The Journey of a New Course
As yet another semester comes to a close, this one was even more special than usual because my vision of creating a new class finally came to life. Considering I assigned my students a final reflection assignment, I thought I’d share my thoughts and experiences as well. First some background if you haven’t been following along: the goal of creating an entire class on redistricting that authentically uses math in the context of a relevant (and often contentious) political issue was almost two years in the making. In my last semester at UConn (Spring 2018), Adam Giambrone (now teaching at Elmira) and I tried the “let’s throw some things [content] at the wall [students] and see what sticks” approach to teaching this topic which for my money is an underrated approach to education – you don’t always need to have a plan! (More on that later.) Anyway, upon being hired at Trinity, I was connected to Jack Dougherty who made me quickly realize that my goal of creating such a c...