When life gave her lemons, Uni math teacher Emily Buhnerkempe made the statistics carnival.
In what has become a grand annual school tradition, the Statistics Carnival was introduced to Uni by Buhnerkempe during the pandemic as a small poster project in an Advanced Topics class of 20-some masked-up students.
After the pandemic, Buhnerkempe was assigned to teach statistics. Though she had some experience teaching statistics prior to her time at Uni, with her undergraduate and graduate work in pure math, she felt uncertain.
Instead of letting that fear take over, she leaned into creativity.
“Sometimes life gives you lemons and you figure out what to do with it. Are you going to make lemonade or eat the sour lemon?” she asks.
Her “lemonade” began with bringing back the small poster project and transforming it into a whole-school carnival. That work caught the attention of a visiting U. of I. professor, who encouraged her to apply for the American Statistics Association (ASA)’s two-year fellowship for high school statistics teachers. She recalls, “I applied on a playground from my phone. My kids were playing on the playground.” When the results came in, she says she was stunned — she was chosen as one of only two recipients nationwide.
With the fellowship, Buhnerkempe took the statistics carnival beyond Uni. Last year, her statistics students brought their games to Booker T. Washington and Stratton Elementary Schools, introducing younger students to statistics through play.
“It didn’t start that big,” Buhnerkempe says. “And it’s overwhelming to think about all of it, but it started small and just kind of changed over time.”
Her fellowship concluded this summer at the ASA’s conference, where she presented on the carnival project and reflected on her experience. “Don’t be afraid to make the first step,” she says. “It’s okay if it’s messy, it’s okay if it’s ugly, it’s okay if it’s not perfect. Just make the first step and know that it’s not going to be that way — it will get better.”
Currently, Buhnerkempe is collaborating with the U. of I. to try out new activities in her statistics class in hopes of developing resources for new statistics teachers — the same position she’d once found herself in.
“Many high school math teachers are math — they’re not stats. This happened to me the first time I had to teach stats,” Buhnerkempe explains. “And you’re scared because it’s not something that you’ve ever taught before… You’re learning alongside your students as you’re going through, which is really uncomfortable.”
When life gave her lemons, Buhnerkempe ended up making more than lemonade, and now she’s sharing the recipe.
