This common lament just makes a math teacher cringe! And it’s not because math is not within the realm of possibility for most of us. It’s really something we should all have a basic knowledge of. What really makes math teachers cringe is the “math mindset” of so many people; children and adults.
Please don’t say that!
Kids hear from an early age that “Math is hard”. “We’re just not good at math.” I can’t tell you how many parent-teacher conferences I’ve had over the years in which parents made these statements, with their impressionable kids sitting right there listening. I can tell you, it’s a difficult mindset to change. How do we go about this?
Why do you love math?
What I really wanted to know was what circumstances created the opposite mindset? Why do some people love math? I polled a group of math teachers to find out how they grew to love math. One teacher shared that her Dad was always playing math games and connecting math to real life. Another math teacher described how her grandmother played math games with her as a child and taught her that math was just a series of puzzles to be solved. She was able to gain a strong number sense playing games, that made math “joyful” for her.
My Personal Experience
This was also my experience growing up. My mother was a math major in college in the 1960’s. (Not common for women during that era.) She loved puzzles! Our home was full of puzzles of all kinds. Word games and math puzzles were the norm.
Math for Love
Just ask Dan Finkel, a mathematician who teaches students with math games. He has been highly successful in changing the mindsets of many young students. On his website Math for Love, he states, “At Math for Love we teach mathematics in its whole context. Mathematics begins by playing…with games, puzzles, patterns, shapes, numbers, stuctures, rules, and ideas.”
Wouldn’t you love to go to math class every day if this were the main approach? The reality is that a certain amount of work and practice must be done to master concepts, however, let’s introduce students to math with games first, and see what happens when we break the “I Hate Math” mindset.