Behind the scenes of the new math film series from across the globe
By Scott Laidlaw, Co-Founder
If there were any species on our planet to hold the title for both the cutest and funniest, the African Penguin would certainly be a verifiable contender for the top spot.
African Penguins are also among the fastest declining endangered animals anywhere on the globe.
“Cape Town is the place everyone knows about in South Africa,” says Maya, a 7th grade middle school student at Curro Academy School, a two-hour drive west of Cape Town.
“We have the coastline with the mountains. And we also have the African Penguin,” adds Calem, Maya’s peer. “But the population declines every year.”
“Our task,” Kaylin, another Curro student, shares passionately, “is to make a video of the penguins... it was mainly to get the idea that penguins are starting to go extinct.” Maya considers more variables penguins are facing, “We look at how few African Penguin breeding pairs there are, as well as their chances of survival with little food because of the overfishing.”
The three of them chatter, explaining what they’ve learned from the data they collected in the field with the penguins over the past week - a week that started as an improbable idea three months before, 10,066 miles away from Cape Town.
Big ideas sometimes come from seemingly insignificant moments. For the MidSchoolMath team, the concept of a new film series was already tossed around as one way to tackle the new California framework in mathematics. Yet, as the team talked, something else took hold... the idea that the changes needed for California could fundamentally enhance the curriculum for clients across the country… and even around the world.
And that’s when Martha Riecks, our Director of National Conference, jumped in. “Well, if you are going international, you know I helped train an African Penguin.” The idea was born. Martha had helped raise ‘Stanley’ the famous, first African Penguin to live at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, PA. Her story of this penguin waddling around her cubicle was infectious.
Two months later, our team decided to embark on traveling to five different countries to film middle school students exploring some of the world’s most prevailing topics, such as animal extinction, electricity load shedding, and trade economies.
We knew immediately upon arrival to film the penguins just how important the BIG Picture International Film Series would be to our teachers and students in the US to bring a multi-cultural lens to math.
“South Africa is really unique because it’s got a really unique culture,” Kaylin says excitedly.
Together, Maya, Calem, and Kaylin dig deep into the math of penguin survival by calculating their diminishing population, where the best nesting sites are located, and rehabilitation efforts to create new penguin colonies.
One of their challenges is to think about how to improve awareness and their actions to protect the African Penguin nesting habitat.
Their potential solution? “The Nest-O-Meter (TM!)” they shout in unison, a hypothetical software application, that would help people understand the underlying math in habitats from the perspective of the penguin.
“An African Penguin has to take 6.5 steps for every human step,” Calem informs us. “So, if a penguin has to walk a long distance to go fishing, it wasn’t such an ideal nest,” Kaylin adds. “And then they have predators and other dangers,” says Maya.
As they finish their calculations for the chapters of their documentary (Penguin Populations, House Hunting Penguin Style, and A New Hope at De Hoop (a restoration project)), the three students start recording their introduction: “We hope you enjoy our penguin adventure as much as we have!”
Next stop: The MidSchoolMath team is now headed to Medellín, Colombia to explore how large wall murals transformed a once dangerous neighborhood into an international destination for art and tourism.
“People talk about bringing ‘real-world’ problems to math. We chose a documentary film style for this project that brings middle school students together from different countries around the world to investigate big problems,” says Jennifer Lightwood, MidSchoolMath’s Co-founder and Executive Producer.
Other planned destinations include São Paulo, Brazil; Tokyo, Japan; and California, USA to explore the speed of deforestation of the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest, mountain geology and international commerce.
It works like that sometimes, where a very big idea comes from something so simple and adorable as a little penguin that symbolizes, perhaps, the most important part of why we teach mathematics: to help students not only navigate their world, but to take care of it.
