January 9, 2025 • 26 mins
Dr. Kasi Allen, Breaking the Cycle of Math Trauma
ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 9
If you are an educator, you’ve likely heard people say things like “I’m a math person.” While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many people can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you are a math person as well. Today we’re talking with Dr. Kasi Allen about math trauma: what it is and how educators can take steps to address it.
BIOGRAPHY
Kasi Allen serves as the vice president of learning and impact at The Ford Family Foundation. She holds a PhD degree in educational policy and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and its history, both from Stanford University.
RESOURCES
“Jo Boaler Wants Everyone to Love Math” — Stanford Magazine
Learning to Love Math by Judy Willis
TRANSCRIPT
Mike Wallus: If you're an educator, I'm almost certain you've heard people say things like, “I am not a math person.” While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many of those folks can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you're actually a math person. Today we're talking with Dr. Kasi Allen about math trauma: what it is and how educators can take steps to address it.
Well, hello, Kasi. Welcome to the podcast.
Kasi Allen: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Mike: I wonder if we could start by talking about what drew you to the topic of math trauma in the first place?
Kasi: Really good question. You know, I've been curious about this topic for almost as long as I can remember, especially about how people's different relationships with math seem to affect their lives and how that starts at a very early age. I think it was around fourth grade for me probably, that I became aware of how much I liked math and how much my best friend and my sister had an absolutely opposite relationship with it—even though we were attending the same school, same teachers, and so on. And I really wanted to understand why that was happening. And honestly, I think that's what made me want to become a high school math teacher. I was convinced I could do it in a way that maybe wouldn't hurt people as much. Or it might even make them like it and feel like they could do anything that they wanted to do.
But it wasn't until many years later, as a professor of education, when I was teaching teachers how to teach math, that this topic really resurfaced for me [in] a whole new way among my family, among my friends. And if you're somebody who's taught math, you're the math emergency person. And so, I had collected over the years stories of people's not-so-awesome experiences with math. But it was when I was asked to teach an algebra for elementary teachers course, that was actually the students’ idea. And the idea of this course was that we'd help preservice elementary teachers get a better window into how the math they were teaching was planting the seeds for how people might access algebra later.
On the very first day, the first year I taught this class, there were three sections. I passed out the syllabus; in all three sections, the same thing happened. Somebody either started crying in a way that needed consoling by another peer, or they got up and left, or both. And I was just pretty dismayed. I hadn't spoken a word. The syllabi were just sitting on the table. And it really made me want to go after this
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
If you're an educator, I'm almost certainyou've heard people say things like,
I am not a math person. Whilethis may make you cringe,
if you dig a bit deeper,
many of those folks can identify specificexperiences that convinced them that
this was true. In fact,
some of you might secretly wonderif you're actually a math person.
(00:23):
Today we're talking with Dr. CassieAllen about math, trauma, what it is,
and how educators can take stepsto address it. Well, hello,
Cassie. Welcome to the podcast.
Hi, Mike. Thanks for havingme. Great to be here.
I wonder if we could start by talkingabout what drew you to the topic of math
trauma in the first place?
(00:43):
Really good question.
I've been curious about this topicfor almost as long as I can remember,
especially about how people's differentrelationships with math seem to
affect their lives and how thatstarts at a very early age.
I think it was around fourthgrade for me probably,
that I became aware of howmuch I liked math and how
(01:06):
much my best friend and my sister hadan absolutely opposite relationship
with it, even though we were attendingthe same school, same teachers,
and so on.
And I really wanted to understandwhy that was happening.
And honestly,
I think that's what made me want tobecome a high school math teacher.
I was convinced I could do it in a waythat maybe wouldn't hurt people as much,
(01:29):
or it might even make them like it andfeel like they could do anything that
they wanted to do.But it wasn't until many years later as a
professor of education when I wasteaching teachers how to teach math that
this topic really resurfaced for me ona whole new way and my family among my
friends. And if you'resomebody who's taught math,
(01:50):
you're the math emergency person.
And so I had collected overthe years stories of people's
not so awesome experiences with math,
but it was when I was asked toteach an algebra for elementary
teachers a course that wasactually the student's idea.
And the idea this course was that we'dhelp pre-service elementary teachers get
(02:12):
a better window into how the math theywere teaching was planting the seeds for
how people might access algebraLater on the very first day,
the first year I taught thisclass, there were three sections.
I passed out the syllabusand all three sections,
the same thing happened. Somebodyeither started crying in a way that
needed consoling by another peer,or they got up and left or both.
(02:37):
And I was just pretty dismayed.I hadn't spoken a word,
the S virus just sitting on the table.
And it really made me want to go afterthis in a new way. I mean something,
it just made me feel like somethingdifferent was happening here.
This was not the math anxiety thateverybody talked about when I was younger.
This was definitely different,and it became my passion project,
(02:58):
trying to figure howwe disrupt that cycle.
Well, I think that's a good segue becauseI've heard you say that the term math
anxiety centers this as aproblem that's within the person,
and that in fact, thisisn't about the person.
Instead it's about the experience,
something that's happened to peoplethat's causing this type of reaction.
(03:18):
Do I have that right, Cassie?
100%. And I think thisis really important.
When I grew up and whenI became a teacher,
I think that was an era when therewas a lot of focus on math, anxiety,
the prevalence of math, anxiety. She,
Tobias wrote the famous bookOvercoming Math Anxiety.
This was especially a problem among women.
(03:39):
There were dozens of books andthere were a number of problems with
that work at the time,
and that most of the research peoplewere citing was taking place outside of
math education.
