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This paper aims to introduce a new paradigm for mathematics literacy. By integrating computational thinking and coding into curricular units from The Algebra Project, we engaged middle school students in creativity, imagination, and self-expression in the mathematics classroom. We refined instruments to measure the development of student voice, agency, and belongingness. In the context of the mathematics classroom, there is potential for an earned insurgency to arise when these attributes of mathematical identity are amplified, leading students to engage in a learning community that rejects the repressive logic of the current racialized, classed, and otherwise oppressive mathematics education 

Through our work to examine mathematical and computational learning in authentic and convivial contexts that requires creativity, imagination, reasoning, and discourse, we have theorized an experiential learning cycle that attends to the development of voice, agency, and identity needed in young people for an earned insurgency—the right to demand change. Our work underscores how the current situation that many students face in classrooms amounts to a type of cognitive segregation that denies these students access to authentic and empowering intellectual agency. By facilitating a process whereby students, using their own creative and imaginative means, intentionally develop a type of ownership over the exploration and application of the mathematical concepts they are being taught, we help students move from simple surface level, syntactic understandings, to deeper semantic learning that is more personally significant and meaningful. 

The pedagogy of The Algebra Project introduces mathematics concepts to students through experiential activities that students then analytically examine using a combination of both informal and formalized language. In this paper, we identify how cultural forms of orality can be supported within this discursive approach, while also introducing computational thinking activities that are particularly constructive. We argue that when cultural forms of orality are left unacknowledged and unexplored, they can lead to issues that have a negative effect on both student engagement and comprehension. But when explicitly supported in the specific ways that are outlined here, new opportunities arise for student-led creative and pragmatic inquiries that have the potential to deepen the level of student engagement and comprehension.