We Don’t Just Teach Math, We Teach Students

Room to Grow - a Math Podcast

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis explore ideas around the emotional side of learning and how it impacts students in their academic growth. Because we and our students are humans - and humans have emotions - it is impossible to learn without a connection to our emotions, whether those emotions are positive or negative. As educators reflect over the summer and begin to plan for the upcoming school year, we hope you’ll consider the emotional side of your students’ experiences in math class.

Joanie and Curtis suggest planning for the emotional experiences alongside planning for content. As a teacher, how might you consider the ways students will feel in sharing their early thinking, perceiving their responses or others as “incorrect,” or being influenced by previous traumatic experiences with math? With some thoughtful planning and attention, these emotional experiences can be managed and leveraged to support learning for all student in the classroom, including those who are traditionally successful and may have positive feelings about math.

We hope the content in this episode will help you consider ideas you may not have thought about before, and spark discussion with your educator friends.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Special issue of Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12 on Social and Emotional Learning and Mathematics Learning from November, 2022 (membership required).
• Access, Power, Identity, and Healing in Mathematics by Sara Gartland, Shellee Wong, and Laurie Silverstein (membership required).
• Our previous conversation on Room to Grow with Juliana Tapper in August, 2022.
• Rough Draft Math by Amanda Jansen
• Jo Boaler article on connection between timed tests and math anxiety

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected]. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.