I Created These Posters to Show My Students that White Males Are Not the Only Mathematicians






If something you want to use in your classroom doesn't exist, just make it yourself. That is what many innovative math teachers are doing: coding programs that will make their lives easier and their students' learning experience better, creating video word problems, and more. When I was thinking about the message I wanted to send in my classroom, I noticed that I had inherited a lot of Einstein and Newton posters. Einstein and Newton obviously deserve to be on posters everywhere. However, when only white males are displayed in STEM classrooms, students of color and non-male students receive the message that the best mathematicians in the world do not look like them. How will they be encouraged to take on that identity without role models to relate to? For that reason, I made these posters to display in my room. Everything from the language you use to how you present your classroom can influence your students. Thus, being intentional and thoughtful in these areas can make a huge impact. 

So, by all means, keep Einstein and Newton up there. But also display Ramanujan, Germain, and Urschel (and other amazing mathematicians; there are more posters to be made)! Feel free to use the files in this blog to print your own posters. If you just right click the picture and download it, you should be able to print high quality posters at Walgreens or other photo centers (I used Walgreens). 

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 14, 2017 at 7:40 PM

    I love these pictures and I would love to make my own. Since I am not familiar with how to do this will you explain how to get them. After I right click on the picture what should I do? How do I down load the pictures? Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mr. HowardAugust 15, 2017 at 7:28 AM

      Hi Kelly! When you right click, a little menu should come up with "Save image as..." Once you click that, save the image under whatever name you would like as a jpeg. From there, I just used the walgreens photo center to make the posters.

      If you are having trouble still you can shoot me an email at joseph.howard@bvsd.org and I'll just email you the files.

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