As a veteran educator with over 20 years of experience, Jenn taught mathematics from second through ninth grade and at a college level. She was also an elementary and secondary math coach and a mentor for new teachers.<\/p>\n
But mathematics didn\u2019t always come easy for her.\u00a0In fact, she really struggled with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a child, I did not fit that mold and I found that math was very challenging for me,\u201d said the Mathematics Education Specialist based in California.<\/p>\n
So how did she come to embrace the subject? It was all thanks to her eighth-grade teacher, Mrs Miller.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s the one that really turned it on for me. From there it just became my passion and mission to really help students understand that they are all mathematicians, we can all do math,\u201d Jenn added.<\/p>\n<\/div>
What causes math anxiety?<\/h3>\n
According to Trena Wilkerson, President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, most children feel enthusiastic about learning mathematics when they start school. However, various factors, such as the need to perform calculations, can quickly trigger anxiety.<\/p>\n
Jenn recalls, \u201cI can vividly remember sitting in my second-grade class learning about the times tables. My teacher went down each row asking for the answer to a multiplication fact. My heart raced as I waited for my turn; multiplication just didn\u2019t make sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in tears by the time she got to me and felt the eyes of every classmate on me. \u2018I don\u2019t know\u2019 became my usual response in math class that year and for many years that followed. A \u2018math wall\u2019 had gone up.\u201d<\/p>\n
She even pleaded with her parents to buy her a multiplication chart to keep in her desk so she could glance at it whenever her teacher asked her multiplication facts.<\/p>\n
Another contributing factor to math anxiety is that there can only be one right answer, or that there\u2019s an assumption there\u2019s only one way to solve a problem. However, Jenn shares that “this puts a lot of pressure on students, who all think and learn in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenn, who now writes the worked solutions for the courses in Mathletics elaborates, \u201cThe beauty of math is there are multiple pathways to reach the same answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents come to school with a lot of knowledge in their toolbox and should feel confident showing their thinking in a way that makes sense to them, with teacher guidance that addresses any misconceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>