Latest / Math Therapy / How to make "show your thinking" less anxiety-inducing

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How to make "show your thinking" less anxiety-inducing · Math Therapy

• 0:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: The point is we've not defined our terms, which leads to uncertainty, which leads to fear, which leads to anxiety.
• 0:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have not defined the crucial term here, that term being "thinking".
• 0:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is thinking?
• 0:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: We say show your thinking, but we never teach what thinking actually is.
• 0:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 0:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need to read you an email that actually lit up my entire brain when I opened it this morning.
• 0:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I read it and instantly did that slow, like dramatic nod and was like, yep, this is the millionth time I've heard this, and it's time to talk about it.
• 0:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: So here's what the email said.
• 0:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hi.
• 0:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: I just listened to your podcast on five simple Math Therapy strategies for your classroom.
• 0:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: I found it very informative.
• 0:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love that you ask for students to explain their thinking.
• 0:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: However, I have so many students who will say.
• 0:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know how I did it, or I don't know how to explain it.
• 0:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: What can I do as an educator to help frame my students' minds to be able to explain their thinking?
• 1:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ooh.
• 1:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: whether you're a teacher or not, like whether you were like once the math student, you're probably, yeah, like, yeah.
• 1:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was so annoying when my teacher asked that, because I don't fucking know, I just knew how to do it.
• 1:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you're a teacher, you're probably like, oh my God, that's exactly what my students say.
• 1:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: So first of all, to the listener who sent this, thank you.
• 1:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you for saying what we are all thinking.
• 1:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Also, thank you for naming what is maybe the biggest unspoken truth of math class.
• 1:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: We all want kids to show their thinking, but literally no one has ever taught them what thinking even is.
• 1:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: No one taught us what thinking even was.
• 1:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: And this matters not just for the teachers.
• 1:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is for parents who are helping with homework or tutors or leaders trying to shift school culture and any adult who like burst into flames inside whenever someone says, so walk me through your reasoning.
• 1:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: We know that thinking has the potential to unlock engagement and confidence from all students even, and especially those students who have never felt good at math.
• 2:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: It can be a huge game changer when we focus on thinking instead of answer getting because.
• 2:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Everyone can think, which means everyone can play the game, which means everybody can get that win.
• 2:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Everybody can feel useful.
• 2:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: But what happens whenever we implement this thinking vibe, students feel like they still can't play at whatever the game is because they don't know how to think.
• 2:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And, and also what happens to the student who was having a great time in math class actually, until suddenly all their teachers started to explain their thinking and like their whole world fell apart because they were like, what?
• 2:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've just been like using formulas and getting answers, and now I have to explain my thinking.
• 2:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't even know what that even means.
• 2:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so if you're listening to this and you can relate, I've got you.
• 2:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is actually what we're gonna talk about in depth in today's episode.
• 2:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: So before we go any further, if you're listening and you already have that one colleague in your head who always says, my kids can't do that, or my kids just stare at me blankly when I ask them to explain, I want you to pause, send them this episode, send them the link, and I'll be right here when you get back.
• 3:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: All right.
• 3:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the first thing I wanna talk about is this.
• 3:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: The classic, I don't know, moment that I'm about to describe here is never about not knowing.
• 3:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hear me out.
• 3:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so let's say you're a teacher, and this is probably gonna feel familiar, possibly triggering.
• 3:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: You like kneel beside a student and you ask them, Hey, can you explain how you got that?
• 3:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you get it.
• 3:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: That classic fast twitch response, the, I don't know.
• 3:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know.
• 3:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: No eye contact, no hesitation.
• 3:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just a verbal brick wall.
• 3:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: And old school math culture hears that and goes, kids don't know how to think.
• 3:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: And actually I would say that old school math culture is like, here's that and goes, this kid cheated.
• 3:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Especially if it's a test.
• 3:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: I feel like we all thought when, when I was in school, we all thought teachers were asking us to explain our work so they could confirm we didn't just like, copy it from the person sitting next to us.
• 3:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: I actually think that still happens.
• 3:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I actually will posit, and kids say this to me, I deal with students all the time, they will say, my teacher just wants to know I like didn't cheat.
• 4:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like they're like not assuming positive Intent.
