Experiential Activity with Math CEO: Connecting Data and Life Stories through Culturally Responsive Teaching

• In Event: Centering Learners, Culture, and Care: Enacting Culturally Responsive Practices through University-Community Engagement

Abstract

In this interactive, hands-on session, participants will engage in a mathematics activity developed by Math CEO (Author1, 2024), an after-school program that honors the identities, knowledge, and voices of Latine and other youth whose brilliance is often overlooked in traditional mathematics settings (Author2, 2025). Based in Southern California and part of the UC Links network, Math CEO is a partnership between UC Irvine, Cal State Dominguez Hills, and four middle schools in Santa Ana and Carson, CA.

The activity, designed for middle schoolers and inspired by the work of Conway IV et al. (2022), uses real data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Symposium attendees will be asked to take-on the role of students and analyze six unlabeled graphs showing how average daily time spent by Americans with children, partners, coworkers, friends, family, or alone changes with age. Each nonlinear graph shows distinct behavior across the lifespan. Working in small teams, students infer matches by analyzing peaks, drops, plateaus, and long-term trends.

Grounded in the Culturally Responsive Practices framework introduced in this symposium, the activity holds high expectations by engaging students in contextual reasoning without formulas. Prompts like “What makes you confident—or unsure—about your match?” foster close observation, justification, and respectful discourse. Though cognitively demanding, the activity remains accessible through everyday language and lived experience.

The task supports culturally responsive mathematics teaching (e.g., Abdulrahim and Orosco, 2020; Aguirre and del Rosario Zavala, 2013) in concrete ways. It centers students’ knowledge and ways of doing things by drawing on cultural, household, and community-based experiences. The prompt “Does this graph look the same for people in your family or community?” invites students to reflect on living arrangements and intergenerational roles—acknowledging cultural variation.

The activity content is relevant to what youth know. The topic—how people spend time— is familiar and engaging. A warm-up invites students to estimate how much time they spend with people of various ages, linking math to daily life.

The activity affirms diverse language and communication preferences. Students describe graphs “in their own words,” using informal phrases like “it goes up, then flattens out” instead of technical terms like “slope.” These informal descriptions are validated as mathematically rigorous.

Unlabeled graphs allow for interpretation, empowering students to develop and defend their own ideas. Reasoning—not correctness—is prioritized. A reflective moment emerges when students analyze the graph for “time spent alone,” which increases sharply after midlife. Questions like “Would you be happy if this graph told the story of your life?” encourage reflection on aging and social isolation. These questions demonstrate an ethic of care and prompt conversation about addressing inequities.

At the end, participants will ‘switch hats’—from students to culturally responsive educators—and reflect on which equity-oriented practices (Aguirre et al., 2013) were activated in this experiential session.

An off-site visit to Math CEO at Cal State Dominguez Hills will offer participants a chance to engage with middle-school and university students and experience first-hand similar types of culturally responsive and joyful math activities.

Authors

• Alessandra Pantano, University of California - Irvine

• Cynthia Sanchez Tapia, California State University - Dominguez Hills