don't know yourself, how do you even know what brings you joy?

So if I don't know what brings me joy, I will be all mathematical, right? Because I know I'm good at it. But I'm gonna tell you a little backstory. I was never good at math, I never thought myself good at math, right? I was a terrible math student. My math teachers will tell you, like today, they'd be like, I cannot believe she's a math educator. Um, because I would skip assignments, I would play around in class, all of those different things because I had so much anxiety about being wrong.

But once I found joy in it, and the joy to me is helping students see themselves in the world around them through mathematics. So that happens to be social justice, right? So like understanding that we are all up against something. And how do we use math in that space, in whatever we're up against, to make sense of it and liberate and get free. And do it with joy. 

So the art and the music and whatever else that kids bring into the space, I have kids that wanna do landscaping businesses and et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like, at the beginning of every year I ask them, what brings you joy? Tell me what brings you joy. And I try to weave something in every single day and every single aspect, in the teaching space.

So I think that having a good balance of, I'm gonna be me and haters are just people with, um, broken hearts that have become un, that are unmended. Right? And I got that from some meme. 

[00:06:37] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, great. Memes are very useful though. This is like, we need this, ok. 

[00:06:41] Crystal Watson: Yes, And, and just being unapologetic about me being good at math, but I'm also gonna do this other thing, and whatever that is, you know, if I'm gonna take a pole dancing class, which I do. 

[00:06:51] Vanessa Vakharia: Yes. Oh my God, you must be so fit, like the strength to pull yourself on that pole? 

[00:06:56] Crystal Watson: No ma'am. No. 

[00:06:58] Vanessa Vakharia: What? it looks so hard. You have core strength, don't you? Like, don't you lift?

[00:07:03] Crystal Watson: Ma'am,

[00:07:07] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh My God, no one has ever called me, ma'am, on this podcast!

[00:07:10] Crystal Watson: Ma'am,

[00:07:12] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my god. 

[00:07:13] Crystal Watson: My strength actually lies in my legs, okay. So I fall a lot and I can't really get up the pole, but baby, I will dance around that thing.

[00:07:23] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God. Oh my God. I really wanna take, I'm actually glad we're talking about this. I just feel like I'm gonna injure myself, but like, 

[00:07:29] Crystal Watson: No. Do it. 

[00:07:31] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, okay. Okay. Let's, okay, so first of all, I'm sorry, I'm still not even over the ma'am thing, I'm like, okay, I don't know how I feel about this, but like, I'm glad came from you. Okay. 

[00:07:39] Crystal Watson: Hold on, that's a black girl thing, that's a black girl thing. That's what we do when we are with somebody that we're comfortable with.

[00:07:45] Vanessa Vakharia: I love it!

[00:07:45] Crystal Watson: It's a ma'am or a sir. So that's a term of endearment.

[00:07:48] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God. Thank you for teaching me! Okay, well see, so I'm actually glad we clarified this to be honest, because what I was actually feeling, I'll tell you my complex emotions that just happened. I was thinking, I hate being called ma'am normally because it means that somebody thinks, like a, the little boy at the grocery store is like, ma'am, and I'm like, fuck you. But what I was thinking is I really just enjoyed when you called me ma'am, and I was trying to, I was like, why am I liking this when I'm so against it? And now I feel like we just figured it out. 

[00:08:16] Crystal Watson: Yeah. Come from here. 

[00:08:17] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my god Crystal. This is very fucking cool. Okay. 

Giving students voice in class

[00:08:21] Vanessa Vakharia: All right, let's move, let's move on. 

I wanna get back to the student voice thing. Cause I actually think it is one of the coolest things about you, is every time I talk to someone about you or I read something about you, they're always like, Crystal is the first person to ask her students what they want or what they think. So yes, you're talking about bringing relevance into the classroom for your students and respecting them as their whole selves. 

But tell me more about how, cause I think a lot of teachers would find it hard to be like, well, what do you mean, asking our students what they think? Like, I need to be the front of the room. I need to be like, how do you mitigate that and how do you negotiate that?

[00:08:53] Crystal Watson: Oh, and people ask me that question a lot, what are the steps to take to do this? 

[00:08:58] Vanessa Vakharia: Right. 

