When I became an elementary school teacher, I wanted to teach everything. After making a major pivot from law school to education, I really wanted space to discover what kind of teacher I most wanted to become. And, although I insisted that I wanted to teach pre-K to sixth grade, I’d always felt a special spark for math. One of my colleagues noticed this and recommended me for a position as a math professor at a local college. Now, teaching both elementary- and college-aged students, I see a wide range of math mindsets, experiences and emotions every day – from excitement and possibility to reluctance and aversion. 

By the time students reach college, many students feel that math isn’t a space to explore patterns or experiment with shifting perspectives. It’s something they’re required to do and can often feel forced to do, with all the added stress of possible failure. That’s not a recipe for joy, curiosity or a sense of real agency. 

To reignite students’ positive math emotions and set students up for success, I start by sharing their burden. I don’t mean giving in to negative math emotions or accepting that some kids are just “numbers people” and some are not. Instead, I make space for kids at any grade level to share where they stand in their relationship to math – literally. 

A first day’s (or any day) activity to restore positive math mindsets

On the first day of class, I ask all my students to stand up. I divide the room into three sections and I invite them to stand in the area that resonates most for them. The left section is for kids who love math – love love love it! It’s their favorite subject, and they feel like they can really shine. The middle section is for kids who feel pretty confident that they can do math, but it’s not their favorite subject. The right section is for kids who can’t stand math and wouldn’t be in class if they weren’t required to be there.

I let every student know that I’m genuinely asking and that they don’t need to be shy about standing in the section that fits them best. Every time I’ve done this exercise in my college classes, I have more students on the “I really just need the math credit” side than in the other two sections. I thank them and I say, “Good! Now my job is to help you get from the right side of the room to the left side of the room.” And right away, the chuckles come out and sighs of disbelief come out because every kid is wondering, “Well, how is she going to do that?” By the end of the semester, the right side of the room is almost empty. 

The power of this exercise is in how it introduces the journey my students and I are about to take together:

• It grounds students in the reality of their past experiences with math.
• It normalizes a range of experiences – both positive and negative.
• It introduces the possibility of change by moving from one part of the room to another.
• It puts each student – and myself – in active roles in order to achieve that movement.

I might not be able to wave a magic wand and make any student appear POOF in the “I love math, it’s my favorite subject” section. But this exercise builds a shared understanding that I am here for them, nonjudgemental about their experiences and committed to supporting them toward positive change.

How we get from one side of the room to the other 

Find the method that fits the student

To help get students moving toward a more positive relationship to math, I realized I needed to embrace a core difference between the way I first learned most procedures and the kind of approaches I see having the most success today. That means finding the methods that fit the student rather than asking the student to fit themself into a single method. After showing a few different options for tackling a problem, a student will usually say, “I’ve never seen [this kind of problem] solved like that before. I get it now!” And they’re off! But they needed a different pathway to the material that could help them access their problem solving skills, get around the specific procedures that they hadn’t connected with in the past and get back to a space of math possibility. 

Don’t forget to play

To continue providing those pathways, I also had to realize that whether I’m in an elementary classroom or a college lecture hall, I’m teaching the same kids. Some are just a little taller. Here’s what I mean: All students, at any age, need to play and explore in order to build confidence and understanding. So when I make anchor charts explaining the real number system for my sixth graders, I can use the same chart for my college kids. When I make fraction strips for my elementary classes, guess what? We’re going to make fraction strips with my college kids. 

At first, I thought my college classes wouldn’t go along with me on these activities. But they did, and they continue to go along with me because of the opportunity that playful, low stakes, tinkering activities provide. Students want to manipulate the concepts they’re learning in tangible ways and re-enter the kind of discovery space we tend to reserve for our youngest kids. 

As far back as I can remember, I wanted to play with numbers. When my father would give my older brother multiplication sheets to practice, I wanted to do them too. Never mind that my brother was in third grade and I was in first grade, I was going to be included! I think those experiences that were rooted in play helped me tap into the joy of problem solving at an early age. I continue being drawn to math as a way to feed that joy, and in my classrooms I give students the tools, whether it’s blocks or fraction strips or formulas, to access that space of play too. It’s been one of the most powerful ways I’ve seen to help kids at any age get real movement in their relationship with math.