The article, Learning to Love Math Through the Exploration of Maypole Patterns, explores what happens when non-math majors are invited into mathematics through collaboration and curiosity rather than correct answers and rigid problem solving. Student Julianna Campbell writes alongside her professor Christine von Renesse to describe how a maypole dance became the entry point for genuine mathematical inquiry. The class explores the patterns ribbons make when dancers weave over and under each other, ultimately asking: how many non-equivalent ribbon patterns are possible given a certain number of dancers and colours? Along the way, students embarked on an extremely rich mathematical journey, developing their own definitions, conjectures, and proofs—they even invented visual tools like the “tree representation” to sketch patterns without having to physically dance them every time. Remarkably, the mathematical results the students produced were quite rigorous—they developed proofs and theorems that would hold up in any math classroom, not just a liberal arts one.

My first stop was the list of meta-goals in the classroom pedagogy section. They made me passionately exclaim, “Exactly!” These aren’t content goals—they are attitude goals: building confidence, encouraging curiosity, developing a positive relationship with mathematics. This is vitally important because I am convinced that attitude is the starting point for any real change in mathematics education. If students and teachers continue to see math as something to survive, no curriculum, no matter how creative, will reach them. I’ve also seen how easily math becomes something to minimize—shortened periods, or entire strands like measurement compressed into a single day and ticked off a list. It makes me wonder what messages we send students about what mathematics is and what it’s worth. The goals Professor von Renesse lists feel like what every math classroom should aspire to, and yet they’re rarely stated so plainly. While these goals reshape what we value in math classrooms, the article also shows how those values are lived out in practice.

My second stop was the detail about the English professor and the Math professor modeling being students together in each other’s classrooms. There’s something quietly radical about that. When teachers show students what it looks like to not know something and stay curious anyway, they’re giving permission. Permission to struggle, to ask basic questions, to begin. I think we underestimate how much students are watching us—not just for content, but for how we behave when things are hard. Julianna’s story is a perfect example of what becomes possible when that permission is genuinely extended.

The moment that genuinely moved me—my biggest pause—was when Julianna describes admitting,“I don’t even understand the concept of a factor. Why is it a factor?” and then writes, “I will never forget Professor von Renesse’s reaction–she was almost thrilled” (p.134). That line made me surprisingly emotional. A teacher’s response in that exact moment can change everything. How many students have asked a question like that and been met with impatience— or worse, been made to feel foolish? And how many mathematical identities were quietly shaped in that instant? I keep thinking about what it would mean for students if confusion was met not with frustration, but with genuine excitement. In many ways, that one response—thrilled, not irritated—captures the heart of the entire article.

My question for discussion: Think about a time in your own math education when you admitted you didn’t understand something. How was that received and how did it shape how you showed up in math class after that?

References

Campbell, J., & Von Renesse, C. (2019). Learning to love math through the exploration of maypole patterns. Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 13(1–2), 131–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513472.2018.1513231