Latest / Math Therapy / Before & After Pt. 1: How Math Therapy changed Lauren Keeling's life (May 2026)

Transcript

Before & After Pt. 1: How Math Therapy changed Lauren Keeling's life (May 2026) · Math Therapy

0:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, hi.
0:04
Vanessa Vakharia: Hello.
0:05
Vanessa Vakharia: I have the coolest episode for you today, and it's actually a two-parter, and you're about to hear part one.
0:11
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, sorry.
0:12
Vanessa Vakharia: Before I explain, hello.
0:13
Vanessa Vakharia: Hi.
0:13
Vanessa Vakharia: Yes, welcome to Math Therapy.
0:15
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm Vanessa Vakharia, AKA The Math Guru.
0:18
Vanessa Vakharia: Fine, The intro is done.
0:19
Vanessa Vakharia: Now listen up.
0:21
Vanessa Vakharia: Do you have math trauma?
0:22
Vanessa Vakharia: Are you convinced you will never change the way you feel about math?
0:26
Vanessa Vakharia: Have you ever wanted to hear what it's like to actually give or get math therapy?
0:31
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, do you watch Shrinking or Couples Therapy and wish you could be in the room when someone gets therapized, but, like, about their math trauma?
0:38
Vanessa Vakharia: Well, guess what?
0:39
Vanessa Vakharia: Today is your lucky day Imagine Learning has a podcast called HeartWork, and they did this three-part series this year on math anxiety.
0:48
Vanessa Vakharia: For one of those parts, their podcast team literally flew to Toronto so that I could give their host, Lauren Keeling, some IRL math therapy.
0:57
Vanessa Vakharia: Now, throughout the series, Lauren was on a mission to explore her own lifelong math trauma, and that brought her and her team to spend an entire day at my tutoring studio in Toronto.
1:08
Vanessa Vakharia: That three-part series came out in the summer.
1:10
Vanessa Vakharia: The other episodes featured, Deborah Peart and Peter Liljedahl, and the whole series is like this Wondery true crime podcast, but about healing math trauma.
1:19
Vanessa Vakharia: We'll link in the show notes.
1:20
Vanessa Vakharia: As a bonus, HeartWork put my full one-on-one math therapy session with Lauren on their YouTube, and today they have agreed to let us share that audio with you in a podcast exclusive.
1:33
Vanessa Vakharia: It gets even better, because guys, Lauren Keeling's math story does not end at that one session we had together months ago.
1:40
Vanessa Vakharia: Her life, as it turns out, has totally changed in ways she never could have imagined.
1:44
Vanessa Vakharia: So I decided to do a follow-up session with her so that we could unpack how math therapy changed her life and her sense of self, and next week you are going to hear that.
1:54
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, guys, this is an epic two-parter.
1:56
Vanessa Vakharia: We've never done anything like this before, and I can't wait for you to hear it, so buckle up, because you're about to get a seat on my pink velvet couch next to Lauren Keeling.
2:05
Vanessa Vakharia: You're gonna hear about why she developed such crippling math anxiety so early on, how that's defined her as a person and limited what she thought she was capable of, and then you're gonna hear growth mindset in action as we work through it in real time.
2:18
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not gonna tell you what happens at the end, because you have to hear it to believe it.
2:22
Vanessa Vakharia: And guys, this is the one.
2:24
Vanessa Vakharia: This is the episode to text your friend with math anxiety, your friend who's convinced they're not a math person and never will be, the teacher you work with who's like,"Mm, it's ELA or bust.
2:33
Vanessa Vakharia: I can't do math," your entire teacher group chat, your students' parents.
2:36
Vanessa Vakharia: This is the one.
2:38
Vanessa Vakharia: This will give them hope and change their lives.
2:41
Vanessa Vakharia: All right, here it is, me and the brave and courageous Lauren Keeling on HeartWork
2:50
Lauren Keeling: Vanessa, welcome to HeartWork.
2:52
Vanessa Vakharia: And Lauren, welcome to Math Therapy.
2:54
Lauren Keeling: I'm nervous.
2:56
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so this is actually a really good starting point.
2:58
Vanessa Vakharia: Good.
2:58
Vanessa Vakharia: I actually am curious.
3:00
Vanessa Vakharia: Your anxiety that you think you're walking in here with is around math.
3:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Can you pinpoint what you're nervous about?
3:05
Lauren Keeling: Failure.
3:06
Lauren Keeling: I am-
3:06
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, okay.
3:07
Vanessa Vakharia: Wow
3:07
Lauren Keeling: terrified that you're going to ask me to do math today, and my entire body is going to lock up, and my brain is going to freeze, and I'm not going to be able to produce anything for you.
3:15
Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
3:16
Vanessa Vakharia: And what would ha- if that happened, first of all, I am not, there's no, there's, I'm not gonna, like, whip out a time test.
3:23
Vanessa Vakharia: So let's go with this.
3:24
Vanessa Vakharia: So your literal fear is I'm gonna ask you to do math, you are gonna, like, freeze.
3:29
Vanessa Vakharia: You're not gonna be able to produce anything.
3:31
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
3:31
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
3:31
Lauren Keeling: And I'm afraid it's going to be really basic math-
3:34
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay
3:34
Lauren Keeling: because it doesn't matter what level of math it is, if you ask me to produce it, and if you put a time capsule on it, I actually would probably melt into the couch.
3:43
Vanessa Vakharia: Here's my question to you.
3:45
Vanessa Vakharia: If I asked you what eight plus eight was, and you couldn't get it, and, right, like, your fear came true, your fear, which is that you are gonna lock up, you're gonna be unable to produce.
3:55
Vanessa Vakharia: You might even get the wrong answer, even worse, on a public forum- Yes like, people are listening, what would that mean about you?
4:02
Lauren Keeling: That I am a failure.
4:04
Lauren Keeling: That I am a dummy.
4:07
Vanessa Vakharia: When is the first time you felt this way?
4:09
Lauren Keeling: I, in first grade.
4:11
Lauren Keeling: It centers on those, those timed tests.
4:13
Lauren Keeling: That's when we started doing flashcards.
4:16
Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
4:17
Lauren Keeling: I see Mrs.
4:19
Lauren Keeling: V walking down the aisles in the rows that we were in, and she sets this paper down in front of me that I have just finished, and it is full of red Xs.
4:28
Lauren Keeling: And that very moment is the very first moment that I can recall in my life feeling like I wasn't very good at this thing and that something was wrong with me.