[00:08:59] Crystal Watson: And it's really hard for me to put it in steps because it's authentic to me. I want to know what kids think, I want to know what young people think. But I think the first step is to actually relinquish a tiny bit of control, And it doesn't have to be, you're sitting, I think it scares folks to think, oh, well, if I'm not at the front of the class, where am I? Oh, I'm sitting at my desk, or I'm in the classroom with the kids and they don't respect me as an authority. And they do, and they'll respect you even more as authority if you allow them space in order to influence what gets, what are they held accountable for, in the math space or in the school. 

Um, if they have influence over what that is, think about the last time that somebody imposed a rule on you and think about the last time somebody asked you your feedback about a community agreement and how those two things were different. 

[00:09:53] Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.

[00:09:55] Crystal Watson: So I just take it a step further to ask, at the end of every week, and I have tons of receipts for this. So if anybody ever needed a an example, I did Pear Deck a lot, even during virtual, I would ask my students, how are you feeling? How was this week? What can Ms. Watson do to help you feel better in the classroom when it comes to making mistakes? Cause I'll tell you, I was not always the best teacher at letting mistakes happen. 

I wanted to pick my babies up, right? I wanted to be like, oh, it's okay. You're making a mistake, but let me fix that for you. Um, instead of just allowing the space. So just taking it a little bit further to let them inform my practice, so that the math class is ours and not Ms. Watson's that they're just frequenting in a one bell, a day. It's, it's our space.

[00:10:45] Vanessa Vakharia: My God, this sounds like somewhere I wanna be in. This sounds like such a nice like, warm fuzzy place! Well, no, because it's like,you hear talk about this, but I think it's like, it's such a new idea, like this idea of like de fronting the classroom or like 

[00:10:58] Crystal Watson: Yeah. 

[00:10:58] Vanessa Vakharia: Not being the authority and not always needing to be right. It's so different than what the conversation was literally even five years ago. Like it's 

[00:11:05] Crystal Watson: Yeah. 

[00:11:05] Vanessa Vakharia: It's so brand new. And I know that most of our students at The Math Guru, they certainly aren't experiencing this. They're experiencing, they're sitting, they're doing math in rows, they have a teacher that, right. Whatever. 

And so I guess one question I have is how do you think not doing this, has been the sort, I'm trying to think of how to phrase this, but kind of like, how do you think what not doing this has led to so much of the math anxieties and traumas that kids have?

[00:11:29] Crystal Watson: We're not letting them operate as their authentic selves in math.

[00:11:34] Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm. 

[00:11:34] Crystal Watson: And I have a lot of friends, most of my friends are humanities teachers, right? Humanities educators. And we have conversations about this and they're like, oh yeah, they get to sit with a text and find the ways in which they, they see themselves or they relate to characters and they really get to unfold the characters and the plot.

And I'm like, why do we not allow that to happen in math? Why can they not sit with a problem? And that's why, you know, I subscribe to Dr. Child's notion about rich tasks, right? So in a math class, letting a group of young people together or by themselves, whatever feels right for them, sit with a problem that has words and context.

Because when you're in an English classroom, we're not just giving you a, a sentence that has no context around it. We're giving you context so that you understand the vocabulary and you understand why the characters are who they are. And you get to see this beautiful picture be painted, right? The painted essay for instance, right? And then we get into mathematics and it's like, we don't have time for that, can you compute this. Right. 

So really situating in the fact that we need to let students see themselves, put their own experiences within a problem, right? And understand that the standards are there as a guide. They're not there for you to regurgitate. They're there to say, this is what a student needs to do in order to be successful in upcoming maths or upcoming units within the math class. But how you do it is all up to you, and you can get as creative as you want to. You can get as creative as your students want to.

Right, and that goes back to asking them, because you're gonna try and you're gonna fail forward. So you're gonna try and you're gonna be like, oh, that sucked. Especially like, you know, that first bell, first bell never gets, what your third bell got, right? So you fail, you fix it, you fail, you fix it, and at one point you get it really right, based on what your students have told you, going through that process.

Who defines "success"?

[00:13:49] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. I have to like, I'm laughing because my next question, I just like think about what you just said and my next question literally says, I'm gonna read it verbatim. 

Something I'm really curious about is success versus failure. We talk a lot about helping kids fail forward and shit, but we never, 

But you literally, just said, you just said fail forward. So I'm laughing so hard, but, but we never talk about success. And I'm actually wondering, like when I'm hearing you talk about this, like yes, you're talking about teachers in a way, like failing and trying and whatever, but I wanna kind of flip this to the students, and my thought is, I've been talking a lot about this lately, and I just kind of wanted your opinion. Like our idea of success in math class, like you're talking about standards, and often our,our version of success is like, did they like, quote unquote meet the standards? What was their mark? That kind of thing. And I've been thinking a lot lately that that leaves so many kids outta the conversation. 