The work was all really before the fieldof neuroscience was actually a thing.
Lots of deficit thinking that somethingis wrong with the person who is
(04:01):
suffering this anxiety.
And most of these bookswere very self-helpy.
And so not only is theresomething wrong with you,
but you need to fix it yourself.
So it really centers all thesenegative emotions around math on
the person that's experiencing the pain,
that something's wrong with them.Whereas math trauma really shifts the
(04:22):
focus to say, no, no, no, thisreaction, this emotional reaction,
nobody's born that way.Right? This came from a place,
from an experience. And somath trauma is saying no.
There's been some series of events,
maybe a set of circumstancesthat this individual began to see
as harmful or threatening,
(04:43):
and that it's having longlasting adverse effects.
And that those long lasting effects,
this kind of triggering that starts tohappen is really beginning to affect that
person's functioning,
their sense of wellbeing when they'rein the presence in this case of
mathematics. And I think thething about trauma is just that.
(05:03):
And I have to say in the earlydays of my doing this research,
I was honestly a little bit hesitant touse that word because I didn't want to
devalue some of the horrificexperiences that people have
experienced in times of warwitnessing the murder of a parent or
something.But it's about the brain.
(05:24):
It's how the brain is responding to thesituation. And what I think we know now,
even more than when I started this work,
is that there is simplytrauma of everyday life.
There are things that we experiencethat cause our brains to be
triggered.
And math is unfortunatelythis subject in school that we
(05:44):
require dear every yearof a young person's life.
And there are things about the wayit's been taught over time that can
be humiliating, ridiculing,
that can cause people to have just somereally negative experiences that then
they carry with them into the nextyear. And so that's really the shift.
(06:05):
The shift is instead of labelingsomebody as math anxious, oh,
you poor thing, you betterfix yourself. It's like, no,
we have some prevalence of math trauma,
and we've got to figure out howpeople's experiences with math are
causing this kind of a reactionin their bodies and brains.
I want to take this a little bit furtherbefore we start to talk about causes
(06:28):
and solutions. This idea that youmentioned of feeling under threat,
it made me think that whenwe're talking about trauma,
we are talking about aphysiological response.
Something is happening within the brainthat's being manifested in the body.
And I wonder if you could talk just alittle bit about what happens to people
experiencing trauma? What doesthat feel like in their body?
(06:51):
So this is really important andour brains have evolved over time.
We have this incredibleprocessing capacity,
and it's coupled with a verypowerful filter called the amygdala.
And the amygdala is therefrom eons ago to protect us.
It's the filter that says, Hey,
do not provide access to thatpowerful processor unless I'm
(07:15):
safe, unless my needs are met otherwise,
I got to focus on being well over here.
So we're not going to give access tothat higher order thinking unless we're
safe.
And this is really important becausemodern imaging has given us really new
insights into how we learn and howour body is reacting when our brain
(07:36):
gets fired in this way.
And so when somebody is experiencingmath trauma, you know it,
they sweat, their faceturns red, they cry,
their body and brain aretelling them, get out.
Get away from thisthing. It will hurt you.
And I just feel like that is soimportant for us to remember because
(07:58):
the amygdala also becomesincreasingly sensitive to repeat
negativity. So it's one thingthat you have a bad day in math,
or you maybe have a teacher that makesyou feel not great about yourself,
but day after day, weekafter week, year after year,
that messaging can start to make theamygdala hypersensitive to these sorts of
(08:20):
situations. Is that what you weregetting at with your question?
It is. And I think youreally hit on something.
There's this idea of repeat negativitycausing increased sensitivity,
I think has real ramifications forclassroom culture or the importance of
the way that I show up as an educator.
It's making me think a lot aboutculture and norms related to math in
(08:44):
schools.
I'm starting to wonder about the type oftraumatizing traditions that we've had
in math education that mightcontribute to this type of experience.
What does that make you think?
Oh, for sure. Unfortunately,
I think the list is a little long ofthe things that we may have been doing
completely inadvertently.
Everybody wants their studentsto have a great experience,
(09:06):
and I actually think our practiceshave evolved. But culturally,
I think there are some things about maththat contribute to these traumatizing
traditions is what I've calledthem. Before we go there,
I do want to say just one otherthing about this trauma piece,
and that is that we've learned aboutsome things about trauma in childhood,
and a lot of the trauma inchildhood is about not a single
(09:29):
life altering event,
but childhood trauma is often about thesethings that happened repeatedly where
a child was being ridiculed,being treated cruelly.
And it's about that repetitionthat is really seeding
that trauma so deeply and thatsense that they can't stop it,
that they don't have control tostop the thing that is causing them
(09:53):
pain or suffering. So I just wanted tomake sure that I tagged that because I
think there is something about what we'velearned about the different forms of
childhood trauma that's especiallysalient in this situation.
And so I'll tie it to your question,
which is think about some of the thingswe've done in math. Historically,
we don't do them in every place,
but the ability groupingthat has happened over time,
(10:16):
it seems to go in and out of fashionwhen a kid is told they're in the lower
class, oh, this is somethingyou're not good. The slower math,
we often use speed tomeasure understanding,
and so smarter is not faster.
And there's some great quotes Einsteinamong them. So that's a thing.
When you got to do it right now, ithas to be a hundred percent right.
(10:38):
It has to be super fast.
We've often prioritized individualwork over collaboration.
So you're all alone in this. Infact, if you're working with others,
somehow that's cheating asopposed to collaborating.
