Dusty Jones: hello, and thank you for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast.
The teaching math teaching podcast is sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators.
The hosts are Eva Thanheiser me dusty Jones and Joel amidon today we're talking with Dr Farshid Safi who just received notice he'll be promoted to associate professor of mathematics education in the college of Community innovation, education at the University of central Florida.
Congratulations Farshid we've asked our sheet to talk with us today about his work with prospective mathematics, teachers and mathematics teacher educators.
Welcome far sheet, would you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Farshid Safi: Sure, thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be with all of you, and so i'm actually Sophie, as you mentioned.
I tell you a little bit about myself I don't separate my personal life from my professional life, so I love the fact that we're starting with who we are and.
I was born in the US, but I grew up until the age of 13 in Iran and so went through the first part of my life and all the way through the startup high school over there and then due to.
The war that was going on, we immigrated back to the US, and then I did high school and my college studies and have lived here, since then, but.
very proud to have gained perspectives from multiple cultures multiple places and been blessed with wonderful family and friends, all the way through and doing that in the context of mathematics education is another huge privilege.

Dusty Jones: awesome yeah that's it's really interesting, the more people we get to talk to the i'm really interested in learning about different perspectives and how they inform what we do and how we.
How we work with, in particular with math teachers, how did you start.
Teaching math teachers.

Farshid Safi: So, like everything else it's i'd like to think of it as beautifully complex, so I didn't start have teaching math teachers I started off teaching.
mathematics and some of the classes, that I was teaching as a graduate student at the University of Florida.
I was teaching some content courses, like the calc sequence called jobs were pre calculus but then there would also ask me to teach this math for teachers class and I didn't know that I was teaching.
You know, future change makers and prospective teachers I just thought it was sort of a.
Focus class, and so my first few years I was teaching both mathematics content and then perspective teachers elementary and then it gradually it wasn't until I was probably in my doctoral program that I realized weeks, you teach perspective math teachers on a regular basis.

Dusty Jones: And so did that start when you were you said a graduate student were you working on your masters or your PhD or did it kind of span that.

Farshid Safi: right time, so what might be interesting is if I sort of gave you a timeline with movies and music, but I don't know if you have time for that so.

Dusty Jones: Sure go ahead.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Oh, I would love that that's a new that's a new podcast right.

Farshid Safi: So so basically I started.
I got my bachelor's in the early 90s in mathematics with specialization in teaching and then I started Grad school than math while I was Tutoring and doing things like that and I ran a math lab.
Where we help students learn about calculus and college algebra and those classes and I was doing that, while I was taking graduate courses.
And then I realized, there was a huge disconnect between the graduate level theoretical mathematics, that I was taking and how, in no way was that connected to the experiences or opportunities to.
engage and help people who were trying to learn, mathematics and so it wasn't until then that I sort of focused on Okay, maybe my graduate studies and thinking about a doctoral program should focus on math education and not just on the mathematics component of it.

Dusty Jones: Okay yeah cool.
When you said movies and music, I thought you were going to let us know, like.
You know something else, like.
The grunge era, or you know this Star Wars movie was out when.

Farshid Safi: We could do that, but then you'll find out that I don't do short answers very well okay.
That would be a whole different.
podcasts.

Dusty Jones: Joel Eva there's a new idea.
What was the best advice that you received when you started teaching math teachers.

Farshid Safi: That, if you want your students to be engaged the you have to help find the relevance from them and, with them as opposed to expecting the course or the curriculum to do that for you.

Dusty Jones: Who did you hear that from.

Farshid Safi: I believe there were.
It was one of the educational psychology professors at the University of Florida and, and so it just I didn't know what student centered teaching was but it, I think I was taking a personality dynamics course.
with him and then he just talked about how you know we just have to focus on reaching people, so we can teach and that really resonated in ways that i'm still processing cool.

Dusty Jones: And to turn that around what advice would you give to someone who is starting out teaching classes for math teachers.