[00:14:37] Crystal Watson: Absolutely. Yep.

[00:14:38] Vanessa Vakharia: So how can we, when we're talking about bringing student voice into this, like how can we broaden the scope of what success means to like allow every student's unique successes to shine? Is that like a thing you do?

[00:14:51] Crystal Watson: So I, I pose a question to you and to whoever's listening, who gets to define success in the math classroom?

[00:14:59] Vanessa Vakharia: Yes. Well, I mean, I don't have an, I mean, I feel like normally it's the teacher defines it and imposes it on the student. 

[00:15:07] Crystal Watson: And the teacher gets the definition of success from the systems in which we're steeped in, right? So whatever our system is or whatever the mechanisms are within that system, that is where we get the definition of success. And it's often rooted in what has been the norm based on white culture.

[00:15:28] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God. Wait, this is my next question! Like, you're one step ahead of me! Go. Let's hear it. I wa, I really wanna talk about this

[00:15:34] Crystal Watson: So, and when I say white culture, I don't mean white people like, please, please, please, that, that is one of my, oh my gosh.

[00:15:42] Vanessa Vakharia: Let's clear the air. 

[00:15:44] Crystal Watson: When I say white culture, I don't mean white people. I mean white culture, which is the dominant norm, at least in my country. And I would say in multiple parts of the world, because if it weren't, we would honor darker skin, we wouldn't have folks bleaching themselves in different parts of our world, we wouldn't have people calling different dialects, you know, "vernacular" which, anyway, I could go off on that. 

[00:16:09] Vanessa Vakharia: Go off!

[00:16:10] Crystal Watson: We use

[00:16:11] Vanessa Vakharia: But that was a great explanation. Okay.

[00:16:13] Crystal Watson: Yes, but success is such a, success means something different to me than it does to you, to the person next to me, et cetera, et cetera. And it's so funny because my friend Izzy sent me this Twitter feed from yesterday where it was talking about the words "black excellence", and talking about like black excellence is often tied to capitalism and elitism. And those are two things that are not gonna get us free. 

[00:16:43] Vanessa Vakharia: Can you explain that a bit too, like I wanna like hear more about that. 

[00:16:47] Crystal Watson: Yes. So, we don't see black excellence in, and I say we, when I say that, I mean typically, right? 

[00:16:55] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. 

[00:16:55] Crystal Watson: Typically we don't see black excellence, or brown excellence, or excellence at all in the stay-at-home mom that is able to wake up in the morning, get all of her kids up, lunches made, drop off at school, come back, clean the house, do all the laundry. 

That's not excellence to us. What's excellent to us is seeing folks in their you know, Tom Ford get ups, sitting at the Grammy tables. Like that's, that's excellence to us. Typically. We have to really work hard to see excellence in everyday life, because we are steeped in like this capitalistic, elite culture. 

And everybody's aspiring to it. I can't tell you how many students I come across that are like, Ms. Watson, I'm going to the league, I'm going to be the next NBA young boy or whatever, and that's okay that that's your dream. If that's your freedom dream, I'm gonna support you. But at the same time, like that doesn't have to be it. I also have students that are like, you know what? I just wanna take over the family business. My dad owns a car detailing shop. Perfect. Let's figure out how do we do that within the math class, how do we get you there?

[00:18:02] Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:03] Crystal Watson: So just really celebrating excellence as a daily thing and not like just Jay-Z and Beyonce, right? Or like, you know, or like Bad Bunny. You know, like they're not the only folks that are doing excellent things. And nine times outta 10, they're not doing as excellent as like our regular mom and pops every single day, right.

[00:18:27] Vanessa Vakharia: And also like, what does that even mean? That's what I kind of even think with the term excellence. Like I, when I think about success, I got get so caught up in like the linguistics of it almost, and like the etymology of the word and I'm like, hold on a second, what, like you said, like who's defining success? 

So let's, let's go back to that idea right, of you, saying that it is defined and rooted in white culture. Let's just go back to that for a second and talk about what that means. So if someone's like, but what does that mean? 

[00:18:54] Crystal Watson: So this takes me to,kind of the overall social climate and political climate that is at least happening in the United States, right? So, we are, everybody's like, oh, they're teaching our kids to hate themselves and, et cetera, et cetera, right? So I feel like when we're talking about white culture, it's okay to identify the fact that every single system is built to advance the very small part of white culture that is elite, right?