We teach kids tricks ratherthan teaching them how to think.
(11:00):
I think we deprive kids of theopportunity to have an idea.
It's really hard to get excited aboutsomething where all you're doing is
reproducing,
reproducing something that somebodyelse thought of as quickly as possible
and needs to be ahundred percent accuracy.
You don't get to bringyour own spin to it.
(11:21):
And so we focus on answers rather thanpeople's reasoning behind the answers.
That can be somethingthat happens as well.
And I think one of the things that'salways gotten me is that there's only one
way. Not only is thereonly one right answer,
but there's only one way to get there,
which also contributes to thisidea of having to absorb somebody
else's thinking ratherthan actualizing your own.
(11:44):
And I absolutely know that mostteachers are working to not do as
much of these things intheir math classrooms.
And I want to be sure having thisconversation that I'm a lover of
education and teachers,
I taught teachers for many years. Thisis not about the teachers so much as the
sort of culture of math and matheducation that we were all brought up in.
(12:07):
And we've got to figure out how tomake math something more so that
kids can see themselves in it and thatit's not something that happens in a
vacuum.
And is this performance courserather than a class where
you get to solve cool problems thatno one knows the exact answer to,
or there's the exact right way,
(12:28):
or that you get to get your own questionsanswered, things you wonder about,
that it's a chance to explore. So I mean,
ultimately I think we just know thatthere's a lot of negativity that happens
around math and we accept it.
And that is perhaps the most traumatizingtradition of all because that kind of
repeat negativity we knowaffects the amygdala.
It affects people's ability toaccess math in the long run.
(12:52):
So we got to have neutral or better.
So in the field of psychology,
there's this notion of generationaltrauma and it's passed from generation to
generation,
and you're making me wonder if we'refacing something similar when it comes to
the field of math education.
I'm wondering what you think educatorsmight be able to do to reclaim math for
(13:12):
themselves,
especially if they're aperson who potentially does have a traumatic mathematics
experience and maybe some of the waysthat they might create a different type of
experience for their students.
Yeah, let's talk about each ofthose. I'm going to talk about one,
the multi-generational piece,
and then let's talk about how wecan help ourselves and our students.
(13:34):
One is I think it's really very possiblethat that's what we're looking at in
terms of math trauma. Culturally,
I think we've known for a while thatthis is happening with respect to math
that I've had parents come to back toschool night and tell me that they're just
not a math family. And even jokinglysay, oh, we're all bad at math,
(13:54):
don't be too hard on us,and all the other things.
And so kids inherit that,
and it's very common for kids to havethe same attitude towards math that their
parents do and alsothat their teachers do.
And that's where I think in my mind,
I really want to help every elementaryteacher fall in love with math because if
we look at the data, I thinkof any undergraduate major,
(14:17):
it's those who major in educationwho report the highest rates of math,
anxiety and math trauma. And so whenyou think about folks who feel that way
about math, then being in charge ofteaching it to kids in the early years,
that's a lot to carry.
And so we want to give thoseteachers and anyone who has had this
experience with math andopportunity to reclaim, regroup.
(14:41):
And in my experience,
what I've found is actually simplyshifting the location of the problem is a
really strong first step.
When people understand thatthey actually aren't broken,
that the feelings that they have aboutmath don't reflect some sort of flaw
in them as a human,
but that it's a result of somethingthey've experienced a lot is
(15:04):
unlocked.
And most folks that I have worked withover my time working on this issue,
they know. They know exactly the moment.
They know the set of experiences thatled to the reactions that they feel in
their body. They can name it and withactually fairly startling detail.
So in my teaching, and I thinkthis is something anybody can do,
(15:25):
is they would write a myography,
what is the story of yourlife through a math lens?
What has been the story ofyour relationship with math over the course of your
life and what windows does that give youinto the places where you might need to
heal?
We've never had more tools togo back and sort of relearn
areas of math that wethought we couldn't learn.
(15:48):
And so often the trauma pointsare as math becomes more abstract,
so many people have somethingthat happened around fractions or
multi digit multiplicationand division. When we started,
we get letters involved in math.
I had somebody say math wasgreat as long as it was numbers.
Then we got letters involved and it wasterrible. And so if people can locate,
(16:11):
this is where I had theproblem, it's not me.
I can go back and relearn some things.
I feel like that's a lot ofthe healing and that in fact,
if I'm a teacher or if I'ma parent, I love my kids,
whether they're mychildren or my students,
and I'm going to work on me so that theyhave a better experience than I had.
And I've found so many teachersembrace that idea and go to work.
(16:34):
So some of the things that can happenin classrooms that I think fall from
this is that first of all, therecognition that emotional safety,
you can't have cognition andproblem solving without it.
If you have kids in your classroom whohave had these negative experiences in
math,
you're going to need to help them unpackthose and level set in order to move
(16:56):
on. And mamography isalso a good tool for that.
Some people use breathing,
making sure that when youencounter kids that are exhibiting
math anxiety,
that you help them localizethe problem outside of them.
No one is born with math anxiety. It'sthe math of school that creates it,
(17:16):
and if we ignore it, it'sjust going to get worse.
So some people feel like theycan kind of smooth it over.
I think we need to give kids thetools to unpack it and move beyond it.
But it's so widespread,
and I've encountered teacherswho were afraid to go there.
It's like the Pandora's box.
My advice to them is that ifyou'll open the box and heal what's
(17:38):
inside, the teaching becomes mucheasier. Whereas if you don't,
you're fighting thatuphill battle all the time.
