About

What is Sew Math?

Let us consider analogies to food:

1. If you give a person a fish, she eats for a day. If you teach a person to fish, she eats for a lifetime.

2. Slow Food, Local Food, and Farm-to-Table are just a few movements engaging people in considering food. These movements ask us to think about the systems that create and transport what goes in our bodies.

Sew Math seeks to engage people in considering what goes on our bodies. Some of the questions revolving around the Sew Math program include the following: Where do our clothes come from? How do they get to us? Who is responsible for making them? How are they constructed?

Sew Math asks participants to imagine and investigate systems of clothing production and consumption. In order to effectively engage with these systems, Sew Math teaches participants sewing skills that enable them to make choices about what they wear. Throughout the program, mathematic concepts and procedures are used as the basis through which to teach the art of sewing.

What is the purpose of Sew Math?

Sew Math has two interconnected purposes:

1)    Integrated Academics:

- Sew Math provides students with opportunities to learn sewing skills by accessing and building on their existing mathematic knowledge.
- Sew Math provides students with experiments in which to apply math skills through sewing.
- Sew Math engages students in systems thinking processes such as:
                  - Identifying connections
                  - Articulating and discussing observations
                  - Metacognition and reflection on experimental processes
- Sew Math engages students in independent experimentation (without following step-by-step procedures).

2)    Systemic Participation:

Sew Math asks participants to conceptualize systemic relations in sewing and math and to consider how they choose to participate in the systems around them through the following process:

- Draw/map a system of clothing production and consumption
- Identify ways we can interact/engage in the system
                  - ex: prevent clothes from going to a dump
                  - ex: learn to sew, make different consumer choices
- Experiment with sewing skills, unwanted clothes, teaching others
                - Reflect on results

- Sew Math provides students with educational experiences that are related to and have an impact on the “real world.”

What is Sew Math's theoretical background?

1. Our current educational climate

Sew Math was designed as a way to involve students in rigorous and creative activities that empower them to consider their impact in societal contexts. Sew Math also exists as a space in which to explore methods of teaching and learning that are innovative and enlivening.

Current educational movements are concerned with standards and assessments that may inadvertently place limits on school-time revolving around creativity, exploration, expression, and interconnectedness. Full-time teachers are under pressure to cover content and procedures such that creative activities are often supplements to, and not staples of curriculum.

Sew Math does not exist in opposition to standards and assessments, but rather, seeks to support students in developing concepts and skills that are not easily quantifiable. Creative skills are important for young people to engage in, regardless of how easily assessable these skills are on tests.

From informal conversations with parents of participants, it has become clear that a primary motivation for enrolling in this program is the lack of creative opportunities many students face in standard educational settings. In the midst of this reality, it becomes even more urgent and necessary for young people to develop artistic skills, in community, for the sake of their social and emotional wellbeing.

2. Pedagogical research

The pedagogies employed in this project stem from research and methodologies such as inquiry models, and Ambitious Methods of Teaching Science.

The majority of sessions begin with an inquiry into a given project. Questions are posed such as, “How can we create shorts?’ and students have opportunities to imagine, talk about, draw, and write responses. This is always a critical point of each session, in which many students hypothesize and connect to their prior knowledge. Many students write, “I hypothesize that shorts will take two pieces, and look like this:” I then ask students to think about what shape each piece makes in two dimensions. Eventually I guide students to deconstruct a garment in order to fully see the geometry of each shape.

Because there are known given geometric shapes that define various pieces of garments (as in pant pieces, sleeve pieces, etc), these inquiries were not entirely open. However, students would determine the steps they needed to take in order to figure out how to construct a garment. This guided inquiry was used to support students in being capable of applying these skills in other independent sewing or construction endeavors.[i]

In addition to inquiry models of exploration, a number of tools from Dr. Mark Windschitl’s Science Learning Framework were also considered.[ii] For example, strategies at supporting discourse were used when attending to and responding to students’ ideas. Students were continually encouraged to make sense of the activities they were engaged in, and to articulate their developing understandings.

[i] Banchi, H. & Bell, R. (2008). The Many Levels of Inquiry. Science and Children, 46(2), 26-29, October 2008

[ii] http://tools4teachingscience.org

_Who are you, Sew Math?

Sew Math = Sara Perl Egendorf + Collaborators

Sara Perl Egendorf

Sara Perl is a founding participant of Sew Math.

She has been creating works of art to wear
for herself, and with others, for 20 years.

She has been employed as a Costume Shop Assistant, a New York City Public School Teacher, and an After School Arts Facilitator.

She has a B.A. in Education History and Policy from Brown University and a Masters in Teaching from the University of Washington.

She is currently tutoring students individually, and studying Geological Sciences.

She is a big fan of volcanoes, glaciers, clouds, interconnected and interdependent systems, philosophy, hip-hop music, dancing, and creative learning in all its forms.

Collaborators

Sew Math collaborators identify systems of clothing production and consumption, and create their own works of art to wear.

Participants have ranged from ages 4 - 88.

People with curious minds: please inquire.