4:39
Lauren Keeling: And then it happened again, and then it happened again
4:43
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so that sounds, first of all, very, very hard.
4:47
Vanessa Vakharia: And I can, like, feel the emotion, like, coming out of you as you talk about it.
4:50
Vanessa Vakharia: It is, it's really interesting, right?
4:52
Vanessa Vakharia: How core, like, you, you said it was a core memory- but then the evidence is you literally remember every detail.
4:57
Vanessa Vakharia: I do.
4:58
Vanessa Vakharia: You remember what she was wearing, you remember, like, how you felt.
5:01
Vanessa Vakharia: Can we talk about the mathematics content?
5:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, so you got the stuff wrong, you got the red Xs.
5:07
Vanessa Vakharia: Time te- forget the timed test, were you able to, in a non-timed situation, do what was on the paper?
5:12
Lauren Keeling: Perhaps not perfectly or well, but I felt like I had the time to be able to count on my fingers.
5:18
Lauren Keeling: I could do touch math.
5:19
Lauren Keeling: The, the
5:19
Vanessa Vakharia: world's OG manipulative, everyone.
5:22
Lauren Keeling: Yes, the original.
5:24
Lauren Keeling: I had to do it a completely different way from what the very straightforward way that my teacher was doing it up on the board.
5:29
Vanessa Vakharia: Got it.
5:30
Vanessa Vakharia: So there's a few, like, really interesting things, which is that, just from a theoretical point of view, and, like, a scientific point of view, it's really important that we hang onto this moment for a second, because this is years and years, this is decades later, decades later.
5:43
Vanessa Vakharia: Decades later.
5:44
Vanessa Vakharia: Decades later, and your body remembers that experience.
5:47
Vanessa Vakharia: It does.
5:48
Vanessa Vakharia: And actually, with math trauma, and any sort of microtrauma or macrotrauma, our bodies do go back into the state we were in when we had the first traumatic incident.
5:57
Vanessa Vakharia: So I actually want you to just give yourself some grace as a bigger picture.
6:00
Vanessa Vakharia: We're gonna talk about this more later, but to remember that now, every time you're faced with math, you are back to being that six-year-old.
6:09
Vanessa Vakharia: It's not just made up.
6:10
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, that is what's happening, and how can you possibly perform mathematically when you feel like...
6:15
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you can't.
6:16
Vanessa Vakharia: You can't access your working memory.
6:18
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, your amygdala is being hijacked.
6:20
Vanessa Vakharia: You're back in that trauma memory.
6:21
Vanessa Vakharia: And I just wanna reflect back, there's a part of you that's like,"Even though I'm able to work this stuff out, and, like, get the result and get a good grade, it doesn't actually count, because I'm not doing it fast enough.
6:31
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not doing it the way everyone else is.
6:33
Vanessa Vakharia: I've gotta use these tools no one else is doing, so it doesn't actually count as me being good at math."
6:37
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
6:37
Lauren Keeling: I had to figure out, I had to draw the pictures, I had to make the circles.
6:41
Lauren Keeling: You know, I had to do all of the different strategies.
6:43
Vanessa Vakharia: And is that, is that not being good at math in your mind?
6:45
Lauren Keeling: No, it's not being good at math- Right in my mind.
6:47
Vanessa Vakharia: And, and why?
6:49
Lauren Keeling: Because there's one way to do math.
6:50
Lauren Keeling: My childhood teaching tells me there's one way to do math, and if you have to do all of this extraneous stuff to get there, you're not doing it right.
6:58
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
6:58
Lauren Keeling: One pathway.
6:59
Lauren Keeling: But can I tell you one more big piece of math trauma-
7:02
Vanessa Vakharia: Tell me whatever you want, yeah
7:03
Lauren Keeling: that lives in my grown-up life?
7:04
Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
7:06
Lauren Keeling: from a career perspective, I've done a lot of different things, and when I transitioned out of my very first job as a journalist and moved into...
7:13
Lauren Keeling: I decided that we were raising girls.
7:15
Lauren Keeling: I needed a different schedule in my life.
7:18
Lauren Keeling: I wanted to be a teacher.
7:18
Lauren Keeling: My mom was a teacher.
7:19
Lauren Keeling: I knew I loved kindergarten.
7:21
Lauren Keeling: It was, my heart was called to it.
7:24
Lauren Keeling: I had to go back to school and get my master's degree, but then came the really difficult part because in Ohio, where I was getting certified, I had to take four different tests in the core subjects, right?
7:33
Lauren Keeling: So math, reading, uh, science, and social studies.
7:35
Lauren Keeling: I went to take my math Praxis, and I'm sitting in this little quiet room, and these sweet ladies are on the outside of the glass, and you know you're not allowed to talk when you're taking those tests.
7:44
Lauren Keeling: Sure.
7:44
Lauren Keeling: You're, like, in your little cubicle.
7:46
Lauren Keeling: So I'm working through this test, working through this test, and I'm taking it at the end, and I fail it, this big test that's going to allow me to get my certification.
7:53
Lauren Keeling: Mm.
7:54
Lauren Keeling: And I fail it by just a very menial number, less than 10 points.
7:59
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
8:00
Lauren Keeling: And I was super disappointed, but I knew I could take it again.
8:03
Lauren Keeling: So I went back to my tutor, and we bought all of the Math for Dummies books and Ma- Praxis Math for Dummies books, and we studied through all of those.
8:10
Lauren Keeling: Probably in
8:11
Vanessa Vakharia: retrospect, like, not a good name, okay?
8:12
Lauren Keeling: Terrible name.
8:13
Vanessa Vakharia: I know.
8:13
Lauren Keeling: So we did all of those books, and I went back and I took that test again the second time, and I was really trying to focus my brain on, like,"You can do this.
8:19
Lauren Keeling: This is a really important thing to you.
8:21
Lauren Keeling: You have the skill," and I failed it again.
8:24
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
8:24
Lauren Keeling: By this time, the ladies in the, on the other side of the zoo glass are invested in what I'm doing as well, and they were disappointed for me.
8:31
Lauren Keeling: So I'm gonna do it again.
8:33
Lauren Keeling: I'm gonna do it a third time.
8:34
Lauren Keeling: We're gonna do all the same stuff over again.
8:35
Lauren Keeling: We're gonna keep practicing.
8:37
Lauren Keeling: I failed it by two points- Oh my
8:39
Vanessa Vakharia: God
8:39
Lauren Keeling: on the third time.
