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My own children voiced over and over again during high school their lack of understanding of why they needed to learn what they were learning in high school math.  I think that the inititative should focus on ALL of the high school years because by their junior  year, the damage is done (and for advanced students their required courses are completed by their junior year, in my experience).

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I believe a lot of parents unknowingly put their math beliefs onto their children which impacts their mindset. Students are scared of making mistakes and give up easily if things are hard.

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Growth Mindset fits here, as well. But it does seem that "math" (over other subjects) carries more negativity.

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Growth Mindset fits here, as well. But it does seem that "math" (over other subjects) carries more negativity.

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Students get frustrated when they don't get the answer correct or don't get it right away. They struggle with perseverance and motivation to keep working at it.

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I worked in a school district in another state that didn't offer any math classes beyond Algebra 2. Any students who wanted to pursue a higher level math course had to enroll in a class at a community college.

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I watch students who do not even try in math even by third grade because they have come in with an idea that they are not good at math, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy

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Over and over again I encounter students who have made up their mindset that they are not good at math.  Once in this mindset it is  a struggle to convince them otherwise.  Students seem less encouraged to work through challenges, it is hard to motivate them to understand that it's not just going to 'click' immediately.

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Over and over again I encounter students who have made up their mindset that they are not good at math.  Once in this mindset it is  a struggle to convince them otherwise.  Students seem less encouraged to work through challenges, it is hard to motivate them to understand that it's not just going to 'click' immediately.

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As a teacher in an affluent school for 14 years, teachers there had funds, time and resources to accommodated for transdisciplinary learning. However, there were many schools in my district that did not have that luxury. Like one of the presenters in the video said, it's zip code dependent. I absolutely agree with that. 

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As a teacher in an affluent school for 14 years, teachers there had funds, time and resources to accommodated for transdisciplinary learning. However, there were many schools in my district that did not have that luxury. Like one of the presenters in the video said, it's zip code dependent. I absolutely agree with that. 

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I see inequitable access when schools offer a singular pathway for students. The Algebra/Geometry/Algebra 2 pathway that may extend to pre-calculus or calculus does not give students access to important topics in mathematics including Statistics, discrete mathematics and many applications.

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It shocks me that I am still hearing from parents that they don't expect their students to be successful in math because they weren't. "We aren't a math family." That is a hard barrier to remove once a student has placed it. Every mistake becomes a "see I told you." Even our grading system plays with the student's mindset.

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I think that my students don't see how math connects to their future. Personally, I didn't really know how math was going to be relevant in my life, either, but I just trusted that it was important. I think that students are a little more skeptical than I was and really want to see how math can be relevant to them.

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I personally had a very fixed mindset when it came to math and it started in elementary school. I didn't feel like I was very good at math, I was slow on my times tables, and some people told me "it was okay because I was not a math person."

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Even between grade levels at the elementary school level there are barriers with consistency. The building blocks aren't always present and the "why" behind teaching certain skills in certain ways so that they can be built upon at later grades is unknown to some teachers responsible for teaching those building blocks. Teaching rules that expire (for example: When you multiply, the numbers get bigger or you add a zero to the end when multiplying by ten) hinder progress at the next few grades, let alone all the way through high school and post secondary education.

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I know that for me, and I see it in current students as well, once we get to a certain point we believe that some students are just good at math and others are not and this creates barriers to our learning and growing as mathematicians. Many parents say, oh I wasn't good at math either. Changing how to speak about math and think about math is important in moving this work forward.

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Students don't often see how the math we are doing in school will be useful to them in the real world. I try really hard to share what future careers use the math we are learning and/or how it can be useful in day to day life.

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My students, and even some adults, ask, "When are we ever going to need this?" when learning math. Some people believe that with calculators available, there is no need to understand computation. Yes, calculators can help, but the user needs to know what to do to solve a problem. The development of mathematical thinking, and the ability to understand how to arrive at what is needed is a life skill. A few days ago, my husband and I were hanging a very large picture in our house. It took lots of measuring, calculating and marking to make sure we hung it properly.

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When teaching Math 105, I had so many students tell me how useful the material was and how they are finally seeing themselves as capable.

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Society's belief that calc is the only way to show you are "smart". So hard to show the rigor of the pathways other than Calc.  Counselors and admissions need to be shown this module.