Students will feel more safe in classroomswhere mistakes are opportunities
to learn where they're not a badthing and where they see each other as
resources,
where they're not alone and wherethey can collaborate and really take
(17:59):
responsibility for each other's learning.So some of the most powerful
classrooms I've seen where there werea lot of kids who had very negative
experiences with math,
a teacher had succeeded increating this learning environment,
this community of learners whereall the kids seem to recognize that
somebody would have a good day,someone else would have a not good day,
(18:20):
but it would be their turn fora good day a few days from now.
So we're all just going to takecare of each other as we go.
I think some things that teacherscan keep a particular eye on is
being sure that kids are givenauthentic work to do. In math,
it's really easy to start givingkids what we've called busy work,
(18:42):
but work that really isn'tengaging their brain.
And it turns out that that boredomcycle triggers the negativity
cycle,
which can actually get your amygdalaoperating in a way that is not as
far from trauma as wemight all like to think.
And so while it isn't the same kind ofmath trauma that we're talking about
(19:04):
here, it does affect the amygdala.
And so that's somethingwe should be aware of.
And so this is something I think kidsshould learn about their brains in school.
I don't know if it'sthe math teacher's job,
but if they haven't learned abouttheir brains yet, when you get them,
I would recommend teachingkids about their brains,
teaching them strategies for whenthey feel that kind of shut down that
(19:26):
headache.
I can't think because most ofthe time they actually can't and
they need to have some kind of reset.
Another tip just in terms of disruptingthat trauma cycle in the classroom is
that by the time kids get tobe third, fourth grade and up,
they know who is good at mathor they've labeled each other,
(19:48):
who's good at math, who's struggled.Even if they are not tracked and sorted,
they've assessed each other. Sometimesthey've put those labels on themselves.
And so if a teacher hasthe skills to assign
competence to those studentsthat may be being labeled as low
status mathematically in their classroom,
(20:10):
and it takes a teacher thatknows their students well,
but if you happen to see that astudent that maybe has low status
with computation, but wow,
they are really good atdeveloping the visuals for a math
problem, or they're reallygreat at illustrating a story or
(20:31):
drawing others out ina collaborative group,
but finding an area ofcompetence that's authentic.
Sorry to go on and on. I could sit hereand talk to you about this all day,
but those are some of thethings I would recommend.
Well,
I think there's a few things that jumpout and I wanted to take them in little
bits.
I'm going to try to summarize and thenI want to come back and pick these up a
little bit. So one of the pieces thatyou named really struck a chord with me,
(20:55):
which is recognizing as aneducator that I have a story about
mathematics that is playing out maybejust under the level of consciousness that
bubbles up here and there. When youmentioned the traumatic experiences,
my head went back to third gradewith multiplication tables,
and I can see myself sitting in the seat.
(21:17):
And when you mentioned fractions, again,
I could see myself facing the board inthird grade looking down at a workbook
where we were supposed to be addingfractions with denominators that were not
common.
And I had this moment of justdread in my stomach because I
remember just thinking,
(21:38):
I don't know what is happening at all.And I'll say biographically,
I think I spent the first seven or eightyears of my teaching career carrying
those things with me in theway that I approach students.
I knew that they weren't good for me,
but I didn't really have a compellingsense of what could be different until I
actually took some mathematicseducation courses and really started to
(22:02):
understand mathematics andhow children's ideas develop.
And it did allow me to decenterthe problem for myself and say,
actually, I can make a lot ofmeaning out of mathematics.
What I experienced was not mathematics.
It was memorizing a bunch of stuffand practicing a bunch of procedures.
(22:22):
This idea that decenteringwhere the problem is from the
educator or in classroomsfrom the student, really,
really feels powerful.
I think it's a huge gift that wecan give to our students and also to
ourselves. The other piece thatI'm really thinking about is this
idea of positioning studentsand finding competency that
(22:46):
really stands out as something that Icould attend to as a classroom teacher.
I suspect that people who are listeningcan think about their own class of
students.
You as an educator probably know whothe other kids think of as good at math,
and I suspect you also know whothey think isn't good at math.
Knowing that kids know those stories aswell, I could do something about that.
(23:08):
I could look at the students who havelow status and think about ways that I
could raise them up thatfeels really tangible.
I could take and start thinking aboutthat when I ask students to share their
ideas, and I could do that tomorrow.
It doesn't take a master's levelcourse in mathematics to do that.
Does that make sense, Cassie?
I love all of that so much. 100%.
(23:31):
When I was observing teachers,
and this tended to happen more withelementary teachers just because of their
own histories with mathas you were saying here,
but the difference between saying,okay, everybody, we get to do math now,
clear your desks and okay,everybody, I know it's hard,
but it's time for math. We'restrong. We're going to do it.
(23:53):
But there is this underlying kindof, I don't really like this either,
but we got to do it as opposed to we'regoing to discover something new today.
And so really just kind listening tosome of those implicit messages in the
words that we choose, that's somethingwe can change in a moment as well.
Well,
I think you and I could probably go onand on and continue this conversation for
(24:15):
a long time. If I'msomeone who's listening,
are there resources you would recommendfor someone who wants to continue
learning about these ideas?
Yeah, absolutely. For me,
the OG of this line of thinking is JoeBowler, who most math teachers will know.
She's the first person I ever hearduse the word math traumatized.
And before I embarked and dovedeeper into my math trauma research,
(24:40):
I went down to Stanford and met with her,
and she was wonderful and encouragingof like, oh, no, no, no. Go, go, go, go.
This is great.
There's a woman named Ebony McGeewho's the founder of our rights.