8:41
Lauren Keeling: I had one more chance to take it.
8:43
Vanessa Vakharia: This is so stressful.
8:45
Lauren Keeling: So
8:46
Vanessa Vakharia: stressful.
8:46
Vanessa Vakharia: Were you stressed in there?
8:47
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
8:47
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
8:48
Lauren Keeling: By the third time, I was, I was not, I was not well-
8:52
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah
8:52
Lauren Keeling: taking that third test.
8:53
Vanessa Vakharia: I got it.
8:54
Lauren Keeling: Because the, the real life, the grown-up pressure was on this.
8:58
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
8:58
Lauren Keeling: This was a career.
8:59
Lauren Keeling: I was making a huge shift away.
9:01
Lauren Keeling: I was taking a chance.
9:02
Lauren Keeling: I- this was the only way I could get a job to teach, is if I passed this thing.
9:06
Lauren Keeling: After all of that, on the fourth test, I did pass, and I barely passed, and I loudly celebrated in my quiet cubicle, in the space you're not supposed to talk, and the ladies outside the zoo glass celebrated when they saw my arms go up- Oh my God because we were just all living this moment that, like-
9:19
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah
9:20
Lauren Keeling: here's this poor girl who has come in here 1,000 times and just keeps missing it by, by a mark.
9:27
Lauren Keeling: So all that to say, that was just another grown-up moment for me that proved, in my mind, that small thing that I knew that I was missing when I was doing that math, that if I could have just done it the way they taught me to do it and I didn't have to do all of the other stuff to get to that answer, I would've been quicker, I could've had more time to check my answers, and I probably would've passed.
9:51
Lauren Keeling: So there's a lot that's sort of knitted into that.
9:53
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, love the Like, I don't love it, but, like, this totally makes so much sense.
9:56
Lauren Keeling: I believe that deep in my soul.
9:58
Lauren Keeling: Even knowing what I know today, even having the experiences I had today, teaching children math as a kindergarten teacher, working with teachers p- to pick and, and put out a curriculum in our district, even knowing all the things I know today, I still, in my soul, when I dig down deep and think about math for Lauren Keeling, there is only one way to solve that problem and you're not doing it right.
10:17
Vanessa Vakharia: It- this is so interesting,'cause when I work with teachers, I often, like, I do a lot of talks around, like, defining failure and success, and I find educators c- very often will, like, have this d- idea of success for the people they lead, right?
10:30
Vanessa Vakharia: Either the teachers they work with or their students, and they'll be like,"Success is just, like You know, it's trying and failing.
10:35
Vanessa Vakharia: It's showing up.
10:37
Vanessa Vakharia: It's whatever." But their standard for themselves is always, like, completely different.
10:41
Vanessa Vakharia: Yep.
10:41
Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
10:41
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, and it definitely sounds like that for you, because off-screen or mic or whatever, you and I were talking, and you were saying that one of your deep core beliefs is that there are, like, multiple ways to learn things and do things, and even if in math you've gotta get to the one answer, there's so many ways you can do it and all of those are equally valuable.
11:00
Vanessa Vakharia: And now it seems like you're just, like, completely gaslighting yourself.
11:02
Lauren Keeling: But not for me.
11:03
Lauren Keeling: But not- Yeah, not for you everyone else in the world- Yeah.
11:05
Lauren Keeling: can have all the ways to get to mastery, but for me, nope, there's, there's one way and I don't know how to do it.
11:10
Lauren Keeling: Okay.
11:10
Lauren Keeling: So fast-forward, I got my, my licensure.
11:13
Lauren Keeling: I was hired thankfully, to teach third grade.
11:18
Lauren Keeling: And the books in third grade are amazing.
11:20
Lauren Keeling: They're so fun to teach.
11:21
Lauren Keeling: But do you know what else you teach in third grade?
11:23
Vanessa Vakharia: What?
11:23
Lauren Keeling: Fractions.
11:24
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, do you love that?
11:25
Vanessa Vakharia: I hate it- Cool
11:26
Lauren Keeling: deeply.
11:28
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
11:29
Vanessa Vakharia: So what happened?
11:30
Lauren Keeling: So I taught fractions, and I'm air quoting, I taught fractions.
11:34
Vanessa Vakharia: Why are you air quoting?
11:35
Lauren Keeling: Because I just had to read directly from the book because that was a style of math that I didn't understand until I started failing forward at cooking and using measuring cups.
11:44
Lauren Keeling: Fractions finally started, started to make a little bit of sense for me in my 30s when I was practicing it that way, which would've been a great strategy to bring into my classroom- Yeah, like
11:53
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like-
11:53
Lauren Keeling: for the students so
11:54
Vanessa Vakharia: I don't wanna be, like, sarcastic and snippy, but I'm like, oh, wow, when you encountered the thing in real life and it was actually relevant- Amazing it made sense.
12:00
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, shocking.
12:00
Lauren Keeling: Not separate and apart and using strange-
12:02
Vanessa Vakharia: Wow
12:03
Lauren Keeling: things in a book.
12:03
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
12:04
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
12:04
Lauren Keeling: So as soon- I- Third grade, the children were wonderful, the books were great, fractions were horrible.
12:09
Lauren Keeling: I was panicked every day that I was destroying math futures for children because I myself was uncomfortable teaching fractions, and I felt like there was just no possible way that wasn't somehow seeping into a child in the classroom who also was finding it to be a little confusing and uncomfortable.
12:23
Lauren Keeling: And so I only spent one year in third grade, truly because pointing to, I just, I just could not torture myself through teaching fractions.
12:30
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
12:31
Lauren Keeling: And I got out, and I started teaching kindergarten.
12:33
Vanessa Vakharia: There are probably a lot of teachers listening that feel the exact way- Mm that you felt in grade three.
12:37
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
12:38
Vanessa Vakharia: What would you tell those teachers?
12:39
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, would you tell them to...
12:41
Vanessa Vakharia: What, what would you say?
12:42
Lauren Keeling: It's hard as a first-year teacher to feel like you're doing good work- Yeah in any space because you're just figuring it out.
12:49
Lauren Keeling: And then it's also extra hard when it's something that you're not confident in yourself.
12:53
Lauren Keeling: And- If I separate myself from how Lauren Keeling felt, and I look at you as the administrator that I became, I would say,"We're gonna figure it out together." Oh.
