At the beginning of the school year, just to get the pulse of my classes, I always ask students to complete the sentence, “Math is _______.” Some kids say, “Math is boring,” or, “Math is hard,” but there are always some kids who say something like, “Yes, math is challenging, but it is necessary.” Statements like that are a seed to grow our conversation.

We then dive into their statements and talk about the reasons they’ve found math challenging. Often, it’s because they’ve felt like they had to do math quickly or get the answer right the first time. We discuss ways we can change that in our classroom. I tell them that math isn’t about speed – it’s about the process.

I also strive to build the sense that math is not something that’s done in isolation. We do math as a community. As the kids begin to believe that, they also begin to see themselves as an integral part of our math community – as people who can do math. And then hopefully, as the year goes on, those negative ideas about what math is slowly change, and students start to take on more positive math identities.

If you visited my classroom, you’d hear me saying these 5 things often to foster positive math mindsets:

“Math is social. Talk with each other.”

If students are part of a community that does math together, that means they’re not bent silently over their paper, working: They are talking with each other. I emphasize that because math is social; there is power when they encourage each other. I’ve been influenced by Peter Liljedahl’s book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. Liljedahl suggests that if we just get kids to talk with each other, their mindset starts to shift a bit.

We start the year with full-class activities in which every kid can feel successful, and as we move into the curriculum, students work in table groups so they’re always in conversation. Even during assessments, I’ll sometimes give students an opportunity to discuss their thinking with each other, and then explain the concepts in their own words on the page. That way, the focus moves from plugging numbers into formulas to making sense of concepts and conveying understanding.

“You don’t move on until everyone is feeling comfortable.”

I emphasize that student groups don’t move on until everyone is comfortable with a concept. It’s tough for some kids at the beginning of the year – especially those who are used to flying through their math assignments and want to move forward independently. But I remind them: Math is social. Gradually, I’ll start to hear students asking each other, “Did you get that?,” or saying, “How did you set that up? I’m not quite sure.” Or they’ll compare answers, saying, “I got this and you got this. Let’s look and see what happened.” In diagnosing missteps together, all the students’ understanding deepens.

I want to credit this shift in my practice to Sara VanDerWerf. I often use her 100 Numbers activity at the beginning of the year to model group work. I also love Sarah Carter’s Broken Circle activity to support this community building.

“Tell me something interesting that someone at your table said.”

Before sharing answers and responses with the class, I have students talk with their table groups. Then, I say, “Okay, tell me something interesting that somebody at your table said.” That way, they don’t necessarily have to share their own thinking, and they don’t necessarily need to share the answer to a problem. It helps offer more access points into our math community and shifts the focus to the deeper thinking that’s coming out of their conversations.

“I know you can get the right answer. But first, let’s figure out where your error happened.”

When students make mistakes, I don’t let them stop at the idea that they got an answer “wrong.” After they take a quiz, they fill out a correction form, which asks them to look at their work and explain to me why the errors happened. Sometimes they find a careless mistake – like dropping a negative or adding instead of subtracting. Other times, they’ll be able to diagnose areas of true confusion, and that gives us a starting point for moving their learning forward. Instead of just asking a friend for the right answer, I want them to reflect on their process and their thinking so they can get to know themselves as mathematicians.

“You just don’t know it yet, but you will.”

The words “not yet” might be the most important words I say as a math teacher. When students reach a checkpoint and they don’t demonstrate understanding, I say, “That’s okay. You just don’t know it yet.” I acknowledge the frustrations and the challenges, but I encourage them that once they put in more practice, new concepts won’t seem as challenging anymore. It makes such a huge difference when students know that, even if they don’t know something when we reach a checkpoint, they aren’t stuck there. They aren’t going to be left behind. They will still have an opportunity to demonstrate their learning. Kids come to me outside of class time and ask for more practice on specific standards so they can reach a checkpoint. The frequent repetition of “not yet” helps build confidence and emphasize the idea that they have never “failed” – they’ve only learned where they still need to grow.

I hope these statements change what students carry out of my classes.

As a teacher, I try to be careful about what students carry out of my classes. When they leave us, they all carry something; you could think of it as baggage. So, is that baggage going to weigh them down, or is it going to be full of memories that lift them up? If my students have felt empowered and encouraged, even if they didn’t earn the so-called As and Bs, then they’ll feel like they’re learning and growing, and they will carry that with them. When they struggle, they will know how to tell themselves, “I might not know this yet, but I can still do it, because I’m still learning.”