So even our education system was built to weed out the labored from the elite, right? So our elite go and get.

[00:19:40] Vanessa Vakharia: Cause this might seem so ignorant, but I wanna like be so clear, cause I feel like I don't even entirely know. When we say elite, what do we mean?

[00:19:49] Crystal Watson: Ooh, elite. Um, so like that top 1%, right? So the folks that come from money, the folks that have some generational wealth, which we know historically marginalized and historically excluded folks, didn't come from 

[00:20:03] Vanessa Vakharia: Didn't come from. Okay. That, that makes sense. Like we're

[00:20:05] Crystal Watson: When you brought us our beautiful country, right? That's where we had our, our riches, and that's where we got to bask in our joy on a daily basis. We were brought here and we were not part of the elite. 

[00:20:20] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Got it. Yes. 

[00:20:21] Crystal Watson: And then you'll learn about some black folks that got here, got under some different plantation owners and became plantation owners on themselves. That wasn't because they're anybody, you know, that's not what all black folks were supposed to do. That's because they drank the Kool-Aid. 

[00:20:37] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. 

[00:20:38] Crystal Watson: They drink the Kool-Aid, like, yeah, this is what I wanna do because I want what that white person has. My needs have to be tied to white needs for them to matter. 

[00:20:48] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Yes, yes. 

So this makes a lot of sense. So we're, we're going back to success, and success in math class. And this actually reminds me of a conversation I was having with someone the other day where she was like talking about how, you know, like all parents want their kids to be successful. And I was like, but what does that mean? And she was like, like successful. And I was like, do you mean happy? And she was like, well no, because we all know what success really means. It means you make money, you have a job, right? Like it means all the things like, and so I think this is very interesting to be like, hold on, when we back up, when we peel back the layer, success is defined in a certain way by a certain group of people and we are all clamoring to reach that status.

So if we are doing that, first of all we're leaving out people who like don't believe in that version of success. So like if in class you're kind of like the classic, well, you need this to get a job, you need this to get into university. And half of your students, or even one student is like, I don't wanna go to university, like, I don't even want that for myself. So what's my motivation here? 

So circling back to what you were saying, of like, but if we incorporate student voice and what the kids want, if we're like, you wanna take over the family business? Great. That's your version of success. Let's make you feel. Okay. I'm getting it. I'm completely getting it. I really love it. 

[00:21:58] Crystal Watson: We've gotta let folks define success for themselves. We can't keep putting it on them. And I learned that from, honestly, my own life. My sister, who is, and hopefully she won't mind me sharing her story, but my sister, she is my middle sister and. I tell her all the time, like, you're so country, we're so different. She would be, she would live out in the woods barefoot if she could function, like, if she could 

[00:22:23] Vanessa Vakharia: Same. 

[00:22:24] Crystal Watson: She really would seriously. And, all the pagan things that, that folks, you know, shun, she would live in that manner every single day. If she absolutely could. And I've learned a lot from her about the definition of success because I used to worry about her all the time.

Like, how is she gonna feed her family? How is she gonna do pay bills, et cetera, et cetera. She's got my nephew and her husband, and they're both the same. And they would not be considered wealthy, but nobody's starving. They get to do things that they want to do, and they're happy. And if that's their version of success, who am I to come in and be like, well, what are you doing next? She never went to school. She got her certification in equine science. Like she wanted to horse trainer. She'll try anything. And that's her version of success. And who am I to come back and be like, well, why didn't you go to Columbia? Or why didn't you, you know what I mean? Like, but that was my version, which is cause I like to learn. I don't go because I want to make more money. Clearly I'm a te, I'm an educator like, you know. 

I go because I'm thirsty. I'm hungry for knowing, right? And experiencing and seeing, and really like living others' experiences through education. So that, that's my version of success. And it, and it's not the same for everybody. And we've gotta get out of the fact that we want them to make, you know, 60 K and be able to, be a middle, you know, upper middle class or middle class or whatever.

If you're not in poverty, then go forward, you know?Poverty is something totally different and I think the systems are what keep us in poverty. People should be able to live. Meagerly, if they need to. They can't do that in our current system because we make every, uh, there's no freaking reason I'm paying $6 for eggs.

