Quilting the Classroom:  An Inclusive Pedagogy Towards Math Understandings and Compassionate Caring Local to Global Community By Kristi Rennebohm Franz Sunnyside Elementary School Pullman, Washington, USA March 2001 An important equity focus of Math Education is providing a comprehensive learning context that inclusively invites and affirms all children across cultural and cognitive strengths, diversities, commonalties to be actively, meaningfully, and successfully engaged with breadth and depth of math understandings towards building human understandings within compassionate and caring community of learners . An essential goal of the first school math experiences in primary classrooms is to provide developmentally inclusive opportunities for all children to intergratively use the whole of their being (verbal, auditory, visual, musical, artistic, physical, tactical, affective , and social domains) in becoming and knowing themselves as math thinkers and doers with affirmed hopes that they can use the cohesive whole of what they learn in service learning projects that their world for the better. "Quilting the Classroom" is a pedagogy designed to achieve that goal. The "Quilting the Classroom" pedagogy embeds journeys of math understanding for primary children in the overarching multicultural framework of a classroom where math is an important component of using new technologies to connect with our world through visual arts, music, world languages, literacy, service learning, communication, compassion and caring for one another.  The main component of this pedagogy is daily visual, verbal and written collaborative math conversations about the Days of School fabric quilts that are generated in the classroom and then shared online with local to global peers,  families, and communities through desktop publishing, email, video conferencing, and the classroom website.  (New technologies used include writing programs, geometry/math programs, digital and video cameras with digital image and video editing software, LAN/WAN networks, including videoconferencing unit.) Beginning on the first day of school, the class starts to create a series of fabric quilts to count the 180 days of the school year.  A series of six, seven or eight quilts, which have fabrics that connect to classroom curricular and multicultural themes, are designed with sequenced patterns in rows and columns to contextualize, support, develop and use children's learning of math concepts in number sense, geometry, algebraic sense, measurement, data analysis and probability, problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and representation, including musical notation, theory and performance. In addition, children use their quilt math learning in comfort quilt projects where they use mathematical, verbal, kinesthetic, visual arts and affective thinking to design, make and send quilts for local to global peers who are in need of comfort.  This includes making quilts for children in hospitals and in locations where natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes have disrupted children's lives, destroyed or damaged their homes an schools. The children use their quilt math and literacy understandings to "learn to read" and "read to learn" how quilts are art of many cultures throughout their community, country and the world and across generations.  And they use integrated quilt math, literacy, world languages, and service learning with compassion and caring to author and illustrate bilingual children's books to online and in hard copy with local to global peers as a way of sharing the comfort of quilts and stories. The children live in the reality of experiencing and sharing quilts as tapestries with continually growing depth of diversity of design, color, shapes, ideas and perspectives brought together to create a beautiful whole. Throughout the school year the children's quilt experiences grow as a metaphor for nurturing their understandings of how they can, in lateral collaboration with children around the world, build an be an inclusive community of learners where the contributions of  each child's thinking, affect, and insight are honored, nurtured and celebrated! The children are active participants in "Quilting the Classroom" in local to global contexts that not only build math understandings but build collaborative, caring community towards a better world. The "Quilting the Classroom" pedagogy is embedded in the classroom website at  http://www/psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz.  Take links in the school years for: Quilt Math: http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/Math/quiltmath2000/quiltmath2000.htm Plus the following resource which focuses on Quilt Math http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/framewk/efp/environ/efpenvsu.htm Literacy: Write to Care http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/Literacy/WRITEtoCare/writetocare.htm Social Studies: Puerto Rico Comfort Quilts http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/SocialStudies/PuertoRicoQuilt/home.htm Global Art Sense of Caring: http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/SocialStudies/GlobalArtCaring/globalartcaring.htm Peace Corps World Wise Schools Partnership http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/SocialStudies/NicaraguaPeaceCorps/nicaraguapeacecorps.htm Ronald McDonald/Children's Hospital Project http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/SocialStudies/RonaldMcDonald/index.htm International Education http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/SocialStudies/socialstudies200001/SocialStudies0001.html http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/MsMcLane/msmclane.htm Plus following resources which have references to and narrartive about our classroom pedagogy: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html http://www.ed.gov/Technology/techconf/2000/report.html http://www.gse.uci.edu/mriel/e-testify/ http://crossings.phillynews.com/archive/k12/charity.htm http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/framewk/efp/align/efpalisu.htm Science: Water Habitat to Water Habitat Quilt http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/Science/WaterHabitat/waterhabitatquilt.htm Plus the following resource which talks about the local to global water habitat pedagogy http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/framewk/efp/research/efpressu.htm http://alpstest.harvard.edu/ent/gallery/pop3/pop3_1.cfm