Let’s face it: math has a bit of a PR problem. For far too long, we’ve framed math as something student either “get” or don’t—and if they don’t, they’re doomed forever. When students have a fraught relationship with math, they’re easily triggered by challenges and new information they might not immediately understand. What that means is they’re unlikely to open themselves up to the possibility that they CAN improve, build new skills, and feel BETTER about math. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be this way. With some intentional shifts, you can help your students develop a healthier, more positive relationship with math—and it doesn’t require a complete overhaul, just a few simple tweaks to your classroom practice!
Here are five easy things you can do this year to help your students build a better relationship with math!
1.Reframe Mistakes as Opportunities
We’ve all heard it before: “Mistakes are proof that you’re trying.” But let’s take that one step further—mistakes aren’t just proof of effort; they’re the key to learning. When students make mistakes in math, it’s not a sign of failure, it’s an opportunity to deepen their understanding. So how do we convince students that this is a thing?
Start by normalizing mistakes in your classroom. Celebrate them. Encourage your students to share their favorite mistakes and discuss what they learned from them. When you make a mistake (because we all do), model how to handle it with grace and curiosity. This simple shift can transform your classroom into a space where growth is valued over perfection, and that you’re practicing what you preach!
2. Make Math Personal
Math can often feel abstract and disconnected from the real world, which is why it’s so important to make it relevant to your students’ lives. But wait – I’m not talking about planes and trains and trying to prove that SOHCAHTOA can for real be used in every day life. I’m talking about showing students that the SKILLS they’re building while learning math, are RELEVANT when they’re NOT doing math. For example, when we’re trying to solve a math problem, we use skills like patience, perseverance, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Those are transferable skills that students can use in ANY are of their lives! Start each lesson with a question: “What meaningful skill do you want to focus on building in math class today?” By encouraging students to focus on the value they’re getting out of each lesson, they’re likely to find the act of learning math more meaningful (even if the math itself might feel kind of pointless sometimes)!
3. Focus on THINKING!
If Building Thinking Classrooms has taught us anything (and it’s taught us a lot!), it’s that when we shift the focus from answer-getting, to thinking, students are more likely to feel engaged and excited about the learning process. In order to build a better relationship with math, students need to feel like they’re gaining something of value EVEN when they’re not necessarily getting the outcome (answer!) they desire.
Encourage your students to explain their thinking, no matter how they arrived at their answer – and regardless of whether the final answer is right or not! Ask questions like, “What was your strategy?” or “Can you walk me through your steps?” This helps you assess their understanding and reinforces the problem-solving process. When students start to value the journey as much as the destination, they’re more likely to persevere through the challenges they will inevitably encounter in math class!
4. Change your language!
We know how powerful a growth mindset can be, but how often do we explicitly teach this mindset in our math classrooms? It starts with the language we use—both as teachers and as students.
Begin by replacing fixed mindset phrases like “I’m just not good at math” with growth-oriented ones like “I’m still learning this concept.” Encourage your students to do the same and catch yourself when you used fixed language, and ask your students to help you correct it! Create a “growth mindset wall” in your classroom where students can post positive math affirmations, and direct students to check it out anytime they need to replace a phrase with “this is too hard” to something like “this is hard, but I can do hard things”!
By consistently using and modeling growth-oriented language, you’ll help your students see math not as a fixed ability but as a skill that can be developed with effort and practice, just like everything else!
5. Make math social
Okay hear me out: every math movie ever made involves some loner dude, without a friend in the world, lost in his own thoughts of crazy equations to his own detriment. Couple that with the fact that traditionally most math classes involve students seated in single rows, silent, crunching numbers at their sad little desks, and what we have is this notion that math is a sad solo sport—just a student, a pencil, and a problem to solve. But collaboration in math can be incredibly powerful. It allows students to see different perspectives, learn from one another, and build confidence through shared problem-solving and – here’s the big one – the FUN that comes from MAKING IT SOCIAL!
This year, try incorporating more group work and math discussions into your lessons. Give your students opportunities to work together on challenging problems, discuss different strategies, and learn from each other’s thinking. This not only makes math more social and enjoyable but also reinforces the idea that math is a collaborative subject, and doesn’t need to be done alone, in isolation, a la Matt Damon in Goodwill Hunting.
At the end of the day, our goal is to help students feel better about themselves as math learners, because that’s the only way they’re going to be able to open themselves up to all of the amazing content and pedagogy we have for them. You can have the BEST lesson plan in the world, but if you’re teaching it to a brick wall – it’s not going to get you very far! By making small but intentional shifts in how we approach math in our classrooms, we can help students build a better relationship with the subject—one where they feel confident, capable, and ready to take on any challenge that comes their way.
So this year, let’s focus on reframing mistakes, making math personal, emphasizing thinking, changing our language, and making math social. With these strategies, we can all create math classrooms where students don’t just survive—they thrive. And at the end of the day, we all just want our students to feel better about themselves as both math learners AND people, which is why building a better relationship with math is a GREAT place to start! Your students are so lucky to have YOU in their classroom (and in their lives), so get out there, make the math-magic happen, and let me know which strategies you end up trying!
