If we were having a conversation face to face, you might say to me something like, “So, you have 24 episodes (posts) about the ways I might be using math in my daily life. But my question is how does all of this help me learn math?” Or “how does this relate to the math my child is learning? How does it help me help them with their homework?”
First, I want you to know those are valid questions. And they may stem from the assumption, or belief, that quote “math people” unquote are the people that do well in math class.
Let me clarify here that I don’t necessarily equate being a math person with doing well in math class. I’ve mentioned this before and it’s worth repeating. Many people don’t believe they are math people because they had difficulty in math classes. I get that. But the real purpose of the podcast and the foundation of my message to the world is it doesn’t matter what your grades in math class were or are. The fact of the matter is you interact with mathematical ideas and use the math portion of your brain every day.
I believe that qualifies you as a math person.
Now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s return to your question. I am assuming you understand from listening to the podcast or reading these posts that there is mathematical thinking hidden in many of the tasks and activities you do every day and that you understand I believe this makes you a math person. You are wondering how this fact helps you learn math…so you can believe it too.
Here’s the deal. Learning and doing the math taught in school…the classroom math we’ll call it…is not so different from what you do every day. It looks different, because nobody gives you a worksheet that asks you to match socks, schedule your appointments, and compare unit prices on the store shelves. When you are trying to figure out the sale price, you don’t necessarily write down an equation with variables and solve it. I mean, I actually do that sometimes, but most people think through things like that in a way that’s less like classroom math.
The point is, you are reasoning through all kinds of scenarios and solving all sorts of problems every day, whether they involve numbers or not. So, the mathematical thinking you do all the time does look different from what you learn in math class. But it’s the same parts of your brain and it’s the same mathematical ideas.
You are already doing the math.
What happens in math class is just more formal in its approach and the problems get increasingly complex as the concepts build and you advance in your thinking.
My take is that mindset is everything. I don’t have an official statistic here…but I’m going to estimate the ability to learn anything is at least 70% mindset for most people. I might even venture to say it’s more like 80% or even 90%. If you do not believe you are capable of learning something, you might be semi successful at it, but you will never fully learn it well. This is because your beliefs are what drive your decisions and your actions. There’s truth in the saying or belief you can do anything you put your mind to. This is because your beliefs drive your actions. Even when you aren’t fully aware of a belief or even when the belief you have isn’t true.
So, when you recognize all the ways you use mathematical ideas each day, you are providing evidence to your brain that you are a math person. You are building the belief that you are capable of learning and doing math. When this new belief takes hold, you start taking different actions…like studying more effectively, putting more effort into learning and understanding concepts, and asking for help when you need it. These actions result in you learning math better, which in turn helps you be and feel more successful as a math learner and provides further evidence to your brain that you are in fact a math person.
It’s a cycle, dare I say, a pattern of belief driven results. Of course there are other factors involved in learning, but I maintain my position that mindset matters and that if you believe you are not a math person, you will have a much more difficult time learning it, partly because you will take different action.
If you are not in math class yourself, but you are trying to help your child learn math, the same thing applies. If you know mindset matters and if you believe everyone is a math person (or you want your child to believe they are a math person), you will approach conversations with your child very differently than if you don’t. If you see yourself as a math person…someone who is a person and who interacts with mathematical ideas…and you see your child as a math person, you will give them that message through your words and your actions. You will encourage your child to see themself as a math person. When you do this, when you give your child the gift of believing they are a math person, they will approach learning with a growth mindset. So even if you aren’t familiar with what they are learning and even if you don’t understand their homework, the messages you give your child about math matter. And, if you yourself have a growth mindset, you will be more likely to find ways to understand what they are learning so you can help them.
Remember when I shared with you my graduate research? If you haven’t heard me talk about this, here’s a recap…
After years of sitting through conferences and hearing parents say because they weren’t good at math…and didn’t view themselves as math people…they didn’t really expect their children to excel at math either, I wondered if a parent’s attitude toward math has any impact on how well their child learns math. So, I surveyed parents and children at two local elementary schools about their attitudes toward math and compared those results to the average scores on end of grade tests.
As it turns out, of the people who participated, the school whose parents had a better overall view of math and of themselves in relation to math had higher test scores in math. Now, please don’t walk away from this episode thinking that a child whose parent has a good attitude toward math will always do well in math. That is absolutely not true. What I do want you to walk away with, though, is it is possible that a child’s math achievement is impacted by how that child’s parent views math. I believe this is primarily due to the messages the parent gives the child about math, whether intended or not.
So, if you are someone who has listened to this podcast and wondered how seeing yourself as a math person in your daily life helps you actually learn math or help someone else learn math, here’s a brief recap:
- Your beliefs drive your actions and your actions create your results.
- If your results are not what you want, shifting your beliefs can change the action you take, potentially getting you a different result.
- So, if you are someone who thinks math isn’t for you, learning to recognize the ways you use your math brain in your daily life can help shift your mindset toward seeing yourself as a math person.
- This shift in mindset makes you more likely to take the actions necessary to learn and be more successful in math class, if you are a student, or to help your child learn math, if you are a parent.
And another little tidbit that is often helpful…pausing to find a way to relate what’s happening in math class to something you do outside of math class. Whether that’s estimating or problem solving or working with patterns. Whatever it is, identifying how you use it in your daily life helps you see that you are already using the math. If you are already doing it, then you must be capable of adapting that skill to learning classroom math.
It’s important to me to reiterate my belief that you are still a math person even if you didn’t do well in math classes. Those things are separate as they relate to my message. You are already a math person because you are a person and you interact with mathematical ideas every single day. If you are a student and want to be more successful in your math classes or if you are a parent who wants to help your child be more successful in math classes, recognizing all the ways you already do math and think mathematically helps build the belief you actually are a math person. That shift can make all the difference.
