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“I noticed that my students were not engaged by the typical textbook examples that I was giving them, like the heights and weights of students or the angles of ladders against walls, and they would disengage in class…So I started asking them, what is it that y'all actually want to learn about? And they told me, they want to learn about gerrymandering, and food deserts, and also online dating, sports, social media; stuff that's more serious stuff, that's less serious, but all relevant to them. So I started bringing in data about those examples. And the class transformed. We had more students take and pass the AP Stats exam that year than the previous 16 years of the school combined.”
In this episode, we’re chatting with Dashiell Young-Saver, High School Math teacher and Founder & Executive director of Skew The Script, a nonprofit organization transforming math education by providing free and relevant math curriculum materials to teachers and students. Skew the Script focuses on creating math lessons that are engaging and relatable to students by using real-world data and examples, which Dash founded while teaching AP Statistics in San Antonio, Texas. Within this conversation, Dash discusses the organization’s expansion, how it’s curriculum maintains relevance and nonpartisanship, and how he plans to continue fostering critical thinking and data literacy.
“There's so much data out there being shared, there's so many ‘studies’ that may or may not be generalizable to the topic at hand, so to be able to facilitate between these things and to know how far the data can get you and also how to question the things in front of you is, I think, more important than trying to pedal aside.”
How to Skew the Script: Transforming Math Education (feat. Dashiell Young-Saver)