[00:24:21] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God. Wait, this is so funny. Somebody else from America said this to me recently and I was like, sorry. Like we've always paid $6 for eggs.

[00:24:29] Crystal Watson: Okay. Y'all are tripping. Like that shit,

[00:24:32] Vanessa Vakharia: Their eggs, do you know in the States their eggs used to be like a dollar? Am I right? Like a dollar or two?

[00:24:37] Crystal Watson: Last year I got a dozen of eggs for like $1.19. 

[00:24:40] Vanessa Vakharia: What the fuck. Okay. Honestly, that's crazy.

[00:24:43] Crystal Watson: Milk for, milk will go on sale for 99 cents 

[00:24:46] Vanessa Vakharia: Excuse me. Is this because you guys have like antibiotics in your milk and eggs?

[00:24:51] Crystal Watson: Absolutely we do. So like if you're organic, you do organic, you know, no R B H, those types of things, then you're gonna pay a little more. 

[00:24:58] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my 

[00:24:59] Crystal Watson: But, 

[00:24:59] Vanessa Vakharia: I'm dying. Dollar eggs!

[00:25:01] Crystal Watson: But you're right. We have a lot of banned substances in our food, so maybe that's why it's cheap. I don't know. 

[00:25:06] Vanessa Vakharia: I think that might be why. 

The problem with grades

[00:25:07] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, But, but this brings up a very interesting point. Okay. Which is, the idea of, I actually feel like math class is almost this place where it's either the worst place to get your definition of success, or it's like the best place for us to finally change the definition of success.

Because so often in math class, success has just been tied to like getting one right answer a certain way and getting a mark. So like if anyone is gonna learn the worst definition of success, it's gonna be in math. But that, but that's why I get so excited for educators, cause I'm like, but you could actually redefine it right now. And then in the most like stringent success environment, all of a sudden your students are like, wait a second, I'm learning what success is. 

But my question is, how do you do that when like, you have to give grades for the right answer. Like how do you negotiate that space of making a student feel successful, but then they also get like a 52 in your class?

[00:25:59] Crystal Watson: So grades is a whole nother thing, girl. We could 

[00:26:04] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. Yeah. I know. 

[00:26:05] Crystal Watson: We could have a whole nother podcast about grades. And I would, I would bring my guy Nolan Fossum, cause he is the grade guru right now. Like, I go to him for everything on grading. But there is a balance, right? For me, it meant not grading everything. It meant designating two or three things a week that I would put in the grade book. One based on effort, right? I always did some sort of effort grade. Because to me, success in my classroom meant that you could show me what you were thinking, whether your thinking led to the right answer or not. And for the folks that are gonna jump on this and be like, oh my gosh, I don't want them building my bridge, you've seen that, I've gotten trolled 

[00:26:48] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, somebody just commented that on one of my things 

[00:26:51] Crystal Watson: So dumb, oh 

[00:26:52] Vanessa Vakharia: Like always the bridge, like fucking move on. 

[00:26:54] Crystal Watson: Robots are gonna be building bridges. Fuck off. 

But anyway, so they, um, so I would always do an effort grade. I wanted them to understand that what they put into it, and effort was, could you show me what you were thinking. Whether that be verbally um, so I taught a lot of multilingual learners that did not write in English very well. And I'd be like, write it in Spanish. Just the way that you can get on Google Translate, so can I. So write it in whatever way makes sense for you.

And then the second grade was always something along the standard, a skill in the standard. And it was a skill that I knew that they needed in order to access something further. So, for instance, if I'm talking about ratios and proportions, I want them to understand ratios and proportions deeply so that they understand that it's how we find slope. It's how we talk about money in the world, right? So understanding like, is somebody getting over us, on us with the price of eggs, for instance, you know? 

Um, so really just making sure that I'm doing a plethora of grades, so that it shows your effort, it shows your mastery. And then also my third grade was always like some sort of project so that, they could put in creativity and art into their work. So I just wrote a book chapter about a big project that I do with transformations where they talk about like gentrification, and it's all social justice based. And I want them to understand like how math can go into them making the world a better place for themselves and their future. So, yeah, I just always made sure that there were a plethora of different types of grades.

But I will tell you that I have privilege in the fact that I taught middle school, so nobody's getting credit. Nobody's, you know, failing out of high school if they don't pass my course or whatever, right? So I understand that. But I also understood that as a seventh and eighth grade teacher, what my students brought with them to algebra one was on me.

