Author: Nettrice Gaskins

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Culturally Relevant Math Expressions

crme quilt bag designs
Example of CRME quilt designs

Introduction

Lesley STEAM or LSTEAM supports authentic learning that doesn’t supplant what happens in school, but introduces teachers and students to concepts and hands-on experiential skills, using a novel schema for knowing, thinking, and doing in mathematics. For three years, LSTEAM has designed and implemented this approach to bridge mathematics and making. T with the aim was to ignite mathematical curiosity by reinforcing K-8 math skills through culturally relevant hands-on learning. Our approach included developing CRIME toolkits such as Math & Quilting, Tangrams, and Crazy Contraptions, and offering Instructables for teachers via a website dedicated to sharing DIY, step-by-step, project-based instructions. It serves as a platform for makers to document, learn, and collaborate.

Culturally relevant hands-on learning is an instructional approach that engages learners through active, experiential tasks (e.g., making, creating) designed to connect new concepts directly to their cultural backgrounds, lived experiences, community and personal references. It empowers learners by affirming their identity, fostering critical thinking, and utilizing cultural knowledge as a scaffold for deep academic achievement (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Key characteristics and components include focusing on utilizing learners’ existing cultural knowledge and strengths; incorporating cultural references,, traditions, and community knowledge into practical activities; mapping or creating artifacts that connect academic content to relevant, real-world issues; and using toolkits that provide curated, evidence-based resources, strategies, and templates that streamline teaching and learning processes, allowing educators to implement best practices effectively.

During each professional development workshop, teachers received toolkits with materials and links to online Instructables such as 10×10 Conversion Quilt Making, an educational or design technique that involves translating numerical data—specifically fractions, decimals, and percentages—into visual, geometric fabric and 2D foam shape designs, often using 10×10 or 5×5 grids to represent a “whole” (100% or 1.0). They color, design, and calculate the proportions of different colors or shapes, converting them between fractions, decimals, and percentages. During professional development workshops for teachers across the United States, participants were shown how to use their toolkits to physically render their math-based designs. The following sections further describe these kits and the activities that are centered on culturally relevant math.

10x10 conversion quilt design and bag via Instructables
10×10 conversion quilt design and bag via Instructables

Math & Quilting

Our Math & Quilting Toolkit blends quiltmaking with mathematical thinking for grades K-8. It includes supplies and guides for exploring patterns, symmetry, geometry, fractions, and measurement through quilt design and construction. By combining grade-appropriate literature, fabric, templates, grids, and pacing guides, the toolkit helps learners see math as tactile, visual, and deeply connected to diverse quilting traditions. Toolkits include quilt design templates from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, Appalachia (Eastern U.S.). Lakota (Sioux), and mandalas (Buddhism). In addition to the 100-square grid, a smaller 5×5 or 25-square template emphasizes the use of 3D foam shapes with adhesive backing, such as triangles and rectangles, and making quilt patterns requires understanding how these shapes fit together. Books such as The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (2017) and Stitchin’ and Pullin’: A Gee’s Bend Quilt (2016) are provided to help ground teachers and students in the history and traditions of quilt making. Here is an excerpt from the latter:

[T]he girl’s grandma explains the meanings and feelings behind each colored cloth. “Blue cools. / Red is loud and hard to control, / like fire and a gossiping tongue.” Green, orange, yellow, white, pink, and all the others have their own personalities. “Grandma says, / ‘Colors show how you / feel deep down inside.’”

CRME Quilt Making Workshop
Left: CRME quilt making workshop; Right: Advanced work on soft circuits

The LSTEAM team led in-person teacher workshops that included hands-on work and physical rendering of quilt designs. The toolkit enabled participants to learn about and recognize quilts from different cultures and identify and use math concepts to make quilts. Participants also learned how to adhere their physical quilt designs to canvas bags using the ‘appliqué’ method. We also integrated advanced work on soft circuits by embedding electronic components for use on these physical quilts using tools such as conductive fabric tape, conductive thread, LEDs, and sensors.

