TODOS Podcast · TODOS Mathematics for ALL

S4E13: Home is the Pacific Islands with Richard Velasco

·56 min·3 clips

Velasco calls his father, who stopped at sixth-grade math, the greatest mathematician he knows.

The hosts start by greeting listeners and introducing Richard Velasco as a longtime colleague and friend. Richard is coming off his time at the University of Oklahoma and stepping into a new role as an assistant professor of mathematics education at the University of Florida. Teddy frames his work around an equity in math education research grant and a project with math teachers in Micronesia. Richard answers with gratitude and a clear sense that this conversation sits inside a wider community of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander educators. The talk settles into the relationship between mathematics and culture. Richard describes how the Micronesian teachers he works with bring more than classroom technique into the project. They bring language, memory, and a sense of what their students live with outside school. One teacher pushes the conversation beyond standard research questions and asks why dreams should not be part of it too. That moment opens a more expansive way of thinking about student knowledge. The hosts and Richard spend time on language itself. Chamorro comes up as a living part of the discussion, not just a side topic. Richard recalls having to take Chamorro language and Chamorro culture in public school, and he notes the overlaps between Chamorro, Spanish, and Filipino histories. The phrase Inafa Maalik comes forward and is explained as making good, or harmony. The conversation lingers there because it points to more than translation. It points to a value system. From there the episode turns toward data and power. Richard talks about how most people picture data as huge numerical sets, but his collaborators keep asking what counts as evidence in the first place. The teachers and researchers are not only asking students to do data science in the math classroom. They are also inviting students to think about what gets represented, what gets left out, and what stays hidden. That link between analytics and justice gives the conversation its core shape. Political questions come into view as well. Richard mentions self-determination and the role of youth in shaping it. The discussion asks how data can support solutions without flattening local judgment or lived experience. The hosts keep the tone open and curious, giving Richard space to move between examples instead of forcing him into a neat summary. That gives the episode a patient rhythm. The conversation also makes room for the everyday texture of teaching and research. Richard talks about how the same ideas can travel through classrooms, community work, and scholarship without losing their meaning. The teachers he works with are presented as collaborators, not just examples for theory. That stance matters here, because the episode is built on respect rather than extraction. There is also a steady sense of connection across place. Micronesia is not framed as a distant case study. It is a living context with specific languages, histories, and educational needs. The episode keeps returning to that rootedness. It asks listeners to sit with the fact that educational research changes when it stays close to local life. It also suggests that math education becomes more honest when it stops pretending that numbers speak for themselves. Toward the end, the hosts step back from the research thread and let the friendship show. They mention listeners who stop them in public, joke about sponsorships, and laugh about plugging Guam, Chamorro history, quantitative justice, and the show itself. The tone stays light without losing the seriousness of the earlier discussion. The final stretch also notes that the season is nearing its end, which gives the whole conversation a gentle closing note.

As heard by us

A warm, expansive conversation about equity, data, and what counts as knowledge.

Richard Velasco draws a wide arc here, moving from mathematics education into Micronesia, Chamorro language, and equity without losing the thread. The episode works best when it treats data as more than a set of numbers.

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Why you'd press play

You want math talk that makes room for culture, language, and lived experience.

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