I am grateful to be able to share this week's Principal's Message column with our Assistant Principal, Abby Jinks.
Prior to my role as assistant principal here at Worthingway, I was an 8th grade math teacher. As a math teacher I would so often hear from students that they are “bad at math”. Ugh! This broke my math teacher heart. During parent-teacher conferences I would often hear from parents that they, themselves, were not “good at math” so they struggled to support their child at home. Ugh! My frustration was not with the parents. My frustration was with this multi-generational belief that some of us just “can’t do math” (some of you are probably reading this thinking “no, really…I can’t do math”)
As a math teacher, it became my mission to instill a belief of mathematical ability in both students and families. We can all do math. Learning math is not about getting answers right. Learning math is about making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. Maybe that is one of the reasons that so many of us believe we are “bad at math”. In order to see success, we must fail along the way.
A colleague of mine at the time recommended the book Table Talk Math by John Stevens. I read the book and began collaborating with families to make suggestions of how to incorporate “math talk” at home. Table Talk Math showed me ways to engage families in math dialogue without worrying about a “correct answer” and focusing on mathematical thinking. Quickly I heard from families that dinner time conversations went from one word responses (“good” or “nothing”) and turned into engaging discourse between them and their child over a task like one seen below. Check out the resources tab on Stevens’ website to find more engaging conversation starters to bring math to life in your home.