Left: CRME quilt making bags; Right: CRME supplies
Left: CRME quilt making bags; Right: CRME supplies

Tangrams

Our Tangram Toolkit builds on the Math + Quilt design templates and uses tangrams to make mathematical concepts visible and intuitive. Tangrams are Chinese geometric puzzles consisting of a square cut into seven pieces that can be arranged to make various other shapes. Through tangram pieces, literature, and design prompts, learners explore geometry, spatial reasoning, fractions, and problem-solving by building and transforming shapes. The toolkit encourages making and mathematical thinking through tactile exploration. This toolkit includes the book Grandfather Tang’s Story (1990) that uses tangram pieces to tell a story. After reading the story, participants can choose animals to make with the tangrams.

tangram examples
Tangram examples via Instructables

Crazy Contraptions

Our Crazy Contraptions Toolkit invites learners to design, build, and tinker with playful, chain-reaction (simple) machines. Using levers, pulleys, wheels, ramps, and connectors, the toolkit introduces core physics and engineering concepts like force, motion, and energy transfer. Through experimentation and iteration, learners discover how simple machines work together to create complex results. With this toolkit, participants can watch a Netflix Jr. Crazy Contraptions & Fabulous Forts video clip that features ‘Ada Twist, Scientist’ and her friends who brainstorm and come up with new ways to solve problems using mechanical engineering. The main character (Ada) is inspired by real-life female scientists like Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie, aiming to promote STEM, perseverance, and curiosity. This toolkit also includes two books that inspired this video clip, Ada Twist, Scientist (2016) and Rosie Revere, Engineer (2013).

Crazy Contraptions workshop
Crazy Contraptions workshop

In both in-person and virtual CRME workshops educators were provided with a comprehensive toolkit of materials that could be used to reinforce culturally relevant learning in math for the students in their classroom. We gathered feedback from our work through a series of post-workshop questions to help educators with their reflections on their experiences with us.

When asked to think about identity (with a focus on underrepresented populations in STEM/STEAM):

  • “Understanding identities is key to deliver equitable instruction in the classroom”
  • “Our identity impacts both how we show up and how we feel a sense of belonging in a space

How does quilting and math increase curiosity in students?

  • “Noticing patterns and cutting to precise size, and connecting parts like puzzles”
  • “Allows students to see real world applications – they can see how it can be used in real life”
  • “Helps them to solve problems in different ways”

How will you apply this knowledge into your teaching practices?

  • “Definitely being more intentional in embedding culturally relevant experiences”
  • “I can get creative and implement art”

Lesley STEAM noted the slow expansion of our work in new communities, local and national, as a powerful indicator of success and growth. In addition to facilitating CRME workshops in the United States we worked with international delegations who were interested in best practices in STEAM education in U.S. Higher Education. We were able to share some of the activities created for CRME with representatives from Vietnam, India, Japan, Ireland, and Moldovia.

References

Beaty, A. (2013). Rosie Revere, Engineer.  Abrams Books for Young Readers.

Beaty, A. (2016). Ada Twist, Scientist. Abrams Books for Young Readers.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.2307/1163320

McKissack, P., & Cabrera, C. A. (2016). Stitchin’ and Pullin’: A Gee’s Bend Quilt. Dragonfly Books. 

Rubin, S. G. (2017). The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Abrams Books for Young Readers. 

Tombert, A. (1997). Grandfather Tang’s Story. Dragonfly Books.

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2025 Summer Pre-College Creative AI & Design Course

Slim Reaper Pop Up Stage and Presentation
Slim Reaper Pop Up Stage and Presentation

Lesley STEAM offered the pre-college Creative AI & Design course for the second consecutive summer. We recognize the importance of creativity that, fundamentally, requires having or showing one’s ability to produce new and valuable things. With the proliferation of generative AI or GenAI, more and more creative people are using machines as tools to interrogate AI and make art. With this in mind, we worked closely with Cambridge Youth Programs (CYP) to recruit Cambridge, MA youth to explore and go beyond the fundamentals of creative AI, which refers to artificial intelligence systems capable of generating novel and original content, such as art, music, writing, and design. 