Farshid Safi: To focus on the fact that we teach students mathematics, science literature other subject content areas we don't teach mathematics per se and I don't even i'm not even convinced that mathematics as a subject needs teaching, but people need engaging and empowering and experiences in.
In mathematical situations and or opportunities to analyze the world.
So I would say the advice would be to be at least as patient with ourselves professionally and personally as we would be with our students.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): proceed I got a question for you, so you know we are shaped as teachers of math and as mts by our own experiences.
As students of mathematics, how did your varied experiences, you know, in Iran, up until high school and then your high school experience.
 Here in the states like how did it has is there anything that any lessons that you drew from those different experiences that you using your own teaching of teachers or even in your teaching mathematics before that.

Farshid Safi: Yes, very interesting that you mentioned that because.
I think we are all influenced by our life experiences and they they affect us, whether we realize it then or only in retrospect, and I would say that things like learning a language.
Like I had to do and, like many of us have to do and learning a culture and learning to adjust but it's all about sense, making and adjusting and I think a lot of mathematical thinking and a mathematical experiences involved in that.
Almost.
sense, making exploration getting stuck getting little less stuck getting stuck again, but then trying to do this with other people towards a goal, so I think doing that.
Socially doing that academically all of those things go hand in hand.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): yeah I love that I mean just the idea of sense, making an adjusting but with others, and you know, thinking of that from a cultural perspective from math perspective that's.
Right.

Farshid Safi: The conversation is i've never heard someone say I live on my Earth.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Right yeah.

Farshid Safi: it's sort of our world.
And so, and what we do is what we plural do.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): yeah so on my Earth.
I want to follow up, for she because I I feel like reflecting on my own growing up bilingually in Germany.
That I always approached the world from a male a sense, making perspective and the constructivist perspective, even though I didn't realize it when I was a kid.
But I realized really early on that things that can be said in one language you cannot say in another, or you can like express the exact same thing and so.
This idea of construction versus reflection of reality, I think, was was kind of in there and I went through school as a centimeter but here's the hilarious thing like I thought everybody went through school like that.
And it took me longer to figure out that.
That actually is not.
everybody else but.

Farshid Safi: I love the fact that you're you're sort of connecting back to how we construct and how we reflect.
Believe it or not, in high school I took three years of German and then in college, I took a couple years of German and I mentioned that, not because of the connection with the German language, but because I would help people understand the grammar of doing languages, using math.
So you take this.
From the beginning, and then you add a tea at the end and then they're like what do you only think this way i'm like, how do you not think about the structure of languages and.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): I just was going to add to that add to it, or I had to learn that, because, as I was preparing to become a teacher in Germany.

Farshid Safi: mm hmm.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): And I was going to teach math and English Latin was still a requirement I don't know why, and I don't know if it still is, but it was.
And Latin is a language that is like literally mathematical and you know, since it's not spoken anymore there isn't that much colloquialism and so sick exact same thing, like building it up like piece by piece yeah sorry for interrupting you.

Farshid Safi: know no no it's a shared conversation and I love the fact that we compose and decompose in languages, the way that we stress it in mathematics and in science and in other areas it's just that to our students, these are separate universes and that's up to us to do something about.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): You think there's some just chewing on these ideas here but, like the idea of sense, making adjusting and going back to that and, like in you're talking about.
You know, making sense of language, making sense of culture and like this idea of a process right, and I think sometimes the criticism of you know of the teaching of mathematics, is that whatever is being.
taught and i'm putting in quotation marks it's great for podcast is like does not make sense right it doesn't come pre packaged.
It like I don't understand it like.
From the get go vs you're talking about you're always engaging in this process of sense, making and maybe that.
I don't know, do you think that puts you in a better shape in doing mathematics, because it is about sense, making versus like you know, maybe there's a.
preconceived notion I don't know from an American sample that hey this should this should make sense right I don't know if that's coming through.

Farshid Safi: Clearly, I think it's.
I think there's a common denominator to that, in that the sense, making in that process has to come along the journey and a progression.
That it can't have necessarily a an expectation of short term success, even though a lot of what our students and sometimes we are forced to think about our short term successes and since making like everything else in life, sometimes happens in a spiral and reflective fashion.
And if our learning and our if our experiences are somehow separate from that, then I don't know what we're doing, because then we are.
purposefully detaching learning experiences and learning spaces from life experiences and just authentic spaces and this this notion of process and people.
To go back to the connection with language that was also the first time that I realized that.
People process and power enter into decisions because, like Eva mentioned, I was told that I needed to take a quote unquote foreign language like German or French because it would help me.
In college understand mathematics at a graduate level, and I said but wasn't a lot of mathematics also traditionally done in Persian which is my first language.
And Arabic.
Not empower us.