[00:28:59] Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:00] Crystal Watson: Right. So I didn't give fluff grades. I was very serious and I had high expectations for my students. But that's the thing that, that's the one thing that I tell teachers every single day. High expectations do not make you mean. I literally had a, a student send me a message. This student reached out to me and she said, Ms. Watson, you are one of the reasons why I am who I am today.

[00:29:22] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh!

[00:29:23] Crystal Watson: The fact that you made me work hard and lectured me, and I did lecture this little girl, man, she woo, she, she took me through it. But she was like, I'm graduating a year early, I've got my STNA license already, I'm gonna be working in a nursing home while I go to college. And this was a girl that people counted out as they often do black girls, 

[00:29:49] Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm 

[00:29:50] Crystal Watson: Counted her out. Was like, no, she's not going to college, she's gonna do X, Y, Z or whatever. And I'm like, nah, no, no, she's not. So she just showed improved.

So I just, I, let me take it back to grades for a second. I get that we have grades that we have to do. Standards based grading is the one way that you can make sure that your grading is unbiased. I do not 

[00:30:14] Vanessa Vakharia: Explain that. 

[00:30:16] Crystal Watson: So standards-based grading, basically you break down, but that include, that requires that teachers understand their content, right? So we have too many teachers out here, too many educators and leaders, right? Principals that don't know math education and don't know math content. 

[00:30:33] Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:33] Crystal Watson: So that means that you've got to really understand deeply what the math standard is asking you, which means that you need to understand your content, right? So if I'm gonna do a grade, if I am teaching, if I want my students to be able to model slope for me using similar triangles within the coordinate plane. I am going to test that, right? That's what I'm going to quiz you on, and that's what your grade is gonna be based on. Your grade is gonna be based on how well you were able to do that.

Now the caveat is, offer retakes! Why do we make it so our students have to know and do and prove at our timing? Nothing in this world is like that. You have multiple choices, chances to do things over and over again. Why do we make it to where it's only, it's one and done in the math classroom? So giving those retakes is another thing where, we're not in the business of failing kids, we want them to learn. So align what you're grading to the actual standards and let them try again.

[00:31:35] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. Yeah, I know we could do a whole episode on this and I think it's,it's so funny cause I've even had such a quick turnaround where like, you know, obviously this is a new conversation, is to get rid of one shot assessments, and I, remember even I, when I first heard about it, I was like, what? No, like and very quickly just even hearing people talk about it and hear, like that exact thing. Like the whole point is we want students to learn. We recognize that learning means you don't pop out of the womb knowing something. Right? We recognize it means like you learn something over a period of time. So if that is the actual goal of my math class, why wouldn't you let them have another try? Anyways yeah, I know. It's, it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. 

[00:32:08] Crystal Watson: Mm-hmm.

What CRT (critical race theory) is and what it isn't

[00:32:09] Vanessa Vakharia: We sadly, like, I don't know where the time went, but we're gonna have to wrap up, I can't believe I left this till the end, but I've been like kind of waiting for the right time to bring this up. I need to talk about critical race theory. Like I need to talk about CRT for like, just, I know it's, that's like the, the craziest last question. But I, one of the main reasons I actually wanna bring it up is because someone recently, and I think the conversation is just different in America than it is in Canada. 

[00:32:31] Crystal Watson: Yeah. 

[00:32:31] Vanessa Vakharia: I know I also say America, like I'm like so foreign, but whatever. Somebody said to me, "oh, socio-emotional learning, yeah, well now that's getting really conflated with CRT" and I was like wait, how? What? 

Could, I know, your face is saying, can you explain, first of all, what is CRT? Like just what is it for a second, like, let's define. And also, how are these two possibly getting conflated, and also like, what the fuck is going on? Are you okay? Question number one.

[00:32:57] Crystal Watson: Let me tell you. Oh not afraid of the CRT conversation because I know what the definition is, I know what CRT is, so I'm fine with this conversation, but I'm gonna start with saying, what, what it is not, is a noun. 

So, Kimberlé Crenshaw tells us that CRT is a verb, it's something that we do, it's something that we utilize. It's not something that we teach, it's not something that we shove down people's throats, and it's not diversity and inclusion, and it's not SEL. It's none of those things. 

So you don't teach CRT, which is what everybody's like up in the arms about. The originators like Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, et cetera, et cetera, it really was about getting outside of the racial binary, right? So like understanding that there's more than just black and white, and folks experience oppression and experience racism on a systemic level, right? Depending on their proximity to whiteness. And by whiteness, I go back to what we talked about at the beginning, right? So, white culture. 

