Hello!
Welcome to Story Table Talk
Who am I?
My name is Shira. In 2020, I wrote a piece in Kaleidoscope Magazine called “Why I Love Story Tables”. The bio that I wrote for that piece is still mostly true. Here it is (with a few edits).
Shira Helft, a Knowles Senior Fellow, loves puzzles of all kinds. This led to her infatuation with math and math learning; she is fascinated by the ways people think through ideas and how this affects their identity and power in society. Shira has been fortunate enough to learn as a teacher, coach, curriculum lead, and professional development coordinator at schools in the Bay Area. She now is a curriculum developer at Amplify Desmos Math, whose mission is for all students to love math and love learning math. In her spare time, Shira grows her brain with cryptic crosswords, puzzle hunts, and chasing the best dumplings in Brooklyn.
What are Story Tables?
That is a post for another day. In the meantime, this is a quote I quite like from that article linked above (which, if you want, can tell you a bit about story tables).
“What I can say is that story tables are one tool my students and I use to honor and appreciate the beauty and brilliance of mathematics and the beauty and brilliance of each other.”
What is this Substack for?
The honest answer is that I’m not quite sure yet. I am really excited about finding ways for more humans to know and think about story tables, and for there to be more resources available to make teaching with story tables possible.
What will this space become? Who knows. Hopefully it will be a place where I (and maybe others) can share classroom resources, philosophical musings, and other things that connect to how story tables can support students in sharing their brilliance.