Dusty Jones: Maybe the Hindu Arabic numerals maybe.

Farshid Safi: You know, and then they're like well no that's not a language that counts.
And Dan.
Still stays with me, because who gets to decide not only whose language but who's math and what counts.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): that's actually very timely right now right when there is legislature being passed all over the place, about what can and cannot be taught in schools.

Farshid Safi: Absolutely absolutely and, by the way, ever congratulations on the on the grant that I think you, and if you other wonderful colleagues are going to be working on, I was like.
So exciting so needed.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): Thank you.

Dusty Jones: Eva, could you tell us a little bit about that, when.
We have some time because i'd like to hear about this.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): Maybe not on Farshid's.

Dusty Jones: All right, great.

Farshid Safi: So, but I would say that getting to think about the intersection and I use that word on purpose the intersection of people stories histories traditions.
Culturally relevant aspects and not at the expense of education but connected to the purpose of education.
And sometimes people form these false dichotomies and they try to over structure to achieve all the other goals and those goals oftentimes come at the cost of just human beings and communities, especially communities of color and marginalized groups.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): So for shadow, and I share a brief story and currently teaching middle school math teacher course and I decided to teach it completely in context, so we.
We looked at, if the world were a village, which is task, have done a lot, and then we looked at gerrymandering we looked at representation in Congress, we looked at the vaccine efficacy rates and all of those kinds of things.
If in week four or five and I like highlighted the math mostly it's ratio and proportion, because that middle school, but there are some linear functions and those kinds of things in there.
And in like week three or force, one of my students said i'm so glad that you reviewed today with us where the math was because I didn't realize, we were doing math.
And that got me thinking like we're so used to separating the math out as this naked playing that if we're doing it in context.

Farshid Safi: mm hmm.

Eva Thanheiser (she/her): Students think oh that we're doing social justice or we're doing these things but we're not doing mathematics because it's matt this make it thing.

Farshid Safi: Right right and.
I think it's.
Those intentional connections that we tend to have in smaller pockets, but sometimes it's almost as if we all say I, in this case, sometimes.
As an educator I presume that people are in our as involved in some of the day to day ways that one area one focus connects with another, but I would say that's one of the areas where I believe academia has over specialized, to the detriment of people.
Where they were people were unless we provide these opportunities, especially perspective, teachers and students at large, they don't get to see the connections.
But if you grow up like you know many of us have where you wonder, and you marvel at architecture and nature and structure and people and traditions and history.
And then the mathematics that goes into that these are not separate things they're all connected and each one it's almost like walking through a rose garden.
And just noticing the structure of the Rose as opposed to the beautiful smells and the structure and the way they lay together and where the sun might be in all of those things.

Dusty Jones: For sheet i'd like to get your insight on taking these ideas and you know with thinking about art and beauty and culture, and then How does that connect to the ideas of using technology, in particular, dynamic technology to explore and mathematical ideas we first met.
I think about a decade ago at.
North Carolina state, I think, is where I met you.
yeah we were.
Preparing yeah PT empty preparing to teach math with technology, so I know that you've got.
A bent or an interest toward using technology so, can you can you talk about some of those intersections and overlaps between technology and.
beauty and mathematics and art and things like that.

Farshid Safi: Sure, and let me start by saying that i'm learning as I go and I have the privilege of learning and growing with so many phenomenal colleagues over the years, including say PT empty and.
learning about how content and pedagogy and technology come together and what's the role of tea Pack and all of that.
I would still maintained by the way, that T packs should be a three dimensional model, not a two dimensional model but that's yet another podcast episode that my phone.
But the idea that these.
intersections some of them, I believe, are are needed, but not if they become constraints, so, for instance, with our perspective, teachers, we know that.
We need to work together on content and pedagogy and technology and equity and assessment and all of these things but it's not, because then they should remain separate in our teaching or in our elevating of student thinking and student voice.
So as as math educators, I believe that we all must have to have at least a floor understanding of how.
Some of these different components merge in working with students and then from a research standpoint I do fully acknowledge the fact that it is darn near impossible to do all of it at a research level to the fullest extent.
But I think from working with prospective teachers.
I do think it's absolutely essential and I think this is where it is easier to do with elementary teachers than with secondary teachers, because secondary teachers already think many of them that they teach a subject area as opposed to teaching students many things.
i'm happy to expand on the technology part more specifically.

