Julian Cortes opens his class with a wordless film: Norma in Ecuador, owner of a banana plantation. The class watches. Then Julian asks: what assumptions did you make? Because Norma is the plantation owner. Not a worker. Not a man. The owner.
The class reads Norma's story to go deeper. A math problem emerges from her actual life: if her son works eight and a half hours and spends four-fifths of that time harvesting, how much time is that? The class works through converting mixed numbers, multiplying fractions, checking each other's work. One learner spontaneously calculates how many bananas Norma sells in a year, without being asked.
Julian reflects on what he saw: both times learners were doing a math problem, he walked around and every single student was engaged. Not because the math was easier. Because it belonged to someone real.
Julian and Jaime Chapple are educators from the same district who each built their own lessons around reweave stories. Their work is different. Their conclusion is the same.
"If we spend time just worried about the math and forget about the kindness and empathy, I think we're doing kids a disservice. If we teach kids to be kind, show empathy, and do math, we're on our way to solving the world's problems."
Julian Cortes, educatorJulian opens with the wordless film of Norma in Ecuador. After watching, he asks: what did you learn? Then he reveals that Norma is the plantation owner. The class discusses the assumptions they made before knowing that. Julian names what happened: perspective shift. Then the class reads Norma's actual story to learn more.
The math problem comes from Norma's real life: her son works eight and a half hours and spends four-fifths of that time harvesting. How much time is that? The class works through it. One learner converts to minutes. Another finds the fraction directly. Julian walks them through both methods, asking the class to compare them.
One learner, unprompted, calculates the total number of bananas Norma's farm produces in a year, assuming 15 bananas per plant. Julian did not ask for that. The curiosity simply appeared, because the math was real enough to be worth wondering about.
Julian closes with a reflection: the subjects are not separate. Writing and math and reading and kindness are all one thing when the story is real. Both times his learners were doing math problems that day, every single student was engaged. He connects that back to what the tools gave him: empathy and mathematics, together, not in separate lesson slots.