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I think about how important it is to make sure that our practices align with our values around Math Mindsets. It's very easy to SAY "everyone is a math person" but if our classrooms are places where an individual student rarely experiences success, that message will be hard for them to believe. We have to make sure our teaching creates access to back up our value of positive math mindset.

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Mathematical mindsets can be barriers to student achievement when students have a fixed mindset, where they believe that their ability in math is predetermined and cannot be improved through effort and practice. This can lead to a lack of motivation, decreased effort, and a fear of making mistakes.

Additionally, if students have negative attitudes towards math, such as believing that math is boring, irrelevant, or too difficult, they may not be as engaged in their learning and may not put in the effort needed to succeed.

On the other hand, having a growth mindset, where students believe that their abilities can be improved through effort and practice, can lead to increased motivation and engagement in math. Students with a growth mindset are more likely to embrace challenges, learn from mistakes, and persist in their learning, leading to greater achievement in math.

Furthermore, promoting a positive math culture in the classroom, school, and community can help students develop positive attitudes and beliefs towards math, and promote a sense of belonging and confidence in their ability to succeed.

I have also heard the phrase from parents "I was never good at math " many times. This is a very counter productive statement for students to hear from their parent even though it is intended to be empathetic towards their child.

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Teachers Reinforcing Poor Mathematical Mindsets

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Teachers Reinforcing Poor Mathematical Mindsets

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The unfortunate reality is that we still have teachers that reinforce poor mathematical mindsets. Elementary teachers are not content experts, and there are a lot of them who do not consider themselves to be "math people." That mindset then gets passed on to students, even if unintentionally, developing fixed mindsets about math at a variety of skill levels.

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Are current pathways are based on a tautology of needing to learn math so you can do more math, and the answer to "why do I need to do more math" is too often "so you can get into college." A significant number of our students will never go to college, and math plays a crucial part in a lot of careers that don't require a college degree. 

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Are current pathways are based on a tautology of needing to learn math so you can do more math, and the answer to "why do I need to do more math" is too often "so you can get into college." A significant number of our students will never go to college, and math plays a crucial part in a lot of careers that don't require a college degree. 

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There was a shift for me as a student from middle to high school. I wasn't able to make connections to what I was learning and became discouraged when I stopped understanding my math classes as much as before.

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For years, students in our district have not had access to advanced math courses at the high school level because they were not identified in the sixth grade to move into the high math class at the middle school.

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In high school I felt the same way that many students do today. How is Calculas going to help me after high school? In fact it didn't. At no point do I remember having open honest conversations about the relevance math will play in our actual futures.

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I always felt like I wasn't good at math, I believed I was a student who was good at reading and writing , but not at math. I want my students to feel like they don't just excel in one area, but that they are capable and can be successful in all subjects.

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I always felt like I wasn't good at math, I believed I was a student who was good at reading and writing , but not at math. I want my students to feel like they don't just excel in one area, but that they are capable and can be successful in all subjects.

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I'm not sure that the placement of students in advanced math course offerings at the middle level always happens in an inequitable fashion.

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In working with students with IEPs, they may have different disparate skills when it comes to math. I have worked with many a parent that is concerned about the student not knowing their times tables or rote arithmetic facts, and not wanted them to move on until they mastered these facts. At the same time, the student has been bored with these facts and shown capability of mastering higher level concepts.

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From the get-go of elementary school, students start off disadvantaged. Some have attended preschool and some have not. This barrier widens with each year they attend school and it can be difficult to close that gap. A basic understanding of number sense is missing with many of our students and it's evident in those first few primary years.

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I remember being a freshman at U of P. I had a friend who had graduated from Roosevelt who was interested in nursing. We were both taking a Chemistry class, and I was trying to help her with a simple multiplication problems involving lots of labeled units. She didn't have the prerequisite understanding of multiplying with different units. She was a capable person, but I could see the obstacles in her path to becoming a nurse, because her high school had not prepared her adequately.

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I remember being a freshman at U of P. I had a friend who had graduated from Roosevelt who was interested in nursing. We were both taking a Chemistry class, and I was trying to help her with a simple multiplication problems involving lots of labeled units. She didn't have the prerequisite understanding of multiplying with different units. She was a capable person, but I could see the obstacles in her path to becoming a nurse, because her high school had not prepared her adequately.

