Inspiring Women: Maria Droujkova: Mathemagician

I met Maria two years ago at ScienceOnline2010. I’m not a mathematician myself (although my father is,) and I’ve never taken any advanced math courses, but more on that another time. At the time I was a librarian for a scientific research institute and attracted to the event because of its emphasis on (and having learned about it through) social media. Anyhow, Maria and I struck up a conversation and I learned about her work which you can get glimpses of on her website and blog. Since my inclination is finding information, I answered some questions she posted to Twitter, and Maria eventually invited me to join her math social bookmarking group.

Maria describes the purpose of Natural Math from her teaching and learning practice and philosophy:

“We need to participate and engage babies and kids in math-rich, meaningful human endeavors that are useful, beautiful and fun. From the earliest time, kids should see themselves as co-creators of mathematics. The richness of the mathematical culture has to become available and accessible in a wide variety of communities, in many beautiful and meaningful forms.”

Toward these ends, Maria created “communities of practice,” through math clubs, videos, the Math Future Wiki (which hosts frequent online events with innovators in math study and teaching.) And consider Maria’s ideas on curriculum as well as her inspired crowdfunding endeavor to create math objects for young children, Moebius Noodles.

A recent story Maria co-wrote with Sarah Berenson emphasizes her concerns with encouraging girls to pursue math and science in school and beyond, focusing on the Girls on Track summer camp resulting from a partnership between several North Carolina colleges and schools and entering into its second decade. “Inspired by the girls, we are working on an integrated model connecting the academic track point of view with personal and community significance of mathematics,” the authors report.

Recently, Maria directed her energies towards math learning games and in recent presentations here and here discusses “helping everybody - millions of kids, parents, teachers - design or remix their own games,” through communities of practice, social networks, and taxonomies.

For her advocacy of math and children’s natural learning and creativity, her effective use of technology and social media, and her entrepreneurial spirit, it is no wonder that one of her fellow travellers called Maria “the Maven of Math World online,” and I heartily agree.

Inspiring Women: Lindsey Mead: Awareness

Awareness seems scarcely sufficient to describe the gifts Lindsey presents through her A Design So Vast. Cosmic consciousness may be a more apt description.

It is this appreciation of the moment in every day, in spite of change, pain and at times loneliness, (and what they teach her,) that is so delightful and transformational about Lindsey’s work, through which I could go, to borrow the words of Randall Jarrell, “shouting and pointing.”

However, today I want to focus on consciousness and awareness and what Lindsey teaches me. Quoting Miriam Gates “Bravery is about being conscious of all life,” Lindsey goes on to write “Bravery is staring into the sun, even when the brightness of life – and the brightness is precisely because life’s minutes are burning in front of us – is painful. Bravery is not flinching and not looking away, even when the emotion of a moment overwhelms us. Bravery is not hiding, in a thousand ways little and big, from our own lives.”

Of appreciation of everyday moments of life and phenomena, Lindsey writes: “The most mundane of things, our very own life-scarred hands, are equally as transcendent as the most ornate and soaring cathedral. There is as much power and as much wonder in the simple human hand as in a grandiose cathedral.”

The awareness of the fleeting quality of life runs through Lindsey’s writing, that we are living and dying at the same time. Or, similarly here, where she emphasizes: “My every conscious moment is filtered through this prism of my piercing awareness of how fleeting it is.” She speaks of choice, a willingness to remain aware in spite of difficulty and heartbreak. And how she passes this appreciation on to her children, vastness and imagination, what she sees in an apparently bleak season of winter, as well as the solstice.

This awareness and imagination generate appreciation and endurance, and joy. Through it all, Lindsey, like others I’ve profiled this month, has a remarkable sense of the journey she is on and shares her gifts generously and profoundly.