So CRT is "taught", that's what the US conversation is, and it's actually not. It's something that we use in order to analyze and critically think about the world around us, as it pertains to folks that are in the margins, right? It started as legal studies,a critical look at legal studies and how the law perpetuates inequity, right? Between black and white folk, and then other folks of color. 

But I love the fact that, Derrick Bell talks about interest conversion, where, I said it a little bit earlier where, if my desires do not match or do not advance the desires of white folk, then my desires go unheard. And what CRT does is it allows me or whomever to critically think about the systems that we're steeped in, the social cultures, all different types of facets of the way that we live. And think about like how are things set up to keep me from going to the places in which my white counterparts are going. So what that might mean is, um, so for instance, one of the tenets is race is not biological. There is no biological difference between you and I, Vanessa, none. Right? But like continuously understanding that those biological differences do not exist, so why do the inequities exist and why does racism exist? Right? When race really is a social construct. 

But what CRT tells us is, yes, it's a racial construct, but it's impactful, socially. Right? Race is, right? And then it acknowledges that racism is normal, it's not like one bad person. It's something that is steeped in everything that we do because it's what the country was built on. Okay. The last thing is, well, there's other parts of it, but the one thing that I tend to hold onto, is CRT helps us to see stuff from a social justice lens. So my oppression is tied to your oppression, and my freedom is tied to your freedom. And we should all get free, and it shouldn't mean that anybody is, nobody is less than. 

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi says that anti-racism says that all folks are equal. There is nobody that is above or below, that's what anti-racism is. So understanding that neither one of us need to be fixed. So CRT is just a way to critically think about things. 

[00:36:35] Vanessa Vakharia: So. I mean, seems like I, I don't even know what to say cause my next question is just like, so what the fuck is everyone's problem? Like, why are people mad?

[00:36:47] Crystal Watson: So think about it, Vanessa, if you were the keeper of all knowledge, you were the keeper of all the wealth, if you were a keeper of all of the notoriety and et cetera, et cetera, and all of the education. Would you wanna give up any of that to somebody that you see as being lesser than you?

[00:37:05] Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and it's like, would I wanna give it up at all? Like, I would just want right? So it's like, 

[00:37:10] Crystal Watson: It's fear. 

[00:37:11] Vanessa Vakharia: It's fear. It's fear, it's competition, it's, so, when it comes to education is, and again, excuse my Canadian ignorance, because this is I think right now a very American convo that's happening. Is it that people are like, oh my God, they're teaching kids all this like bullshit in schools, basically? Is that where this is all, like, is that the argument? 

[00:37:34] Crystal Watson: All we're doing, and when I say we, I mean anybody that's doing this work, all we're doing is teaching truth, right? Whole reason for me, I rock this shirt often. Because what we're doing is we're teaching truth, we're teaching the things that are left out of the history books. And we can tell you, I can tell you that it's left out of the history books because when I got to college, I learned about folks that I had never even heard about, and I'm a black person. And I finally start to see myself in history, in literature, and it was only a little bit, I had to take the African American history class or the African American literature class to see myself. 

[00:38:12] Vanessa Vakharia: I'm also like, I do feel confused about this cause I feel like people do talk about it like it's a noun, right? Like everyone's like, "they're teaching our kids CRT in schools", that's how they say it. But you're like, tell me if I'm getting this right even, is it kind of like if you have that framework, like if you, the knowledge that all of these things exist, just informs your teaching just like anything else would. 

[00:38:34] Crystal Watson: Yes, that's exactly right. You know these things exist, so it informs the ways in which you make sure that all of your students feel heard. They know they exist past the now. Right. So historically they've existed and there have been um, contributions from folks that look like them, that come from where they come from. That's what it is. Like, it, it's really not that big of a,

[00:39:00] Vanessa Vakharia: No,

[00:39:00] Crystal Watson: It's all about the fear of losing power or 

[00:39:03] Vanessa Vakharia: That's it. 

[00:39:03] Crystal Watson: You know, that's all it is.

[00:39:05] Vanessa Vakharia: The last thing I was gonna say is I keep seeing these articles being like, leave race out of math class. Like duh duh duh duh duh. And it's like, what are you talk, like I want to think of something like more benign and something maybe most of us can agree on. Okay. Okay, here I've got one. Knowing that anxiety exists, okay. Just the knowledge that anxiety is a thing, we kind of know how it works, whatever. It's not like you're necessarily gonna go into your classroom and be like, Hey everyone, let's talk about anxiety every single day. But you're like, oh, I'm aware that a lot of my students experience anxiety, that we have a bit of a mental health crisis going on right now, that's just gonna inform how I talk to students. The end.