Artwork by Norman Teague and Stephanie Dinkins
Left: Installation view of the exhibition “Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions” at MoMA. Photograph by Jonathan Dorado; Right: Installation view of Stephanie Dinkins’s If We Don’t, Who Will? in the Plaza at 300 Ashland Place. Photo by Avery J. Savage

Students were introduced to artists such as Stephanie Dinkins who creates art about AI as it intersects race, gender, and history. They saw the designs of Norman Teague, whose Adobe Firefly-generated works offer a reinterpretation of design history.

Dinkins programmed the generative art to prioritize (more diverse) worldviews and figures. She did so by fine-tuning different AI models, programs that recognize patterns through datasets. Dinkins and her team of developers fed the models images by the Black photographer Roy DeCarava, who captured photos of Black people in Harlem. They also programmed it using African American Vernacular English so that the models would learn to recognize its tonality and better generate images based on the stories of people who use it. —Melissa Hellman via The Guardian

Norman Teague used Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of generative AI models, to imagine a world where iconic objects in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) design collection were created by a more diverse chorus of voices. Teague, and his assistant designer Daniel Overbey used Firefly to revisit 15 pieces in MoMA’s collection from the perspective of Black history and inspiration.

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2024 Summer Pre-College Creative AI & Design Course

Prompt Battle 1
Our first generative AI prompt battle.

This summer we invited 13 Cambridge, MA youth from diverse backgrounds to explore and learn the fundamentals of generative artificial intelligence or GenAI. This experience created space for youth to bring their identities and interests into creative computing in ways that allows them to see themselves in GenAI. They worked together and addressed questions such as: What is generative AI and where do we see it in the art world? How does working with AI tools affect creativity? Can AI teach us how to be more creative? What are the benefits and harms of GenAI?

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2023 Summer Art, AI & Robotics explores 3D art, coding & invention at Lesley

Setting up the Paintbrush Bot
PHOTO: Setting up a paintbrush bot (with LSTEAM director Sue Cusack)

This summer we invited 12 Somerville High School (SHS) students from diverse backgrounds to explore the combination of three-dimensional art, machine learning artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics. The in-person course built upon an existing collaboration with SHS teachers Karen Leary (math) and Laura Peters (robotics) and Lesley STEAM. Every day for two weeks SHS students met the SHS/LSTEAM at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design or LA+D.  Like the 2021 course, students earned 4 Lesley college credits that were matched by 2.5 math or 2.5 art credits. The skills they learned can be applied to other classes they can take during the school year such as math, art, robotics, and computer science.

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Alternate reality game sparks interest in informal science learning.

Dr. Susan Rauchwerk, right, leads CYP staff through an activity. Photo courtesy Lesley University.
Dr. Susan Rauchwerk, right, leads CYP staff through an activity. Photo courtesy of Lesley University.

In addition to the summer 2021 Art, A.I. & Robotics course at Somerville High School, the Lesley STEAM team worked with Cambridge Youth Programs or CYP staff on an alternate reality game or ARG. Most educational ARGs consist of scenarios that lead participants to collaboratively solve puzzles and accomplish activities. LSTEAM used this social learning format as a professional development opportunity for CYP.

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Summer Art, AI & Robotics class captures imaginations in Somerville

SHS students work on basic robot kits.
SHS students work on their basic robot kits.

Sixteen Somerville High School (SHS) students from diverse backgrounds came together to explore the combination of art, storytelling, artificial intelligence (A.I.), and robotics. Their teachers worked with Lesley STEAM to weave this content together with relevant STEAM and CTE standards and learning objectives. The final product was a hybrid course that took place in the High School’s new FabLab, as well as online with Lesley University’s College of Art and Design faculty, a comic and graphic novel artist. They earned four Lesley college credits that were matched by 2.5 math and 2.5 art credits from SHS. Many of the skills they learned can be applied to other classes they can take during the school year such as math, language arts, art, and computer science.