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In my own personal experience I always struggled with Math for a variety of reasons. I always had access to higher levels of math, but for me I couldn't do them because I struggled so much. I think part of my struggle I recognize was my own mathmatical mindset, but that mindset came from struggling in class. When I was in school math was very much a memorize type of learning. I was never taught why we did something, and be given the foundational background. Instead I just had to memorize whatever was needed. The issue always ended up being that I am not great at memorization, and what I could do would be quickly forgotten because there was no context to my learning. I was missing so much foundation, and interested and understanding in math that it gave me a negative mindset because others around me could do it, but I just couldn't get the hang of the skills rewarded in math learning at the time. Now as an Elementary teacher I feel like I take that experience and I work really hard to not have my students have the same experiences. I myself even feel like my skills have gotten better in math because the way we teach now is so different. I see how these early years can affect students later in life. I am passionate about teaching first grade because of this foundational time in their life. I want to impact my students to be able to do any math that comes their way and truly understand not just memorize a method.

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I struggled with math as a student and had the idea that "I'm not good at math." As a kid growing up I really wanted to be an architect, but I think my mindset kept me from considering or perusing this as a profession because I knew how much math would be involved in college.

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 We track them without ever giving opportunities to move ahead and without truly clear criteria for what an advanced math student may be.

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 We track them without ever giving opportunities to move ahead and without truly clear criteria for what an advanced math student may be.

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Students experience barriers from our lack as teachers of the importance of language, process, and concrete experiences that are  necessary in learning, seeing, and understanding mathematics. 

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Students experience barriers from our lack as teachers of the importance of language, process, and concrete experiences that are  necessary in learning, seeing, and understanding mathematics. 

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There is too often the assumption of knowledge that students should know and no place for what is actually the reality of what students actually know.

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There is too often the assumption of knowledge that students should know and no place for what is actually the reality of what students actually know.

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I have seen the demoralizing effects on students from the current curriculum that our district uses, which is so conceptually poor as to make students dependent on memorizing procedures. That doesn't work well long term. 

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I have seen the demoralizing effects on students from the current curriculum that our district uses, which is so conceptually poor as to make students dependent on memorizing procedures. That doesn't work well long term. 

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This Launch Years Initiative seems to be focused much too late in the school years. I have seen students loose all interest for and confidence in math by the time they get to 5th grade. Failing to address that fact will significantly hamper efforts in late high school. Math mindsets are formed long before 11th grade.

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When I was working as a math tutor at my university, I worked with a lot of students who were required to take a math course that didn't earn them college credit because based on ACT scores or high school math credits they didn't have the necessary prerequisite to take even the entry level math class. So they had to pay for tuition for a course they weren't even getting credit for before they could take the basic math course.

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I have students who were very mathematically talented lack confidence in themselves if they didn't believe they fit the traditional mold of being 'good' at math.

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Students who have to choose between challenging themselves in math or other elective classes they had passion for because the way the master schedule was built didn't allow them to do both and math became a thing that would have prevented them from other classes they wanted to take.

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"These are students who can't do Algebra..."

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"These are students who can't do Algebra..."

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When I was a first year hs math teacher, I was assigned a course called "Math B," which was designed for students who "couldn't do math," according to my math department chair. Not surprisingly, the  students enrolled in the course were mostly male, BIPOC.  Almost thirty years later, language like this continues to perpetuate the "can" and "can't" do math culture.

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Math Course Pre-requisites: students who fail math courses ¯\_(:/)_/¯

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Math Course Pre-requisites: students who fail math courses ¯\_(:/)_/¯

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Fail Algebra 2 => Enroll in Geometry=>Fail Geometry=> Enroll in Algebra 1=>Fail Algebra 1=>Enroll in General Math=>Fail General Math=>Create new course that students can fail :P

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I resonated with the statement about access being zipcode dependent. I went to a different high school than my siblings (I was on a boundary exception for a special program). My high school was in much lower SES area than the one my brothers went to. High-level math options were VERY different between our schools. I had one option unless I went to the community college. They had 3.

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Not to dis on any teachers, because we were all 'new teachers' at some point, but I definitely feel like students struggle to learn when they have a new teacher, because the teacher is just trying their best to figure it all out themselves. There is a lot that teachers have to do and as a new teacher I think it can be pretty overwhelming that sometimes it feels like they are just trying to make it. I think students struggle at any grade level when they have a new teacher.

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I have experienced many students with the "I can't do math" mindset as they enter the classroom. This is a very detrimental mindset that can be a very major roadblock to high level learning and limit a students ability to be successful in the classroom.