Dusty Jones: Like but I don't go ahead.

Farshid Safi: yeah so to me part of technology is connected with the kind of questions and the kind of explorations that we can do that are worth the time that we have together.
In other words, I think, technology does allow us to natalie notice and extend patterns, but also attend to different representations in wonderful ways and potentially take a focus of trying to view mathematics as calculation.
So whenever I think of technology, I think of multiple representations I think of the ways that allows us to think about.
Five practices, the ways that we can engage students or the ways that we can continue to push forward or linger over specific questions.
And so, if it allows us to model some of what happens around us, in order to understand them more deeply and more in a more connected and coherent fashion, then I think that is a huge afforded that technology needs to have pre K to 20.

Dusty Jones: Do you have a particular example of that you're thinking of of how how you've recently use technology and in a way, like this.

Farshid Safi: So when we quickly shifted to.
To remote instruction, then one of the things that we used to do was focus on the fact that noticing patterns and extending and understanding function types becomes vitally important.
and trying to understand say linear versus non linear growth, when it came to it seems like spring 2020 is a lifetime ago, but it really isn't but.
But then to also talk about how we can use technology to make predictions and then to be able to reflect and then find out if this is my conjecture.
What are the implications but not, starting with the math and then ending it with connections to people, but actually starting with.
content with connections to people in communities and then getting to the the mathematics, the and having the technology allow for this exploration.
And then saying you know what we can't actually get at precision it's not even possible right now, the idea is, what are the what are some possible ranges of outcomes and then having.
conversation about confidence intervals, having conversations about what are the different types of prediction models that we can have, so I guess that would be maybe one example from the last year.

Dusty Jones: So far, sheet as a.
As a math teacher educator or as a person, because you said you don't you don't really want to sell you don't try to separate your or you don't separate your personal life in your professional life, so as far she'd what makes a good day.

Farshid Safi: What makes a good day is first of all feeling like i've been the as good a.
Partner Father son brother that I can be.
On a personal level, and then feeling like i've been.
able to be of service and have.
A way to just elevate and empower those that I have the good fortune of working with whether that's undergraduate students, whether that's.
teachers in the classroom right now, or whether it's our graduate students or our doctoral students that I I just grow so much with or colleagues that I continue to just.
be amazed at the phenomenal things that I never thought that I would get a chance to explore, so what makes it what makes a good day is when I continue to elevate others while feeling like i'm adding to my own potential to keep growing with others.
I told you, I couldn't give you a short answers.

Dusty Jones: Though that's great.
So we part of the reason we have this podcast is to give people ideas, especially people who are starting out about.
What other people have found useful and helpful and important and so we'd like to ask our guests, where they might go online to find resources do you have any go to locations that you could recommend.

Farshid Safi: Whenever I talk about resources, I connected to people, because people and perspectives have a lot to do with what those resources become and what kind of perspective, they offer or they could potentially still grow in, and so I do a lot of I I use Twitter a lot.
But I also find that more recently things like mathevon.
are very nice as as almost like a playground, and as as areas for exploration, especially for our teachers.
I do a lot but going back to technology, so I use best most NGO jabra as resources and I keep encouraging our.
Our prospective teachers and our newer teachers to focus on how do you modify a resource before trying to create it from scratch yourself.
just for the sake of not only time, but the idea of being able to achieve things and modify it with people and communities and context in mind, as opposed to trying to create something.
Without that consideration.
and any curriculum any other resource that I believe focuses on connections and progressions and coherence, then i'm all over it.

Dusty Jones: What do you like to do for fun for she'd, how do you balance things out how do you.

Farshid Safi: So fun starts with.
Family time and good friends and.
But also.
To me, a lot of the fun activities that I do still have to do with wanderings and analysis that's happening in the background.
So I love watching sports, but I am fascinated by the analytics of sports and so for about 2025 years now.
A few friends and I we've been doing fantasy football and basketball and those things, because then it's context based.
But then it's also analytical but it's also a prediction model but it's also reality and things beyond your control, and so it teaches you humility, but it also teaches you that you can collaborate but also be competitive in a good way and sometimes the fun part.
involves being together in community with people you care about, and so, if those if that activity has kept the group of us together and in communication for a couple of decades now, there must be something to it.