She's a professor at Vanderbilt.
She's doing some work with mathidentity that I think touches on this
subject in a valuable way. I mean,
(25:00):
I think this whole area ofdeveloping positive math identity
is tightly connected to themath trauma work, and honestly,
anyone who is doing workaround child trauma and
neuroscience and how we are seeingthe development of the brain is going
to provide some interesting resources.I have to say,
(25:22):
my all time favorite is a bookthat I believe it is out of print,
so it might be a thrift books purchase,
but Dr. Judy Willis wrote a bookcalled Learning to Love Math.
Looks like you might be familiar with it.
And I really think she did alovely job in that book in a way
that is absolutely targetingteachers to help us see how these
(25:44):
very small actions that we take inthe classroom could make a really big
difference in terms of how ourstudents see and experience the
subject that we care about so much.
I think that's a great place to stop.Thank you so much for joining us, Cassie.
It's really been apleasure talking with you.
Oh my goodness, Mike, thank you so much.It's really been an honor to be here.
(26:05):
Thanks for having me.
This podcast is brought to you by theMath Learning Center and the Meyer Math
Foundation dedicated to inspiring andenabling all individuals to discover
and develop their mathematicalconfidence and ability.
If you're an educator, I'm almost certainyou've heard people say things like,
I am not a math person. Whilethis may make you cringe,
if you dig a bit deeper,
many of those folks can identify specificexperiences that convinced them that
this was true. In fact,
some of you might secretly wonderif you're actually a math person.
(00:23):
Today we're talking with Dr. CassieAllen about math, trauma, what it is,
and how educators can take stepsto address it. Well, hello,
Cassie. Welcome to the podcast.
Hi, Mike. Thanks for havingme. Great to be here.
I wonder if we could start by talkingabout what drew you to the topic of math
trauma in the first place?
(00:43):
Really good question.
I've been curious about this topicfor almost as long as I can remember,
especially about how people's differentrelationships with math seem to
affect their lives and how thatstarts at a very early age.
I think it was around fourthgrade for me probably,
that I became aware of howmuch I liked math and how
(01:06):
much my best friend and my sister hadan absolutely opposite relationship
with it, even though we were attendingthe same school, same teachers,
and so on.
And I really wanted to understandwhy that was happening.
And honestly,
I think that's what made me want tobecome a high school math teacher.
I was convinced I could do it in a waythat maybe wouldn't hurt people as much,
(01:29):
or it might even make them like it andfeel like they could do anything that
they wanted to do.But it wasn't until many years later as a
professor of education when I wasteaching teachers how to teach math that
this topic really resurfaced for me ona whole new way and my family among my
friends. And if you'resomebody who's taught math,
(01:50):
you're the math emergency person.
And so I had collected overthe years stories of people's
not so awesome experiences with math,
but it was when I was asked toteach an algebra for elementary
teachers a course that wasactually the student's idea.
And the idea this course was that we'dhelp pre-service elementary teachers get
(02:12):
a better window into how the math theywere teaching was planting the seeds for
how people might access algebraLater on the very first day,
the first year I taught thisclass, there were three sections.
I passed out the syllabusand all three sections,
the same thing happened. Somebodyeither started crying in a way that
needed consoling by another peer,or they got up and left or both.
(02:37):
And I was just pretty dismayed.I hadn't spoken a word,
the S virus just sitting on the table.
And it really made me want to go afterthis in a new way. I mean something,
it just made me feel like somethingdifferent was happening here.
This was not the math anxiety thateverybody talked about when I was younger.
This was definitely different,and it became my passion project,
(02:58):
trying to figure howwe disrupt that cycle.
Well, I think that's a good segue becauseI've heard you say that the term math
anxiety centers this as aproblem that's within the person,
and that in fact, thisisn't about the person.
Instead it's about the experience,
something that's happened to peoplethat's causing this type of reaction.
(03:18):
Do I have that right, Cassie?
100%. And I think thisis really important.
When I grew up and whenI became a teacher,
I think that was an era when therewas a lot of focus on math, anxiety,
the prevalence of math, anxiety. She,
Tobias wrote the famous bookOvercoming Math Anxiety.
This was especially a problem among women.
(03:39):
There were dozens of books andthere were a number of problems with
that work at the time,
and that most of the research peoplewere citing was taking place outside of
math education.
The work was all really before the fieldof neuroscience was actually a thing.
Lots of deficit thinking that somethingis wrong with the person who is
(04:01):
suffering this anxiety.
And most of these bookswere very self-helpy.
And so not only is theresomething wrong with you,
but you need to fix it yourself.
So it really centers all thesenegative emotions around math on
the person that's experiencing the pain,
that something's wrong with them.Whereas math trauma really shifts the
(04:22):
focus to say, no, no, no, thisreaction, this emotional reaction,
nobody's born that way.Right? This came from a place,
from an experience. And somath trauma is saying no.
There's been some series of events,
maybe a set of circumstancesthat this individual began to see
as harmful or threatening,
(04:43):
and that it's having longlasting adverse effects.
And that those long lasting effects,
this kind of triggering that starts tohappen is really beginning to affect that
person's functioning,
their sense of wellbeing when they'rein the presence in this case of
mathematics. And I think thething about trauma is just that.
(05:03):
And I have to say in the earlydays of my doing this research,
I was honestly a little bit hesitant touse that word because I didn't want to
devalue some of the horrificexperiences that people have
experienced in times of warwitnessing the murder of a parent or
something.But it's about the brain.
