Community engagement and social justice are unique and well-defined frameworks of working with, about, and for communities. These approaches to teaching and learning have a number of potential benefits; however, they also come with their own challenges and misunderstandings. This chapter will explore this by first defining what is meant by community engagement and social justice, followed by providing some mathematics education context and history. Next, a narrative structure of P2N will be shared, primarily as it resides in the understanding of social justice. Finally, the intersection of these two theories will be explored and nuanced in general and more specifically in Prepare2Nspire.

Utilizing culturally-conscious teaching promotes instruction that values the cultural knowledge and experiences of ethnically diverse students. This qualitative study centers culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2002) and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to contextualize mathematics learning for an after-school tutoring program in North Minneapolis, Prepare2Npsire. The aim of this research was to use a community-based participatory action research approach to: 1) explore the culture wealth of North Minneapolis, 2) create culturally responsive mathematics activities for Prepare2Nspire. Two activities were developed to center community assets and youth empowerment. The goal of these activities was to strengthen community, curriculum, and classrooms by intentionally connecting students’ multidimensional identities with mathematical learning. Specially, Muhammad’s (2020) culturally and historically responsive literacy framework was adapted using a mathematical lens to: 1) Create tasks that build mathematical proficiencies and 2) Create tasks that cultivate mathematical identities.   The emphasis on participatory, community-based, and action-oriented practices in this study encouraged the disruption of deficit-based assumptions of communities while also creating joy-filled learning opportunities for Prepare2Nspire attendees.