Cultivating Mathematical Hearts

Julia Maria Aguirre is a biracial Chicana activist math education scholar and teacher educator. Her parents were educators and activists integrating faith, community, and justice growing up. Dr. Aguirre is a Professor of Education at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her work focuses on critical equity studies in mathematics education, teacher education, and culturally responsive mathematics pedagogy. She has taught mathematics in formal and informal classroom settings. A primary goal of her work is preparing new generations of teachers to make mathematics education accessible, meaningful and relevant to today’s youth. Dr. Aguirre welcomes all to join her in cultivating a more humanizing and just mathematics education.

Maria del Rosario Zavala is an American-born daughter of Peruvian immigrants, a mother, and an Associate Professor of Elementary Education at San Francisco State University. She studied mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz almost(!) became a high school math teacher, before working in elementary education. Across her 20+ career in education, she has worked in classrooms across the K-12 spectrum, and supported teachers’ professional learning in a variety of contexts. During her PhD in Education with a focus on Learning Sciences at the University of Washington, she became interested in ethnomathematics and social justice mathematics, and in particular how topics like these can make mathematics classrooms welcoming spaces for Latinx students and other historically marginalized populations. In addition to work on the role of racial and other socially constructed identities in learning mathematics, a large part of her research agenda includes defining, expanding, and evolving ideas of culturally responsive mathematics teaching (CRMT) – in particular the impact of CRMT on both teachers and students. Maria believes mathematics teaching and learning are creative endeavors. She has unequivocal faith in teachers, and the power of teachers, parents, and community members working together to make schools places worthy of our children.