(05:24):
It's how the brain is responding to thesituation. And what I think we know now,
even more than when I started this work,
is that there is simplytrauma of everyday life.
There are things that we experiencethat cause our brains to be
triggered.
And math is unfortunatelythis subject in school that we
(05:44):
require dear every yearof a young person's life.
And there are things about the wayit's been taught over time that can
be humiliating, ridiculing,
that can cause people to have just somereally negative experiences that then
they carry with them into the nextyear. And so that's really the shift.
(06:05):
The shift is instead of labelingsomebody as math anxious, oh,
you poor thing, you betterfix yourself. It's like, no,
we have some prevalence of math trauma,
and we've got to figure out howpeople's experiences with math are
causing this kind of a reactionin their bodies and brains.
I want to take this a little bit furtherbefore we start to talk about causes
(06:28):
and solutions. This idea that youmentioned of feeling under threat,
it made me think that whenwe're talking about trauma,
we are talking about aphysiological response.
Something is happening within the brainthat's being manifested in the body.
And I wonder if you could talk just alittle bit about what happens to people
experiencing trauma? What doesthat feel like in their body?
(06:51):
So this is really important andour brains have evolved over time.
We have this incredibleprocessing capacity,
and it's coupled with a verypowerful filter called the amygdala.
And the amygdala is therefrom eons ago to protect us.
It's the filter that says, Hey,
do not provide access to thatpowerful processor unless I'm
(07:15):
safe, unless my needs are met otherwise,
I got to focus on being well over here.
So we're not going to give access tothat higher order thinking unless we're
safe.
And this is really important becausemodern imaging has given us really new
insights into how we learn and howour body is reacting when our brain
(07:36):
gets fired in this way.
And so when somebody is experiencingmath trauma, you know it,
they sweat, their faceturns red, they cry,
their body and brain aretelling them, get out.
Get away from thisthing. It will hurt you.
And I just feel like that is soimportant for us to remember because
(07:58):
the amygdala also becomesincreasingly sensitive to repeat
negativity. So it's one thingthat you have a bad day in math,
or you maybe have a teacher that makesyou feel not great about yourself,
but day after day, weekafter week, year after year,
that messaging can start to make theamygdala hypersensitive to these sorts of
(08:20):
situations. Is that what you weregetting at with your question?
It is. And I think youreally hit on something.
There's this idea of repeat negativitycausing increased sensitivity,
I think has real ramifications forclassroom culture or the importance of
the way that I show up as an educator.
It's making me think a lot aboutculture and norms related to math in
(08:44):
schools.
I'm starting to wonder about the type oftraumatizing traditions that we've had
in math education that mightcontribute to this type of experience.
What does that make you think?
Oh, for sure. Unfortunately,
I think the list is a little long ofthe things that we may have been doing
completely inadvertently.
Everybody wants their studentsto have a great experience,
(09:06):
and I actually think our practiceshave evolved. But culturally,
I think there are some things about maththat contribute to these traumatizing
traditions is what I've calledthem. Before we go there,
I do want to say just one otherthing about this trauma piece,
and that is that we've learned aboutsome things about trauma in childhood,
and a lot of the trauma inchildhood is about not a single
(09:29):
life altering event,
but childhood trauma is often about thesethings that happened repeatedly where
a child was being ridiculed,being treated cruelly.
And it's about that repetitionthat is really seeding
that trauma so deeply and thatsense that they can't stop it,
that they don't have control tostop the thing that is causing them
(09:53):
pain or suffering. So I just wanted tomake sure that I tagged that because I
think there is something about what we'velearned about the different forms of
childhood trauma that's especiallysalient in this situation.
And so I'll tie it to your question,
which is think about some of the thingswe've done in math. Historically,
we don't do them in every place,
but the ability groupingthat has happened over time,
(10:16):
it seems to go in and out of fashionwhen a kid is told they're in the lower
class, oh, this is somethingyou're not good. The slower math,
we often use speed tomeasure understanding,
and so smarter is not faster.
And there's some great quotes Einsteinamong them. So that's a thing.
When you got to do it right now, ithas to be a hundred percent right.
(10:38):
It has to be super fast.
We've often prioritized individualwork over collaboration.
So you're all alone in this. Infact, if you're working with others,
somehow that's cheating asopposed to collaborating.
We teach kids tricks ratherthan teaching them how to think.
(11:00):
I think we deprive kids of theopportunity to have an idea.
It's really hard to get excited aboutsomething where all you're doing is
reproducing,
reproducing something that somebodyelse thought of as quickly as possible
and needs to be ahundred percent accuracy.
You don't get to bringyour own spin to it.
(11:21):
And so we focus on answers rather thanpeople's reasoning behind the answers.
That can be somethingthat happens as well.
And I think one of the things that'salways gotten me is that there's only one
way. Not only is thereonly one right answer,
but there's only one way to get there,
which also contributes to thisidea of having to absorb somebody
else's thinking ratherthan actualizing your own.
(11:44):
And I absolutely know that mostteachers are working to not do as
much of these things intheir math classrooms.
And I want to be sure having thisconversation that I'm a lover of
education and teachers,
I taught teachers for many years. Thisis not about the teachers so much as the
sort of culture of math and matheducation that we were all brought up in.
(12:07):
And we've got to figure out how tomake math something more so that
kids can see themselves in it and thatit's not something that happens in a
vacuum.
And is this performance courserather than a class where
you get to solve cool problems thatno one knows the exact answer to,
or there's the exact right way,
(12:28):
or that you get to get your own questionsanswered, things you wonder about,
that it's a chance to explore. So I mean,
ultimately I think we just know thatthere's a lot of negativity that happens
around math and we accept it.
