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and for society must be based upon experience— which is always the actual life - experience of some individual. ” (Dewey, 1938/2015, p. 90). Furthermore, we must engage in a critical relation ship with the goals of our lessons, especially under the current circumstances of our work. Dewey again: We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything. (Dewey, 1938/2015, p. 90). This elucidation by Dewey is precisely the same as my call to the field at this time: As teachers of mathematics, we must embrace the circumstances under which we are working and must provide our students with meaningful and relevant mathemat ics instruction, so that they are being equipped to do the same in the future. It is not enough to treat our remote lessons as patchworked Band - aids for our usual lessons while we wait for “ these times ” to return to “ normal. ” Indeed, I would ask that we all collectively reconsider what “ normal ” may in fact mean now. While this pandemic may fade away, the future of mathematics education relies on how each of us engages with the technological horizon as a generator of opportunities for our stu dents, not a restriction under which we feel bound. The greatest disservice to our students at this time is to engage with the remote learning environment as a limitation of what is possible: Technology by its very purpose is designed to open new possibili ties rather than restrict them. Thus, the predisposi tion to see our present circumstances through the lens of, “ I can ’ t, ” should be replaced by the lens of, “ There is a new horizon of possibilities for my mathematics instruction. ” This mindset enables a reconstruction of our world right now, and of our students ’ experiences in mathematics education, as well as our own experi ences as teachers of mathematics engaged in a con tinual process of learning how to teach, which is indeed an enterprise in which we are all engaged.

That is, we as teachers of mathematics are in fact learners ourselves, learning how to employ mathe matics instruction that helps our students recon struct their lived experiences including their expe rience of remote learning and growing up during a pandemic. Dewey affirms that this is the essence of the teacher ’ s role: [E]xperiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject - matter, a subject - matter of facts or infor mation and of ideas. This condition is satis fied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of re construction of experience (1938/2015, p. 49). With this in mind, we all must embrace the techno logical horizon and the necessity of remote and flexible learning with the orientation that Dewey sets forth: that the primacy of experience in educa tion cannot be replaced or overlooked. As a result, we must thoughtfully reflect on the questions which predicate our lessons: What is possible? And what are its consequences? As Dewey re minds us, our students are all learning collaterally, even in the remote environment, so I charge all of us, as teachers of mathematics, to embrace the technological horizon and ask ourselves in plan ning and implementing mathematics lessons, “ What , exactly, is being learned? ” (Shah & Leo nardo, 2017, p. 50, emphasis in original) Dewey, J. (2015). Experience and education . Free Press. (Original work published 1938) Shah, N., & Leonardo, Z. (2017). Learning dis courses of race and mathematics in class room interaction: A poststructural perspec tive. In I. Esmonde & A. N. Booker (Eds.), Power and privilege in the learning scienc es: Critical and sociocultural theories of learning (pp. 50 – 69). Routledge. References

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