• 4:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're assuming the teacher is asking them to explain their work so they can confirm they're not cheating.
• 4:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: That is the first red flag that we are not explaining why thinking is important to our students.
• 4:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's the first thing I'm gonna say.
• 4:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now, here's the thing.
• 4:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: From a Math Therapy lens, this is actually a juicy moment.
• 4:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: When a student says, I don't know, that moment is telling you exactly what the student has learned math class is supposed to be.
• 4:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: That moment usually means something like, well, I solved it using intuition, and if I try to explain that to my teacher, I might expose myself.
• 4:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or, I actually have no idea how I solved it, it just came to me like magic, and if I start trying to figure out how it came to me, I might lose that magic and never know anything again.
• 4:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or, I don't have the right vocabulary and I don't wanna sound stupid, so I'm just gonna say that I just got it.
• 4:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or, I don't know, math class taught me that speed matters, not reflection.
• 5:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: So why are we even talking about this?
• 5:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or, my teacher doesn't believe I actually know the answer and maybe I actually don't know the answer because I'm not that smart to start with.
• 5:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, do you know what I mean?
• 5:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: There are all sorts of things going on, and actually same.
• 5:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Same.
• 5:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Maybe we can relate, like adults do this too.
• 5:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ask any grownup to explain how they made a decision they arrived at quickly.
• 5:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: We all go blank like we've never had a thought in our lives.
• 5:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we literally go into freeze mode.
• 5:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: One of the trauma responses.
• 5:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: We feel unsafe, we shut down.
• 5:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: We feel like we're being attacked.
• 5:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like somebody is like trying to argue with us or be like, well how did you make that decision?
• 5:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's, we go into defensive mode and often we feel trapped.
• 5:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: The thing is that thinking out loud is vulnerable.
• 5:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 5:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's basically asking someone to unzip their brain and like let you take a look inside.
• 5:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: And the other thing is, "I don't know", is often code for "please don't judge me".
• 5:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we've been taught how we're supposed to be thinking or like that there's some right way to think.
• 5:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like teachers have been using this term think and explain and show your work forever, and despite all the, there's no wrong way to think, everyone can think propaganda that we've been like spewing, kids are still scared of doing it wrong, whatever that it is, Think about it, they still carry that embodied feeling that in math class there is a right way to do things.
• 6:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: And even though now we're focusing on thinking, which is technically a very broad term, they're still scared that there's a wrong way to think and they don't wanna be judged for doing it wrong.
• 6:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're unlearning also the concept that no one actually gave a fuck about their thoughts a few years ago.
• 6:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Seriously in math class, we really didn't care.
• 6:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: We were like, just get the right answer.
• 6:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sure.
• 6:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's not like we weren't asking them to show their work, but like we were really focused on the answer.
• 6:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: So they're still trying to unlearn the fact that we don't only care about the answer anymore.
• 6:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now I do a lot of work around student motivation with teachers, and one thing I'll hear teachers say is this, students don't want to think.
• 6:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: My students just don't wanna think.
• 7:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like the vibe is like they're lazy or like they're trying to take a shortcut and they literally don't wanna think.
• 7:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: I get how it feels that way, but it's really important for us to assume positive intent.
• 7:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's happening is not that they're lazy and they don't wanna think.
• 7:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're usually overwhelmed.
• 7:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: The task seems too daunting.
• 7:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: There are not clear instructions.
• 7:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: They do not know what you want from them, and they're scared of feeling the same way they've always felt in math class, like if they don't get the right answer, if they don't do the thing the right way, they're doomed.
• 7:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: And honestly, as with many other hot debates we've had on this podcast, for example, direct instruction versus discovery math versus new math, versus like algorithms or like, and my favorite one, like what even is common sense, as with all of that, the issue is that we have not defined our terms.
• 7:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Often you'll hear people arguing about two things but really they're both just defining those things in different ways and they agree on the actual point.
• 8:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: The point is we've not defined our terms, which leads to uncertainty, which leads to fear, which leads to anxiety.
• 8:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have not defined the crucial term here, that term being "thinking".
• 8:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is thinking?
• 8:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: We say show your thinking, but we never teach what thinking actually is.
• 8:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Here's the part that makes me wanna stand on a table with a megaphone and scream.