Inspired by developments in artificial intelligence such as machine learning and A.I. sensing, the SHS/LSTEAM team facilitated several activities such as learning Scratch programming language, building basic robots, then students gained fine arts and storytelling skills from drawing comics. Class activities culminated in a capstone “artbot” project. The main objectives of the class were for students to:

  • Show their understanding of storytelling by animating a character using craft material & servos.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of robotics by building robots that alter the environment through art.
  • Show their understanding of the iterative design process by rebuilding/repurposing their robot for new ends.

Students began the class by learning about artists who explore human-machine collaboration and interaction such as Soughwen Chung and Stephanie Dinkins. They learned about Joy Buolamwini, a coder who uses art and research to illuminate the social implications of artificial intelligence. 

Joy Buolamwini talks about racial bias in AI.
Joy Buolamwini talks about racial bias in AI. © TED

During the first two weeks, students learned how to use design thinking based on a culturally relevant making model from LSTEAM staff. The model included “design cyphers”, concept mapping, and “collaborative peer reviews.” They learned about the fundamentals of computer programming with Scratch, as well as how to build and program robots to imitate human creative expression. Later, they used an A.I. sensing extension in Scratch to enable their robots to respond and react to human movement.

During the third week, students worked with their peers, teachers and LSTEAM staff to synthesize what they learned in art and storytelling with their A.I. robot builds. In the morning, they took “Comics and the Graphic Novel” online with Barrington Edwards, summer faculty from Lesley University’s College of Art and Design; and in the afternoon, they met at the FabLab to engage in tasks that allowed them to combine clearly and coherently different ideas from visual storytelling with their physical robot prototypes. These activities culminated in student presentations synthesizing their work at the end of Friday class.

SHS student capstone artbot project.
This SHS student capstone “artbot” project is a Kraken monster that paints.

For the last and final week, students worked independently on their capstone projects, with support from the SHS/LSTEAM team. Students participated in collaborative peer reviews and gallery walks to get feedback from their peers, school teachers and administrators, and outside experts. On the last day each individual student or small group of students presented their final projects to the general school community.

Making the Artbots

For this class, students were tasked with designing, programming, and prototyping, and presenting their artbots, which are robots that respond to people and make art. They created a short comic about how to make an artbot and presented them during class. To build the artbot students were given design constraints such as: 

  • Your artbot can move freely or be attached to an object or a person
  • Your artbot must generate or help users to make art 
  • Your artbot must convey a story or a message (ex. through gesture)
  • You are encouraged to use pose detection / pose estimation 
  • You are encouraged to use sensors or other peripherals in your robot design
  • You must design and fabricate your own chassis that can include single or multiple motors/servos, wheels, or other moving parts

Pose estimation is a computer vision technique that predicts and tracks the location of a person or object. This is done by looking at a combination of the pose and the orientation of a given person or object. Students learned how to add code modules and extensions to Scratch that detect human movement using the computer’s in-board (web) camera. This builds on the Face Sensing block that uses machine learning that is trained to see faces.

Examples of the students’ final ‘artbots’ include “Cube”, a robot that is controlled by two mini-computers called BBC Micro:bits; “The Crab” that moves left, right, forward, and backward using servos motors; a “Boatman Painter” bot that actually paints; a “Kraken” bot that draws; a “Ladybug” bot that realizes how beautiful the sunshine is and draws sun symbols on paper; and a Butterfly bot that collaborates with humans to draw colorful pictures. Two students created a skateboarding “Ninja Turtle” that used music as the art form to define its movement. And finally, one student created their version of the “Scratch cat” as a motion-sensing A.I. robot that uses peoples’ body movements to draw.

To learn more, check out the students’ final artbots:

This course was made possible through the support of BiogenSTAR, Somerville High School, Lesley University College of Art and Design, and the City of Somerville.