2024-25 Xplorlabs Educator Fellow and math teacher Monique Carter shares her experience using Xplorlabs in her classroom to teach both math and fire safety.
December 1, 2025
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CAN A PLACE BE SO HOT? I have heard little about the dry heat of Arizona, and being born and raised in New York, I believed I was MORE than prepared to handle ANYTHING. Little did I know Arizona’s heat at 4 p.m. planned to beat down on my glistening shea butter skin, making it almost impossible to move or simply breathe.
I stepped off the Valley Metro Rail because Uber is for losers (I thought), and I proceeded to find my hotel like any New Yorker from my era — I walked! The gods of the crossroads must have watched the footage of me trying to find my hotel with all my luggage in tow as a silent slapstick comedy from the early 1900s.
After 40 minutes in the Arizona sun, I finally found my hotel, which was a mere 10 minutes from where the Metro dropped me off. From the moment I walked into my air-conditioned room, I knew this was going to be a unique and unforgettable experience.
I share this to note the importance of the personal narrative. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns us against a single narrative, my first Xplorlabs session allowed me to not only meet dynamic science and math teachers from various parts of the country but to also hear their stories about school, the population of students they teach, the districts in which they work, and later, the dangers of fire and how it impacts their personal community.
Who knew that in some towns in Arizona, fire sprinklers are mandated? Without the Xplorlabs Educator Fellowship, I would know very little about fire safety efforts in Philadelphia. I also would not have received brief guidance from a parent who is employed as a firefighter … or known that the small caps in my classroom were fire sprinklers.
The stories and ideas of others were so motivating and impactful that I began to wonder how fire and fire safety can inadvertently affect different communities of people. After retiring from our sessions, I spent more than a few nights simply researching. Learning about the victims of fire and their propensity to be people of the global majority, particularly Native Americans.
I read countless articles and studies and even began listening to “There Are No Accidents” by Jessie Singer. Through my brief studies, fire safety morphed from a topic where I was simply creating a unit plan to one that personally affected me, my family, and anyone in my community. I then began to wonder: What do fire and fire safety look like in Philadelphia?
After asking that question, it was clear what I was charged to do!
One of the most valuable pieces of information I received about planning a unit utilizing the Xplorlabs fire safety material was to not go with my first or even second idea for a project related to fire safety. I was in the unusual position of being a math teacher in a room full of science teachers.
My goal was to teach a unit using Xplorlabs’ tools, but unlike most science teachers in the room, my focus was on the math connected to the science of fire and fire safety. My ideas ranged from calculating percentages of materials and metals used in constructing a phone, survey creation, and graphing and floor plan design. Given that I planned on rolling out my unit at the beginning of the year, I knew I wanted my students to understand what their year of math would look like in my classroom.
Through my Xplorlabs unit, I combined social justice, narrative, measurement, scaling, area, and perimeter.
I couldn’t wait to see how students would respond to our first unit of the year: Math Meets Fire Safety.
My goal for students in math is to help them naturally connect their personal narrative to their learning, whether it is math, science, or the humanities. I felt like I had to show students what I meant by sharing a narrative about the fire at Twin Parks North West, an affordable-housing building and high rise in the Bronx. The devastation of that story captivated students. When they were tasked with finding a story in Philadelphia that demonstrates the importance of fire safety measures, we landed on the Fairmount Row Home fire of 2023. Both fires were devastating, and both fires demonstrated the importance of making plans for the narratives, students were charged with creating a one-level, fire-safe apartment complete with fire safety equipment.
The Xplorlabs fire safety material was invaluable in helping students make their own collective conclusions about fire safety and home design. It helped students and myself understand how fire sprinklers work, the different types of fire sprinklers, and the economic and practical challenges with mandating fire sprinkler installations in homes.
I don’t think any of them will forget that stuffed teddy bear in the side-by-side burn demonstration of a room with and without fire sprinklers. For any student who was not paying attention to the entire unit, they definitely understood various elements of fire safety and shared it with their families.
The rich and intellectual conversations that came from the work students and I did was amazing to witness!
I thought after our unit, we were done with our service to Xplorlabs, but we will be utilizing Xplorlabs units on thermal runaway and the battery supply chain in the coming year.
There are so many ways to connect the Xplorlabs material to your subject — I am proof!
Go visit Xplorlabs and check it out for yourself. See how you can integrate one of the Xplorlabs pathways to promote profound connections and conversations in your classroom, and then tell me how it worked!
