The Change Agent is an adult education magazine for social justice, written by and for adult education students and adult education teachers. Each issue is centered around a theme – recent themes have included Mental Health, the Pandemic, Indigenous Peoples, Our Immigration Stories, and We Take Action.

Many ELA classes in adult education use the Change Agent to study reading, writing, social studies and science. But the Change Agent is also a fantastic resource for math class!

Each issue provides a wealth of timely and relevant material and contexts for adult education math students and teachers to explore important issues in our lives through a mathematical lens.

The folks at the SABES Mathematics and Adult Numeracy Curriculum and Instruction PD Center have created a growing collection of activities and lessons connected to articles from the Change Agent, designed for math class.

Some examples of what you’ll find:

• Is It in Proportion? A lesson on recognizing disproportionality in the races and genders of front line workers in New York City during the pandemic is connected to the article, Essential Workers—Pay Them, Protect Them, Empower Them in issue #53.

• Math in Text: Hortensia’s Story An important skill in both numeracy and statistical literacy is the ability to make sense of the numbers, fractions, and percentages that appear in narrative texts and articles. This lesson, connected to the article, Better Future: At Home, There Are No Jobs, The Cities Are Unsafe, and the Rivers Are Dry from issue #56 of The Change Agent, helps learners develop this skill through an investigation of data related to climate change and drought in northern Mexico. Using colorful maps and statistics, students have a chance to work with large numbers, fractions, and percents as they develop questions about the data, write true statements about the data, and compare visual representations of data with written descriptions.