As an educator, there’s one phrase I always come back to: “Students don’t care until they know how much you care.” I’m a white curriculum and instruction specialist, supporting tutors and educators who support primarily Black and Brown students in under-resourced communities, and I’m aware that our lived experiences differ. However, our differences are our strengths and I value being in right relationship with others. That’s why I strive to help educators develop authentic relationships with our students – and encourage students to develop authentic relationships with their learning.

Recently, my team and I began using Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships+Math Toolkit to create an environment of trust, connection and motivation around math learning. I’ve been so excited to see how well these strategies have resonated with our students, and I want to share a few favorites with you.

These three relational activities have been especially powerful for my community, but I encourage you to explore the whole toolkit and find the strategies that resonate with your students.

+ Human Maps Reflection

The Human Maps reflection is a great community builder for students because it creates space for them to express and discuss their experiences with math. But it can also be an exciting activity for educators because it invites us to reflect on our own math journeys and identities – and those reflections can bring new inspiration to the ways we promote positive math identities for our students.

It’s a two-step process: First, a teacher writes a series of statements like “I am a math person” on the board. Next, every student (or educator) plots themselves onto a spectrum of math identities, ranging from “That’s me” to “That’s not me.” The process of plotting and discussing helps students (or educators!) see their own strengths and shout out one another’s capabilities – and that makes math learning feel humanized and supportive.+ Growth Mindset Strategy

This “Keep, Start, Stop” strategy has inspired the educators I support to make practice shifts that are simple enough to bring into the classroom the next day but impactful enough to change the way students think about their math abilities. It’s a 20-minute reflection that asks three questions:

1. What growth mindset practices do I want to keep?
2. What growth mindset practices do I want to start?
3. What fixed mindset practices do I want to stop?

I like this activity because it emphasizes the importance of thinking about your thinking. Educators can invite students to explain their thinking as they solve math problems, not just when they suggest the wrong solutions, but also when they come up with the right one – because that puts the emphasis on group learning, not individual performance. Or they can model positive language while students are working through a new math activity. Especially when students don’t feel capable or confident in math, these shifts can take their focus off making mistakes and create a new sense of shared motivation. 

+ Math in Everyday Life Activity

We educators know that math achievement isn’t just about teaching students skills: To empower kids to thrive in math, we need to get them interested in the ways that math works in their lives – and the ways it can support their dreams. That’s why I recommend this three-step Math in Everyday Life strategy. It asks students to write creatively about the role of math in their lives and then respond to one another’s writing – and this process of getting creative can open them up to experiencing math in new ways.

The educators I support know that students who haven’t found enjoyment in math learning in the past might struggle to get imaginative, so they sometimes start with a “four corners” activity. They’ll share a statement like “I’ll use math in my future career” with the class, and students choose one of four corners to stand in: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree. Just getting up and moving around can make students feel more comfortable expressing their feelings – and that sets the stage for conversations and creative writing about new ways to look at math. I loved seeing how this process shifted students’ thinking!

As educators, the work we do is day to day, but it has a lasting impact on our students. The interactions we create for our students – with math, one another and us – can change the way they see themselves and the way they see their possibilities in life. I think this toolkit can be a particularly useful resource because it provides the concrete language we need to promote those simple, powerful daily experiences in math for all our students.