13:02
Lauren Keeling: "And I'm gonna give you all the supports that you need, and I actually know a teacher just right across the hall from you who is really doing great work teaching children fractions and can maybe support you in this." As a grown-up who has had great people in her life and who has raised daughters and lived in the world, that what that person needs is just really what you're doing for me right here, providing an opening for them to talk about it and think about it and actually connect to what the real root issue is.
13:30
Lauren Keeling: And then how do we figure it out?
13:32
Lauren Keeling: You love third grade.
13:33
Lauren Keeling: Let's pretend that that's what it is.
13:34
Lauren Keeling: You love third grade.
13:35
Lauren Keeling: Oh, but I cannot- This is the space you wanna be in
13:36
Vanessa Vakharia: imagine teaching third grade, but yes.
13:38
Lauren Keeling: Yeah, there's a lot that's happening in, in and with third graders.
13:40
Vanessa Vakharia: No, but I love it.
13:41
Vanessa Vakharia: I love it so much.
13:42
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
13:42
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay?
13:42
Vanessa Vakharia: So let's say you love it.
13:42
Vanessa Vakharia: I
13:42
Lauren Keeling: love large rooms of chi- little
13:44
Vanessa Vakharia: children.
13:44
Lauren Keeling: You're just...
13:45
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
13:45
Lauren Keeling: You, you love that.
13:46
Lauren Keeling: Tons of people are cut for third grade, and that's where they wanna be.
13:49
Lauren Keeling: The math is hard, and that's not gonna change.
13:52
Lauren Keeling: But you're smart.
13:54
Lauren Keeling: You're a teacher.
13:54
Lauren Keeling: You passed all these hard tests.
13:56
Lauren Keeling: You've done all of these things, and you have a really big heart for helping these children figure it out.
14:01
Lauren Keeling: So let's also have a really big heart for you figuring it out, and let your heart be big for yourself to figure it out.
14:07
Lauren Keeling: What kind of grappling work can we do to get there?
14:10
Lauren Keeling: How can I help you?
14:11
Vanessa Vakharia: I...
14:11
Vanessa Vakharia: We're gonna need, once this is done, for you to play ba- that back to yourself- to the grade, the third-grade teacher you were, and I wish someone had said that to you.
14:20
Vanessa Vakharia: But also, I fully support being like,"I don't wanna torture myself."
14:25
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
14:25
Vanessa Vakharia: We are adults.
14:26
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
14:26
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay?
14:26
Vanessa Vakharia: We get to choose now.
14:28
Vanessa Vakharia: We don't have to do anything we don't like.
14:30
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
14:30
Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
14:30
Vanessa Vakharia: So, so you are, uh, uh, fully able to be like,"I actually...
14:34
Vanessa Vakharia: This..." Like, there are tons of things I do where I'm like,"I could do this- but it's gonna take a lot of work, and I don't wanna put in that work," or,"This is gonna make me miserable, and I don't wanna do it." Yeah.
14:44
Vanessa Vakharia: It doesn't mean I don't think I can do it, but I think that is a bit of the difference, and you as an administrator, and all the administrators listening to this who probably have teachers that they are leading who feel this way, I think this is really important to hear.
14:58
Vanessa Vakharia: You're not the only one who thinks this.
15:00
Vanessa Vakharia: This is one of the key arguments we will hear from students and from teachers.
15:04
Vanessa Vakharia: They will say,"It just didn't come naturally for me." But what I like the most about math is that it is a gateway into really highlighting how someone feels about themselves, and it is a gateway to changing the way somebody feels about themselves as a core identity shift.
15:23
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I think math can do that because math is so weighted, and it gives people such visceral experiences, often negative- often so identity-based because we do use it as this identity piece, like you're either a math person or not- that we can use it to, like, leverage this incredible identity shift with people.
15:41
Vanessa Vakharia: Most of us learned that failure is really bad- at some point.
15:45
Vanessa Vakharia: Definitely failure in school is really bad.
15:48
Vanessa Vakharia: And so math was, like, this perfect storm for you- Yeah that has formed this childhood protector part, as, like, IFS would say, that now lives within you and wants to make sure you never feel that way again.
16:00
Vanessa Vakharia: But, like, the core story is untrue because your core story is,"Unless I do math in this specific exact way, I can't be good at it.""And, and if I'm not good at it, I'm a failure." In our society, math is the thing we associate with intelligence.
16:19
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
16:20
Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
16:20
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we don't- Yes, absolutely call Picasso smart.
16:22
Vanessa Vakharia: We don't call LeBron James smart.
16:24
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we call ma- Like, when you're good at math, you are smart.
16:27
Lauren Keeling: That's so true.
16:28
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm tr- I don't wanna make this gendered, but I am My master's thesis was called Imagining a World Where Paris Hilton Loves Math.
16:35
Vanessa Vakharia: And it is specifically about women and math.
16:37
Vanessa Vakharia: I-
16:37
Lauren Keeling: That's a fantastic title-
16:38
Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you- by the way so much.
16:40
Vanessa Vakharia: It was about media representation, you know, of mathematicians and of women, and how so many women self-select out of mathematics- because they feel like there's no room for their full identity to merge with the identity of mathematician.
16:53
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
16:54
Vanessa Vakharia: There is a lot of research around this.
16:55
Vanessa Vakharia: So it's not You know, I, I, I bring it up because women tend to be so much harder on themselves than they are with those around them, and this is a, a large reason we see a discrepancy when it comes to gender and mathematics- is because of a wh- a, a whole range of things here, but this being one of them, this idea of if you can't achieve perfection- then it means that you are a failure, and there is nothing worse than being a failure, so you stick to the things you're good at.
17:23
Vanessa Vakharia: Kids know that.
17:24
Vanessa Vakharia: They know that they are literally one wrong answer away from getting written off.
17:30
Vanessa Vakharia: And I hope you're seeing these major themes coming out.
17:34
Vanessa Vakharia: That math symbolizes so much more for us, right?
17:38
Vanessa Vakharia: It symbolizes what intelligence is.
17:40
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
17:40
Lauren Keeling: We just bought a house.
17:42
Lauren Keeling: We were talking all about mortgages, and numbers, and percentages, but I certainly didn't wanna have any hands in trying to actually do the numbers, and think about the numbers, and look at the numbers.
17:51
Lauren Keeling: It just, one, made me super nervous because what if I got it wrong?
17:55
Lauren Keeling: I just hated the fact that even if I were going to sit down and try to suss those numbers out and figure out what it might or could be, I could be wrong, and that could have given us a poor picture of what- Sure we were going to do, right?
