Learning to Love Math: Math Anxiety and Social Emotional Learning

Learning to Love Math: Math Anxiety and Social Emotional Learning

Math anxiety can prevent students from engaging in math. Using social emotional learning, teachers and parents can create an environment where math is playful, mistakes are expected, and students can learn to love math. Everyone can do math and every person is a math person! We know that this is true, according to some of our most well-known mathematicians/educators such as Jo Boaler, Marian Small, and John Mighton.

However, there is an epidemic of math anxiety in our classrooms that prevents students from fully engaging in learning math. In order to counteract this contagious condition, teachers need to create a classroom community where students feel safe enough to take risks and make mistakes. Parents can do the same at home! Through the explicit teaching of the skills, habits, and mindset of social emotional learning, all teachers can create a math classroom full of students who can understand the process of learning, the purpose of mistakes, take risks, and support each other as they learn to love math. In this engaging session, teachers and parents will reexamine and challenge their own perceptions of math and learn to see math in a new light.

Parents and teachers will learn strategies and games that they can use immediately to help counter math anxiety and improve the math learning experience for everyone.