And that is perhaps the most traumatizingtradition of all because that kind of
repeat negativity we knowaffects the amygdala.
It affects people's ability toaccess math in the long run.
(12:52):
So we got to have neutral or better.
So in the field of psychology,
there's this notion of generationaltrauma and it's passed from generation to
generation,
and you're making me wonder if we'refacing something similar when it comes to
the field of math education.
I'm wondering what you think educatorsmight be able to do to reclaim math for
(13:12):
themselves,
especially if they're aperson who potentially does have a traumatic mathematics
experience and maybe some of the waysthat they might create a different type of
experience for their students.
Yeah, let's talk about each ofthose. I'm going to talk about one,
the multi-generational piece,
and then let's talk about how wecan help ourselves and our students.
(13:34):
One is I think it's really very possiblethat that's what we're looking at in
terms of math trauma. Culturally,
I think we've known for a while thatthis is happening with respect to math
that I've had parents come to back toschool night and tell me that they're just
not a math family. And even jokinglysay, oh, we're all bad at math,
(13:54):
don't be too hard on us,and all the other things.
And so kids inherit that,
and it's very common for kids to havethe same attitude towards math that their
parents do and alsothat their teachers do.
And that's where I think in my mind,
I really want to help every elementaryteacher fall in love with math because if
we look at the data, I thinkof any undergraduate major,
(14:17):
it's those who major in educationwho report the highest rates of math,
anxiety and math trauma. And so whenyou think about folks who feel that way
about math, then being in charge ofteaching it to kids in the early years,
that's a lot to carry.
And so we want to give thoseteachers and anyone who has had this
experience with math andopportunity to reclaim, regroup.
(14:41):
And in my experience,
what I've found is actually simplyshifting the location of the problem is a
really strong first step.
When people understand thatthey actually aren't broken,
that the feelings that they have aboutmath don't reflect some sort of flaw
in them as a human,
but that it's a result of somethingthey've experienced a lot is
(15:04):
unlocked.
And most folks that I have worked withover my time working on this issue,
they know. They know exactly the moment.
They know the set of experiences thatled to the reactions that they feel in
their body. They can name it and withactually fairly startling detail.
So in my teaching, and I thinkthis is something anybody can do,
(15:25):
is they would write a myography,
what is the story of yourlife through a math lens?
What has been the story ofyour relationship with math over the course of your
life and what windows does that give youinto the places where you might need to
heal?
We've never had more tools togo back and sort of relearn
areas of math that wethought we couldn't learn.
(15:48):
And so often the trauma pointsare as math becomes more abstract,
so many people have somethingthat happened around fractions or
multi digit multiplicationand division. When we started,
we get letters involved in math.
I had somebody say math wasgreat as long as it was numbers.
Then we got letters involved and it wasterrible. And so if people can locate,
(16:11):
this is where I had theproblem, it's not me.
I can go back and relearn some things.
I feel like that's a lot ofthe healing and that in fact,
if I'm a teacher or if I'ma parent, I love my kids,
whether they're mychildren or my students,
and I'm going to work on me so that theyhave a better experience than I had.
And I've found so many teachersembrace that idea and go to work.
(16:34):
So some of the things that can happenin classrooms that I think fall from
this is that first of all, therecognition that emotional safety,
you can't have cognition andproblem solving without it.
If you have kids in your classroom whohave had these negative experiences in
math,
you're going to need to help them unpackthose and level set in order to move
(16:56):
on. And mamography isalso a good tool for that.
Some people use breathing,
making sure that when youencounter kids that are exhibiting
math anxiety,
that you help them localizethe problem outside of them.
No one is born with math anxiety. It'sthe math of school that creates it,
(17:16):
and if we ignore it, it'sjust going to get worse.
So some people feel like theycan kind of smooth it over.
I think we need to give kids thetools to unpack it and move beyond it.
But it's so widespread,
and I've encountered teacherswho were afraid to go there.
It's like the Pandora's box.
My advice to them is that ifyou'll open the box and heal what's
(17:38):
inside, the teaching becomes mucheasier. Whereas if you don't,
you're fighting thatuphill battle all the time.
Students will feel more safe in classroomswhere mistakes are opportunities
to learn where they're not a badthing and where they see each other as
resources,
where they're not alone and wherethey can collaborate and really take
(17:59):
responsibility for each other's learning.So some of the most powerful
classrooms I've seen where there werea lot of kids who had very negative
experiences with math,
a teacher had succeeded increating this learning environment,
this community of learners whereall the kids seem to recognize that
somebody would have a good day,someone else would have a not good day,
(18:20):
but it would be their turn fora good day a few days from now.
So we're all just going to takecare of each other as we go.
I think some things that teacherscan keep a particular eye on is
being sure that kids are givenauthentic work to do. In math,
it's really easy to start givingkids what we've called busy work,
(18:42):
but work that really isn'tengaging their brain.
And it turns out that that boredomcycle triggers the negativity
cycle,
which can actually get your amygdalaoperating in a way that is not as
far from trauma as wemight all like to think.
And so while it isn't the same kind ofmath trauma that we're talking about
(19:04):
here, it does affect the amygdala.
And so that's somethingwe should be aware of.
And so this is something I think kidsshould learn about their brains in school.
I don't know if it'sthe math teacher's job,
but if they haven't learned abouttheir brains yet, when you get them,
I would recommend teachingkids about their brains,
teaching them strategies for whenthey feel that kind of shut down that
(19:26):
headache.