18:06
Vanessa Vakharia: That's, like, an actual risk.
18:07
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
18:07
Lauren Keeling: So there's- Yeah there are, there are real consequences connected to the math that I would be responsible for doing, or thinking through, or putting on paper and actually sharing today.
18:18
Lauren Keeling: And so when I say I feel indifferent, I feel indifferent because I'm just saying,"Okay, someone else can figure this out.
18:23
Lauren Keeling: I can put this on someone else's plate who is going to get it right because they are math smart, and I don't have to worry about the outcome." If I do it, we gotta worry about the outcome'cause we're gonna have to look at it with a magnifying glass and have somebody else check my work, right?
18:38
Vanessa Vakharia: My goal with anyone, e- even with students, is like, I don't need you to like go into STEM or do math.
18:45
Vanessa Vakharia: I actually really do not care.
18:46
Vanessa Vakharia: I care that you believe that you could if you wanted to or needed to.
18:51
Vanessa Vakharia: That's actually what I care about.
18:52
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, like right now you're not in a position to be figuring out mortgages, right?
18:56
Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
18:56
Vanessa Vakharia: Like you like have math trauma from grade one.
18:58
Vanessa Vakharia: You don't like it.
18:59
Vanessa Vakharia: It sucks, and there's someone who can do it.
19:01
Vanessa Vakharia: So like, it's really, there's nothing...
19:03
Vanessa Vakharia: I don't want us feeling bad about that.
19:04
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
19:04
Vanessa Vakharia: Like you don't need to be like doing your own math.
19:06
Vanessa Vakharia: It's like when somebody uses a calculator I'm like,"Don't feel bad about it." Yeah.
19:09
Vanessa Vakharia: "Maybe you just didn't feel like thinking about it in the moment." Like I don't care what you're doing, I just want you to know you're capable of doing it.
19:14
Vanessa Vakharia: Again, uh, when I was talking about my master's thesis, the, the big finding from that was that for young girls, like the girls that I was working at, in order to become math people it meant they had to shed the identity they had.
19:30
Vanessa Vakharia: For example, a lot of them were, were like cheerleaders.
19:34
Vanessa Vakharia: We have never seen a cheerleader represented as being good at math in the media.
19:37
Vanessa Vakharia: The two are the opposite.
19:38
Vanessa Vakharia: We all know the movie, right?
19:40
Vanessa Vakharia: Like you're either the cheerleader who needs like the like, uh, the, the smart girl to like help her with math, and then you give the smart girl a makeover and then she be- like whatever.
19:48
Vanessa Vakharia: So there was a very big identity conflict.
19:50
Vanessa Vakharia: These girls were great at math.
19:52
Vanessa Vakharia: They were getting 90s.
19:52
Vanessa Vakharia: They were getting As in my, my grade 10 classroom, but they were deter- they were like,"We are not good at math." And when we really dug down to it, it was kind of like this conversation we're having here.
20:01
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
20:01
Vanessa Vakharia: Where like the proof, the evidence was that they were good at math.
20:06
Vanessa Vakharia: But it was like, but if they became good at math, did, did they have to let go of something else?
20:11
Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
20:12
Vanessa Vakharia: Did it mean that they had to engage in different behavior?
20:14
Vanessa Vakharia: And I think we really disregard the identity.
20:16
Vanessa Vakharia: You know, we talk about math identity a lot.
20:19
Vanessa Vakharia: But I think we're missing a very key component of math identity which is how does math identity, like in the Venn diagram of identities, how does math identity intersect with our own identity?
20:29
Vanessa Vakharia: Mm.
20:29
Vanessa Vakharia: Is it diametrically opposed to it?
20:31
Vanessa Vakharia: What, what happens, right?
20:33
Vanessa Vakharia: Like math identity isn't just about math.
20:35
Vanessa Vakharia: Is, it's about what math means in relationship with all the other identities we hold.
20:42
Lauren Keeling: I, you have struck me speechless.
20:46
Lauren Keeling: Which has never happened-
20:48
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, I
20:48
Lauren Keeling: know in the history of this podcast.
20:51
Lauren Keeling: Don't believe that.
20:53
Vanessa Vakharia: The problem is, what being a math person also means, whether we choose to accept it or not, is it means things like you don't like creative things.
21:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, think about every stereotype of what- Yes a math person.
21:06
Vanessa Vakharia: You definitely don't like music and the arts.
21:08
Vanessa Vakharia: You're a logical thinker.
21:10
Vanessa Vakharia: You're boring.
21:11
Vanessa Vakharia: You always get the right answer.
21:14
Vanessa Vakharia: You sit and study all the time.
21:16
Vanessa Vakharia: There's so many things the term means.
21:18
Vanessa Vakharia: So the problem is, I'm not surprised when you're like,"You know what?
21:22
Vanessa Vakharia: I kind of...
21:24
Vanessa Vakharia: Being not a math person is part of my core identity." I think that it's a really interesting question to ask because the question is, should we be pushing people to become a math person?
21:36
Vanessa Vakharia: Or is there, is it perhaps, counterproductive to our goal, which is to...
21:42
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, my goal is to show every single student that they can build an, a better relationship with math.
21:47
Vanessa Vakharia: It's for people to just feel capable and to be like,"Hey, you know what?
21:49
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm capable of more than I thought I was, including these fractions."
21:53
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
21:53
Vanessa Vakharia: But my agenda is not to be like,"No, you need to call yourselves a, yourself a math person." I, I hate labeling in general, so why are we now using this as a label?
22:04
Lauren Keeling: I don't have to become a math person to just be able to do math.
22:08
Vanessa Vakharia: Exactly.
22:09
Lauren Keeling: I even think about that from a school perspective, to release children from, and teachers from, are you this person or are you that person?
22:19
Vanessa Vakharia: Why are we doing that?
22:21
Vanessa Vakharia: Ew.
22:22
Lauren Keeling: And it's okay to like math, and it's okay to like reading.
22:26
Lauren Keeling: But to like those things does not make you that person.
22:30
Vanessa Vakharia: And to like those things doesn't mean all of a sudden you have to go into a STEM career.
22:34
Lauren Keeling: So what is it, Vanessa, that you do?
22:37
Lauren Keeling: What did I come here needing from you today?
22:40
Vanessa Vakharia: I, I mean, you should tell me that probably.
22:43
Vanessa Vakharia: It probably shouldn't be for you.