Dusty Jones: yeah we have we play fantasy football with my wife's family and my kids are old enough now to like understand and.
And we said, do you want a team and they're like why never win and I like we don't we don't do this because we're trying to when we do this to you know stay in contact with uncle Chris and.
Aunt Erica and you know you know of course there's some bragging rights and there's some some good natured competitiveness, but really it's about the relationships and just keeping those.

Farshid Safi: Right and then to bring it back to music and and movies, I feel like my my brilliant by foreigners, she is a genius besides the one mistake that she made in selecting me.
that's her one downfall, but you know going on 20 years now, so will you know too late for that.
But one of the things that we love to do is actually go through periods of music with our kids and based on the sounds having them guests within a couple of years what period, or what era that music could have come from.
And what led.
To that same thing with movies, you know you watch part of the marvel universe, and then you my 12 year old son.
nima and my 16 year old daughter nika then we watch the behind the scenes about what we missed because that helps us to find context and connections.
that's what I mean about it's all about progressions and connections, whether we call that math or whether we call that insight or structure it's it's all there.

Dusty Jones: Joel Eva do you have anything.
As we wrap up here.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Just in here in verse either together i'm going to mention something I was just listening to this podcast series on spotify called like 60 songs that explained the 90s, and there was a there's one about I want it that way by the backstreet boys, the Info.
And it talking about the mathematics of that in like like the mathematics, of making a hit song, I think.
You might like that episode, but just but anyway, all those sorts of things like talking about the context and those songs like how much.
You know, even the song hey jealousy which i'd never thought twice about there's like 60 minutes I guess episode about it it's like.
And then it's coming back to what you're talking about fresh like you know there's this is.
Every you know these songs are you know there's either I want it that way that's there's a money making like formula for that one but hey jealousy there's like some.
Like dark themes about a guy's life within that song it's like I never thought twice, but, but now it's like.
I don't know everything in this episode you're kind of talking about person first in everything with the teaching method and like.
Even to think like with songs with movies, and like there's always this ingredient of humanity and all of it and how do we bring that to the surface, no I think that's a that's a good message that you've put forth for us i'm glad you brought up these ideas.

Farshid Safi: But these are the things where it's one of the privileges of of teaching is that our students become our teachers and what works and how it works and why it works and what's relevant and how it connects to their daily life, and so this is when.
In a beautiful way the power dynamic shifts without us even realizing it but it's based on relationships and authenticity.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Beautiful.

Dusty Jones: Farshid do you have anything to promote.

Farshid Safi: Our students are wonderful teachers are a community that keeps sustaining us when life is hard, I think that that's if anything we've learned over the past couple of years.
Then it's the importance of a support structure, I I don't know that we do enough to promote those who.
elevate the elevators if that makes sense, those who empower others who might be in the position to empower our students our schools in our communities.
and finding ways of of learning.
together and growing that way.
So I would start there as far as.
Professional things to promote i'm more excited about some recent things that we are doing in collaboration.
So i'm at the University of central Florida, and we are working on a nsf grant where we basically are focused on professional development, and how be.
That can impact our programs our secondary ED program in in mathematics education and then seeing how math educators mentor teachers perspective teachers.
Supervisors internship supervisors, how we all can work together to towards a common goal, that is so empowering, and that is so powerful because we see its effect and then you see the students and they just light up but it it's there's a lot of work that goes into making that happen.
So I would say sort of promoting efforts that elevate students and schools, both at the elementary and the secondary level because that's also another.
almost invisible boundary that doesn't always need to be at the forefront.
We teach people.
They happen to go across different grades and in different buildings but buildings don't shouldn't define us.

Dusty Jones: Farshid thanks so much for joining us today, this has been a delightful conversation I really appreciate you sharing with us today.

Farshid Safi: Thank you for the opportunity I really enjoy speaking with each of you and the chance to learn through the podcast series it's wonderful thanks.

Dusty Jones: And thanks again to you listeners for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast be sure to subscribe to the podcast.
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