[00:39:41] Crystal Watson: Yeah. It is literally like that. I don't think it's any more intricate than that, but problem is, is we're making it harder than it, and not we, white folks are making it harder than what it is. Right? And they find their token black folks that don't agree with it too, and they wanna, you know, be on that side of, of whiteness, and that's fine. That's what y'all wanna do, go ahead and do it. But don't negate what we're doing based on, you know, I, I feel like we can't make blanket policies. Like we can't make a whole state policy, DeSantis, based on your discomfort. Alright, so

[00:40:17] Vanessa Vakharia: That was such a nice name drop. Okay.

Q1

[00:40:19] Vanessa Vakharia: Crystal, this has literally been so eye-opening. I'm, uh, it's one of, this is one of those interviews where now I just have, like all of my questions and your answers have led to like a hundred more questions. Um, but, we, we will have a part two when we read your birth chart. Great. Okay. 

Now we have to get to the final two questions that we ask every single guest. Here we go, number one. 

What is, I know this seems redundant, but you've gotta pick just one. What is the one thing you'd like to see changed about the way math is taught in schools?

[00:40:46] Crystal Watson: I'd like the teacher to decenter themselves. Decenter yourself and center a different student every day, or a different group of students or whatever. 

[00:40:56] Vanessa Vakharia: I love that. Okay. 

Q2

[00:40:57] Vanessa Vakharia: And number two, what do you say to someone who's like, Crystal, I'm just not a math person.

[00:41:03] Crystal Watson: You know what? hear that every day and I tell people, I'm like, nobody walks into a room and says, "I can't read y'all!" Like, but everybody says, I'm not a math person. And I say, we are all math people. We just do it differently. And nobody has taken the time to honor the way in which you understand and do math.

[00:41:21] Vanessa Vakharia: Ooh I love that 

[00:41:22] Crystal Watson: And I'm here to do that, so let's talk. Right?Cause I used to say I'm not a math person, and somebody said something similar to that to me and it changed my life.

[00:41:31] Vanessa Vakharia: I love that. I love that. I love that. Okay. 

Outro

[00:41:33] Vanessa Vakharia: This has been literally the highlight, I have been thinking about this interview since we met almost a year 

[00:41:38] Crystal Watson: Absolutely!

[00:41:39] Vanessa Vakharia: Act, that's bad math, like six months ago. Was it only six months? October. Okay. Who cares? 

[00:41:43] Crystal Watson: Was it? 

[00:41:44] Vanessa Vakharia: It feels like I've known you forever, like I feel like we are very like spirit connected math sisters.

Where can we find you, tell everyone where to find you.

[00:41:51] Crystal Watson: You can find me on Twitter @_crystalmwatson. Find me on Instagram @_crystalmwatson. You can find me at crystalmwatson.com. Or you can find me out and about in Cincinnati, so if you see me on the streets, holler! I'll say what's up. I'm pretty, I'm a pretty cool person.

[00:42:08] Vanessa Vakharia: You're so cool. Okay. has been the fucking best. You are the best. Crystal, thank you so much for coming on the pod.

[00:42:16] Crystal Watson: You're welcome. Goodbye, adios, auf wiedersehen, all of the things.

[00:42:20] Vanessa Vakharia: Bye. 

Okay. I'm obsessed with this interview, but mostly with Crystal. She's a legend. She's an icon, and I just love how she speaks her mind and gives no fucks about the haters, and when I grow up, I wanna be more like her. 

Let's all remember that the idea of student-centered learning has to be more than just like a catchphrase or a classroom poster, if we really want it to be effective. It has to be an action, not just an idea. And that's my biggest takeaway from today's episode.

Show outro

[00:42:51] Vanessa Vakharia: If something in this episode inspired you, please tweet us @maththerapy, and you can also follow me personally @themathguru on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. 

Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia, it was created by me and Sabina Wex, and it's produced and edited by David Kochberg. Our theme music is by Goodnight Sunrise.

And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or just needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please, please, please share this podcast, and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use. Those things actually make such a big difference for us. I'm determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help, so spread the word. Until next time, peace, love, and pi.

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