22:44
Vanessa Vakharia: But no, I think that, the number one thing people need in my experience is validation.
22:54
Lauren Keeling: Mm.
22:55
Vanessa Vakharia: They need to feel val- feel validated.
22:57
Vanessa Vakharia: They need to see that they're not alone.
23:00
Vanessa Vakharia: And the reason I like to always start opening the conversation, and whenever I do a talk I do this, I say, I, I frame it as I would like everyone to think about whether they've ever had a negative experience with math.
23:11
Vanessa Vakharia: That's my number one teacher move, and we did it here today.
23:16
Vanessa Vakharia: The reason that can be so groundbreaking for people is when they start talking about it, which you did, right?
23:21
Vanessa Vakharia: And I hope for you it's really empowering because it shows you that you were not born with these feelings.
23:28
Vanessa Vakharia: You developed these feelings, right?
23:30
Vanessa Vakharia: Emotions encode experience.
23:32
Vanessa Vakharia: When we have an experience that is very emotional, we remember that experience.
23:36
Vanessa Vakharia: It forms a memory that it's very hard to let go of.
23:39
Vanessa Vakharia: Neuroscience shows us that the percentage of people born with a natural aptitude for mathematics is so small.
23:47
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, like, you know when you think about like a prodigy or something like that?
23:50
Vanessa Vakharia: The It exists, but the percentage is so, so, so, so, so small, and other than that subset of people Math ability being something that you are born with, like nature versus nurture- the nature part of it, it is so, so, so small- in terms of its effect on your future math ability, and the biggest predictor of math ability is nurture.
24:17
Vanessa Vakharia: It's practice.
24:17
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, have you read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell?
24:19
Lauren Keeling: No.
24:20
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, what?
24:22
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, no, stop.
24:23
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, we, like, just, this book, it's about, like, the most famous hockey players, the most famous mathematicians, the most famous mu- musicians, the ones that you would believe, like, they must have been born with an exceptionality, they're so good at it.
24:35
Vanessa Vakharia: And he did all this research and found that the one thing all of these people had in common, they had one thing in common, and the one thing they had in common was that they had all spent over 10,000 hours practicing their craft.
24:46
Vanessa Vakharia: Wow.
24:46
Vanessa Vakharia: So, and if you think about it that way, to put in 10,000 hours, it would help if you started at a young age.
24:54
Vanessa Vakharia: It's a lot of hours to put in, right?
24:55
Vanessa Vakharia: So often, it- we, we conflate nature and nurture because the conversation would be like,"Well, from a, from a young age, they were so good at this thing," but it would often be someone who was, like, tinkering with the piano when they, like, were three years old- or, like, you know, Eugenia Cheng talks about how her parents, like, would read her math stories at night.
25:11
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, instead of story time, they had math games.
25:13
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, so w- we have been shown time and time again that nurture plays a larger role, yet we love, we love the juicy story of people born with this crazy thing, and it also gives us an excuse- right?
25:27
Vanessa Vakharia: To be like,"Well, I just was born at a deficit."
25:30
Lauren Keeling: Yep.
25:30
Lauren Keeling: But it's just, it's not true.
25:32
Lauren Keeling: So tell me how this feeds into the work that you do.
25:35
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
25:35
Vanessa Vakharia: So I feel like I wrote Math Therapy after years and years and years of, you know...
25:41
Vanessa Vakharia: I, I think if you talk to most teachers, they're like,"Yeah, I'm doing therapy in the math classroom," right?
25:45
Vanessa Vakharia: Sure.
25:45
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, a lot of the work I'm doing is really therapeutic.
25:48
Vanessa Vakharia: so I wrote it after years and years and years, over 20 years of teaching and tutoring and working one-on-one with kids, and, Really realizing that the, the number one thing, I mean, I've had so many different types of students in this space, and the number one thing that makes a difference is actually not whether they're taught through the algorithm or not, or with worksheets or not.
26:11
Vanessa Vakharia: It's, I mean, those things matter, but the number one thing that mattered was actually the therapeutic element of interacting with them.
26:17
Vanessa Vakharia: It was doing stuff like this.
26:19
Vanessa Vakharia: It was having these conversations.
26:20
Vanessa Vakharia: It was h- it was so emotional.
26:23
Vanessa Vakharia: One of the biggest strategies is when somebody says they feel bad at math or they're not, they're not good at math, I often start arguing with them.
26:30
Vanessa Vakharia: I'll be like,"But you're doing math, but you do this.
26:32
Vanessa Vakharia: Like look, you took down the Christmas tree, like, that's math." And what I'll find is what they actually really mean is,"I wasn't good at school math."
26:41
Lauren Keeling: Mm.
26:42
Vanessa Vakharia: Like,"I wasn't good at the math that got graded, that got evaluated." So I wanna sit with you, and we're gonna actually do a little skills analysis.
26:50
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
26:50
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay?
26:51
Vanessa Vakharia: So I want you to name me math skills.
26:54
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, or, I, so here's the count.
26:56
Vanessa Vakharia: It's math skills or things that are math.
26:57
Vanessa Vakharia: So I'm gonna write the f- one thing on here.
27:00
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna say mental math.
27:02
Lauren Keeling: Okay.
27:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay?
27:04
Vanessa Vakharia: Give me one.
27:05
Lauren Keeling: Uh, addition.
27:06
Vanessa Vakharia: Addition.
27:07
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, great.
27:08
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna say, baking
27:14
Lauren Keeling: Mm.
27:14
Lauren Keeling: Planting my garden
27:16
Vanessa Vakharia: What do, like, what do you do?
27:18
Lauren Keeling: Making my rows, figuring out the distances and the, the distances between each of my flowers that I'm planting- How
27:23
Vanessa Vakharia: do you do
27:24
Lauren Keeling: that?
27:24
Lauren Keeling: the depth of putting the bulbs in the ground.
27:27
Lauren Keeling: I,
27:27
Vanessa Vakharia: I use- Oh, like, do you use a ruler?
27:28
Lauren Keeling: I use non-standard measurement, my arm, but-
27:31
Vanessa Vakharia: But you-
27:31
Lauren Keeling: I told you I love non-standard measurement.
27:33
Vanessa Vakharia: No, but that's really good.
27:34
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, plant-
27:34
Lauren Keeling: So yes, it's gardening, you know.
27:37
Vanessa Vakharia: Planting a garden.
27:38
Vanessa Vakharia: Now, if I had a student who felt bad at math, I would do this with them, and then I'd be like,"Okay, I would look up how these tied to the content I was teaching right now." Mm.