I can't think because most ofthe time they actually can't and
they need to have some kind of reset.
Another tip just in terms of disruptingthat trauma cycle in the classroom is
that by the time kids get tobe third, fourth grade and up,
they know who is good at mathor they've labeled each other,
(19:48):
who's good at math, who's struggled.Even if they are not tracked and sorted,
they've assessed each other. Sometimesthey've put those labels on themselves.
And so if a teacher hasthe skills to assign
competence to those studentsthat may be being labeled as low
status mathematically in their classroom,
(20:10):
and it takes a teacher thatknows their students well,
but if you happen to see that astudent that maybe has low status
with computation, but wow,
they are really good atdeveloping the visuals for a math
problem, or they're reallygreat at illustrating a story or
(20:31):
drawing others out ina collaborative group,
but finding an area ofcompetence that's authentic.
Sorry to go on and on. I could sit hereand talk to you about this all day,
but those are some of thethings I would recommend.
Well,
I think there's a few things that jumpout and I wanted to take them in little
bits.
I'm going to try to summarize and thenI want to come back and pick these up a
little bit. So one of the pieces thatyou named really struck a chord with me,
(20:55):
which is recognizing as aneducator that I have a story about
mathematics that is playing out maybejust under the level of consciousness that
bubbles up here and there. When youmentioned the traumatic experiences,
my head went back to third gradewith multiplication tables,
and I can see myself sitting in the seat.
(21:17):
And when you mentioned fractions, again,
I could see myself facing the board inthird grade looking down at a workbook
where we were supposed to be addingfractions with denominators that were not
common.
And I had this moment of justdread in my stomach because I
remember just thinking,
(21:38):
I don't know what is happening at all.And I'll say biographically,
I think I spent the first seven or eightyears of my teaching career carrying
those things with me in theway that I approach students.
I knew that they weren't good for me,
but I didn't really have a compellingsense of what could be different until I
actually took some mathematicseducation courses and really started to
(22:02):
understand mathematics andhow children's ideas develop.
And it did allow me to decenterthe problem for myself and say,
actually, I can make a lot ofmeaning out of mathematics.
What I experienced was not mathematics.
It was memorizing a bunch of stuffand practicing a bunch of procedures.
(22:22):
This idea that decenteringwhere the problem is from the
educator or in classroomsfrom the student, really,
really feels powerful.
I think it's a huge gift that wecan give to our students and also to
ourselves. The other piece thatI'm really thinking about is this
idea of positioning studentsand finding competency that
(22:46):
really stands out as something that Icould attend to as a classroom teacher.
I suspect that people who are listeningcan think about their own class of
students.
You as an educator probably know whothe other kids think of as good at math,
and I suspect you also know whothey think isn't good at math.
Knowing that kids know those stories aswell, I could do something about that.
(23:08):
I could look at the students who havelow status and think about ways that I
could raise them up thatfeels really tangible.
I could take and start thinking aboutthat when I ask students to share their
ideas, and I could do that tomorrow.
It doesn't take a master's levelcourse in mathematics to do that.
Does that make sense, Cassie?
I love all of that so much. 100%.
(23:31):
When I was observing teachers,
and this tended to happen more withelementary teachers just because of their
own histories with mathas you were saying here,
but the difference between saying,okay, everybody, we get to do math now,
clear your desks and okay,everybody, I know it's hard,
but it's time for math. We'restrong. We're going to do it.
(23:53):
But there is this underlying kindof, I don't really like this either,
but we got to do it as opposed to we'regoing to discover something new today.
And so really just kind listening tosome of those implicit messages in the
words that we choose, that's somethingwe can change in a moment as well.
Well,
I think you and I could probably go onand on and continue this conversation for
(24:15):
a long time. If I'msomeone who's listening,
are there resources you would recommendfor someone who wants to continue
learning about these ideas?
Yeah, absolutely. For me,
the OG of this line of thinking is JoeBowler, who most math teachers will know.
She's the first person I ever hearduse the word math traumatized.
And before I embarked and dovedeeper into my math trauma research,
(24:40):
I went down to Stanford and met with her,
and she was wonderful and encouragingof like, oh, no, no, no. Go, go, go, go.
This is great.
There's a woman named Ebony McGeewho's the founder of our rights.
She's a professor at Vanderbilt.
She's doing some work with mathidentity that I think touches on this
subject in a valuable way. I mean,
(25:00):
I think this whole area ofdeveloping positive math identity
is tightly connected to themath trauma work, and honestly,
anyone who is doing workaround child trauma and
neuroscience and how we are seeingthe development of the brain is going
to provide some interesting resources.I have to say,
(25:22):
my all time favorite is a bookthat I believe it is out of print,
so it might be a thrift books purchase,
but Dr. Judy Willis wrote a bookcalled Learning to Love Math.
Looks like you might be familiar with it.
And I really think she did alovely job in that book in a way
that is absolutely targetingteachers to help us see how these
(25:44):
very small actions that we take inthe classroom could make a really big
difference in terms of how ourstudents see and experience the
subject that we care about so much.
I think that's a great place to stop.Thank you so much for joining us, Cassie.
It's really been apleasure talking with you.
Oh my goodness, Mike, thank you so much.It's really been an honor to be here.
(26:05):
Thanks for having me.
This podcast is brought to you by theMath Learning Center and the Meyer Math
Foundation dedicated to inspiring andenabling all individuals to discover
and develop their mathematicalconfidence and ability.
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