Math on the Border volunteers engage children with mathematical puzzles.
getty
Mark Saul is a former director of the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival and the Center for Math Talent at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. A visit by such a renowned expert in gifted and talented math programs would delight an educational community of any caliber. Yet he chose to spend last winter quietly sharing his immense educational experience with unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S. southern border.
What occurs at the border isn’t limited to merely the areas at the southernmost stretch of U.S. territory. Immigration authorities send kids to facilities all over the country, including major cities like Chicago, New York, and Seattle. There, groups of children are brought to the courts for a brief consultation with a lawyer representing them in their immigration status hearings. But first, children must spend hours outside of the legal offices awaiting their fate. If they are lucky, the waiting room may have tables and chairs; otherwise, they just patiently stand in the hallway. Beyond very basic activities (such as coloring books), children don’t have anything to fill these stressful, tense hours. This is where Saul and his team step in.
His educational program Math on the Border, partially supported by the Alfred.P.Sloan Foundation, has been working with migrant children since 2018. Some volunteers are retired math teachers, while others are Spanish-speaking students (many of whom are former immigrants themselves). They select math activities that have been extensively field-tested and are appropriate for various ages or group sizes. Besides teaching children, they share educational ideas and math games with caregivers, to make sure children’s math skills are maintained until they can enter the regular classroom. As a bonus, entertaining mathematical activities may help children bond with their foster families and improve their self-esteem. Now, as the Math on the Border efforts have stalled due to the pandemic, outreach to caregivers, such as providing easily accessible math resources, is even more critical.
The children may have been out of school for months or even years, moving between shelters and foster families. Yet Saul is not bothered by their lack of mathematical background, curricula, textbooks, or even classrooms – if no flat surface is available, they can just use the floor. He doesn’t speak Spanish, but neither do many of the children (who sometimes speak only indigenous languages of South America). But this is rarely a problem; mathematics, like music, is a universal language. What matters is that children’s minds are engaged. All they need are simple materials, such as tangrams, logic games, mathematical puzzles, crayons and paper. For example, Saul builds a geometric figure out of tangram pieces and shows it to a child. It’s a cat! Next, a giraffe. The child looks puzzled. Not a problem: let’s just flip a few pieces upside down, and we get a boat. Now, it’s the child’s turn. Let’s build the next figure together.
Having an opportunity to use one’s brain is a basic human need, says Saul. Back at the Templeton Foundation, he studied under-exploited human capital and the boundless human potential. Despite their difficult past and uncertain future, migrant children are eager to build their math skills. Resourceful and resilient in the face of failure, they reshuffle the pieces and try again. They work in groups and make new friends along the way. Many of them are highly gifted – Saul can attest to that. It doesn’t take him long to see what these children, abandoned by life, are capable of with just a little encouragement. And he can tell from the looks on their faces how delighted they are at having their abilities recognized and valued.