27:48
Vanessa Vakharia: So I'd be like,"Planting a garden.
27:49
Vanessa Vakharia: Here are all the units that I'm teaching this year.
27:51
Vanessa Vakharia: Tell me exactly how this ties in." Why would I do that?
27:55
Vanessa Vakharia: Because you, Lauren, are sitting here being like,"Yeah, I guess I do this math, but I didn't really qualify it as math."
28:00
Lauren Keeling: Yeah.
28:00
Vanessa Vakharia: In your mind, I bet you're like,"It doesn't really count." And that is where we start seeing that it is not math the problem.
28:07
Vanessa Vakharia: It- that's the problem.
28:08
Vanessa Vakharia: It's the way we are treating math in a school setting that is ruining math for everyone.
28:12
Vanessa Vakharia: Yes.
28:13
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you were never graded at this, and that is the only thing that counts.
28:16
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so now I'm gonna give you this.
28:18
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
28:18
Vanessa Vakharia: And I want you to, with this pink pen, I want you to circle, like, anything you feel good at.
28:23
Lauren Keeling: I feel good at?
28:23
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
28:23
Lauren Keeling: Well, planting a garden is first.
28:25
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
28:26
Vanessa Vakharia: And you feel, like, satisfied after or
28:27
Lauren Keeling: something?
28:28
Lauren Keeling: I do.
28:28
Lauren Keeling: I feel really great after I plant my garden.
28:30
Lauren Keeling: Just the way that it looks like it fits in the space- Okay that's a real puzzle to me that I love putting together.
28:36
Lauren Keeling: Oh
28:36
Vanessa Vakharia: my God, you put puzzles on the list.
28:37
Vanessa Vakharia: Puzzles.
28:37
Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
28:37
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
28:38
Vanessa Vakharia: So I want us to look at this.
28:39
Vanessa Vakharia: So we have 19 items on here, and you circled one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11.
28:46
Vanessa Vakharia: 11 out of 19.
28:46
Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
28:47
Vanessa Vakharia: Over a half of the things on here you circled, okay?
28:53
Vanessa Vakharia: I would now like you to look at this and ask yourself, do you believe everything you circled has some sort of mathematical component?
29:03
Lauren Keeling: I do.
29:03
Vanessa Vakharia: You've circled a lot of math stuff.
29:05
Vanessa Vakharia: And there's a lot of stuff you circled that I wouldn't be able to circle.
29:09
Vanessa Vakharia: Does this change in any way the way you feel about your math ability?
29:12
Vanessa Vakharia: And you can say no, I'm just curious, looking at all the math things you circled.
29:15
Lauren Keeling: It does because it's what I think, I don't think about sneaky math.
29:20
Lauren Keeling: So for me, sneaky math is where-
29:23
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm sorry, pardon?
29:26
Lauren Keeling: Sneaky math, where we're, where we're looking at angles and thinking about putting together, uh, my garden or arranging my furniture.
29:33
Lauren Keeling: I'm not actively working and manipulating numbers.
29:39
Vanessa Vakharia: Sneaky math.
29:41
Lauren Keeling: I don't mind putting my garden together because I don't actually have to come into contact with numbers when I'm doing it.
29:46
Lauren Keeling: Okay.
29:47
Vanessa Vakharia: I fully get what you mean, 100%.
29:49
Lauren Keeling: Measuring and baking is sneaky math.
29:50
Lauren Keeling: It's sneaky math.
29:51
Lauren Keeling: I didn't realize I was doing fractions until I had a moment where I thought,"Wait, three quarters of a cup is the same as a..."
29:56
Vanessa Vakharia: If we made more sneaky math, so can we call it implicit math just for what I'm gonna say?
30:01
Vanessa Vakharia: Sure.
30:01
Vanessa Vakharia: It's gonna sound like more of a mic drop.
30:02
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so if we made more implicit math explicit, more people would realize how much math they were doing and how good they were at it.
30:11
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
30:12
Vanessa Vakharia: Think about how much discussion we can now be having with kids.
30:14
Vanessa Vakharia: And kids are like,"Oh my God, well, I do this," and then just like we were, we're like,"Okay, well, what about this?
30:19
Vanessa Vakharia: And what...
30:20
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, fine, if you're gonna say baking, I'm gonna say measuring." Now we're realizing how much math we're doing.
30:25
Vanessa Vakharia: For a lot of kids, and probably for you a little, you're like,"Okay, but it's not feeling like it's, I didn't say algebra, and I didn't say sine and cosine." So we wanna tie it to the things we're doing in our curriculum and the content we're teaching.
30:36
Vanessa Vakharia: We do wanna tie it in- and, and give it that language.
30:40
Vanessa Vakharia: That really helps.
30:42
Vanessa Vakharia: As we've established, on this sheet here, you have so many math superpowers that I don't have.
30:48
Vanessa Vakharia: And every single person has these latent math skills, these, sorry, implicit sneaky math skills- that are not necessarily brought to the fore.
30:56
Vanessa Vakharia: And part of what you were saying earlier is you felt like you weren't good at math'cause you weren't doing it the way you were supposed to or the way other people do it.
31:03
Vanessa Vakharia: And what I want everyone to know is that is actually your math superpower.
31:08
Lauren Keeling: Mm.
31:08
Vanessa Vakharia: Is that when you're planning the garden, you're using your- You've made up this whole method, right?
31:13
Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you're doing, you have all these skills that not everybody in the class has.
31:18
Vanessa Vakharia: And in a classroom of students, you are gonna have kids who have all circled different things on this page, and that is not bad.
31:25
Vanessa Vakharia: That is the blessing in it, is to be like,"Guys, look, you guys all have these different skills.
31:30
Vanessa Vakharia: And in our room combined, we have, like, 30-plus math superpowers.
31:34
Vanessa Vakharia: We have all something different to bring to the table." It also create, helps create this collaborative environment where instead of kids competing to one another, you can be like,"Hey, you need help with that?
31:43
Vanessa Vakharia: Well, like, Sally circled this thing.
31:46
Vanessa Vakharia: Their, their math superpower is problem-solving.
31:48
Vanessa Vakharia: Go talk to them about this.
31:50
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, you need help with counting?
31:51
Vanessa Vakharia: Didn't somebody..." Like, right?
31:53
Vanessa Vakharia: And so everyone is now not competing with one another, but realizing that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
31:58
Vanessa Vakharia: Mm.
31:58
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, the last thing I wanted us to do is on your phone, give me your phone.
32:02
Lauren Keeling: Yes.
32:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Open up Duolingo.
32:04
Vanessa Vakharia: They have now added math as a language, okay?
32:07
Vanessa Vakharia: I see that.
32:07
Vanessa Vakharia: So add math to your thing.
32:09
Vanessa Vakharia: And great.
32:11
Vanessa Vakharia: So we're not...
32:12
Vanessa Vakharia: Do you wanna do a lesson right now?
32:13
Lauren Keeling: Sure.
32:13
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, okay.
32:14
Vanessa Vakharia: We're now suddenly doing math.
32:15
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, go for it.
32:16
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not even looking.
32:17
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, keep going.
32:18
Lauren Keeling: Okay.
32:18
Vanessa Vakharia: I think there's only a few.
32:19
Vanessa Vakharia: It'll take, like, one minute.
32:20
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
32:20
Vanessa Vakharia: But you do that.
32:21
Vanessa Vakharia: See how it goes, and I'm gonna- Tell
32:23
Lauren Keeling: me if this is a, while I'm working on this- Yeah maybe tell me, is this a practical strategy for-
32:28
Vanessa Vakharia: I have gotten-
32:28
Lauren Keeling: parents, teachers?
32:29
Vanessa Vakharia: The reason I love it is, is it's, so when we go into avoidance with math, like you were saying, you avoid math.
32:35
Lauren Keeling: I do.
32:35
Vanessa Vakharia: We're not gonna get better at something when we avoid it.
32:37
Vanessa Vakharia: That's just, like, how life works.
32:40
Lauren Keeling: I'm doing really well.
32:42
Vanessa Vakharia: Just, sorry, I can't hear my lo- my voice over all the loud bings and bops- happening from Lauren's mastery of mathematics right now.
32:51
Vanessa Vakharia: so it's three minutes a day, and it starts building confidence, and but more than that, it shows you, it rewires the thing in your brain that you have, which is,"When I do math, a horrible thing happens." Whether you get the answers right or wrong on the app, you're seeing that when you do math, a horrible thing does not happen.
33:07
Lauren Keeling: Actually, a really joyful thing happens.
33:08
Vanessa Vakharia: A joyful thing happens, and even if you get something wrong, you're just gonna try again the next day.
33:12
Vanessa Vakharia: When we have math anxiety, we get stuck in the anxiety avoidance cycle.
33:16
Vanessa Vakharia: And we are never gonna get out of it unless we break the cycle out of avoidance, which means we need to do some math, and it's a great way to do math.
33:21
Vanessa Vakharia: You are really crushing here.
33:23
Lauren Keeling: I'm really doing a great job.
33:24
Vanessa Vakharia: What is happening?
33:25
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, we're almost done.
33:26
Lauren Keeling: Yep.
33:27
Lauren Keeling: I pulled something out of this that you just said- Yeah that Duolingo's doing.
33:32
Lauren Keeling: Math is a language.
33:33
Vanessa Vakharia: Well, I, right?
33:34
Vanessa Vakharia: Can, can I just tell you what they added?
33:36
Vanessa Vakharia: They added math and music.
33:37
Vanessa Vakharia: Those were the two new languages, and I was like,"Again- Yes this is a language issue." It is a language.
33:44
Vanessa Vakharia: It is.
33:44
Vanessa Vakharia: And it is okay for language to be hard to learn.
33:47
Vanessa Vakharia: Preach.
33:49
Vanessa Vakharia: And we're also now really-
33:50
Lauren Keeling: I think I'm done.
33:51
Lauren Keeling: I don't feel stressed because I...
33:54
Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I'm done here.
33:56
Vanessa Vakharia: I'm finished.
33:57
Lauren Keeling: Well, I'm a learning legend.
33:59
Vanessa Vakharia: Is that what it says?
34:00
Vanessa Vakharia: Uh-huh.
34:01
Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so every day, just do it for two weeks and see what happens.
34:04
Vanessa Vakharia: Can I just point out that you just not only did math, you did math while we're all actually kind of now impatiently waiting.
34:10
Vanessa Vakharia: At this point, we're on the third battery.
34:12
Vanessa Vakharia: I am staring at you.
34:12
Vanessa Vakharia: You actually were talking at the same time, and you're being recorded.
34:16
Vanessa Vakharia: You did not seem stressed.
34:17
Lauren Keeling: Landing on the fact that math is a language-
34:20
Vanessa Vakharia: That's crazy
34:21
Lauren Keeling: that we speak is a big deal for me personally as a learner, as a teacher, as a thinker.
34:29
Lauren Keeling: It lifts, releases, throws away, pushes out the window a lot of the pressure around just having to show up and be good at it because we don't expect anyone to show up and just be good at a language.
34:42
Lauren Keeling: We teach really explicitly and thoughtfully and with full hearts.
34:47
Lauren Keeling: It's the same with math.
34:48
Lauren Keeling: Math is a language.
34:49
Lauren Keeling: Should we just end with the Duolingo beep being like,"Good job"?
34:53
Vanessa Vakharia: Yay.
34:53
Vanessa Vakharia: Should we crown Lauren?
34:54
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh! There you go.
34:56
Vanessa Vakharia: There you go, the, the unicorn of understanding.
34:59
Lauren Keeling: Oh.
35:00
Lauren Keeling: I love it.
35:01
Vanessa Vakharia: There she is, our queen.
35:03
Vanessa Vakharia: Our math queen.
35:05
Lauren Keeling: Oh, I do love a crown.
35:10
Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, guys.
35:11
Vanessa Vakharia: Was that not insane?
35:13
Vanessa Vakharia: I am dying to know what you think, so text the podcast now by hitting the link in your show notes.
35:18
Vanessa Vakharia: And I don't wanna say too much because remember, next week I follow up with Lauren to see how she's doing four months later.
35:24
Vanessa Vakharia: So put a reminder in your calendar for next Thursday at 6:00 AM EST, because you are going to want to be the first to hear this.
35:32
Vanessa Vakharia: Thanks again to Imagine Learning for letting us share this audio.
35:35
Vanessa Vakharia: Go check them out and the three-part Heart Work series on math anxiety.
35:39
Vanessa Vakharia: Link in the show notes.
35:40
Vanessa Vakharia: And guys, thank you for being here.
35:42
Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you for listening, and thank you for believing that everyone can build a happier, healthier relationship with math