• 8:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Kids are not confused because they can't think.
• 8:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Kids are confused because thinking is invisible.
• 8:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: It is a mirage, it is a ghost, it is a whatever, and we've never actually taught them the components of thinking.
• 8:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Noticing, deciding, comparing, choosing, changing your mind, checking if something feels weird.
• 8:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Instead, we jump straight to explain yourself.
• 8:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, excuse me.
• 8:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's a difference by the way, between thinking and reporting a procedure.
• 8:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I would like to hypothesize here, I'm gonna say it, when we have traditionally said, show your work, we have meant the latter.
• 8:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have meant report the procedure you have used.
• 9:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's what we have meant.
• 9:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now we're like, we wanna see your thinking.
• 9:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Does that still mean report the procedure or does that mean something else?
• 9:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I, I also think there's like a whole thing of like, we kind of mistake, like talking fancy for thinking deeply in the academic world.
• 9:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know this is like a whole different thing, but I'm just trying to say that there are so many ways we can interpret the word thinking and explaining, there are so many ways to look at it.
• 9:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: So what do we do?
• 9:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have to approach thinking from an emotional perspective as well as a cognitive one.
• 9:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: We know this about math in general, like you know this because you listen to this podcast, which is all about this very thing.
• 9:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Math learning and instruction is about humans, and humans have emotions and while thinking seems like this purely cerebral thing, it is not.
• 9:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Our entire selves including our feelings and the embodied memories we bring into math class, lay the foundation for thinking.
• 9:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: They are the thinking.
• 9:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: They are inseparable.
• 9:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: If we want students to not only think, which by the way, they're already doing, whether they know it or show it, obviously they're thinking that's what humans do, we don't have to complicate it, they're fucking thinking.
• 10:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: But if we want them to reflect on their thinking, to understand their thinking, to notice their thinking, and to explain it to us, we need to recognize the deeply emotional piece that underlies it all.
• 10:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: So let's talk about some Math Therapy rooted actions and perspectives we can take.
• 10:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Strategy number one, explain what the fuck thinking is.
• 10:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: We throw around the word thinking in math class, like everyone just knows what it means.
• 10:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've already said that, you know, we say things like, show your thinking.
• 10:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explain your thinking.
• 10:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Think it through.
• 10:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: But here's the truth no one says out loud.
• 10:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Most kids, and honestly, most adults have no idea what thinking actually refers to.
• 10:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: They think it means immediately producing a clean, polished explanation with zero confusion and full confidence.
• 10:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: aka the exact opposite of how actual human cognition works.
• 10:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So half the time when students say, I don't know what to do, or I don't know how to explain it, or I don't know, what they really mean is, I don't know what version of thinking you're expecting, so whatever I'm like doing in my brain probably doesn't count.
• 10:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's why one of the most powerful things we can do as educators, parents, tutors, leaders, whatever, anyone guiding someone through a mental process, is to explain what thinking is.
• 11:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Put shape around it.
• 11:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Normalize it.
• 11:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Demystify it.
• 11:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know what I, you know what this has actually got me thinking about, this is what my therapist does, this is what therapists do, which is why this is what math therapists should do.
• 11:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think about when I'm on a call with my therapist, she's never like, ex, like, I'm actually imagining if I like told her this whole thing and I came on and I was like, I'm so upset, I'm feeling so pissed off.
• 11:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: And she was like, explain your thinking.
• 11:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'd be like, what the fuck?
• 11:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 11:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I'd be stumped, like I'm feeling emotional.
• 11:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm going through a process.
• 11:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: The whole point I'm seeing her is I don't understand what's going on.
• 11:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: She will ask me pointed questions.
• 11:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, she'll be like, what did that remind you of?
• 11:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is there a time you can remember when blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you know, she'll, she'll prompt me.
• 11:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: She puts a shape around it.
• 11:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: She gives me like a bit of a container to then explore my thoughts.
• 11:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I'll say this to students, like when students are like, I don't know, or I, what do you mean, explain your thinking.
• 12:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'll say something like this.
• 12:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thinking is noticing what's happening in your brain.
• 12:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Even if what's happening is confusion, guessing, half ideas, patterns you can't name yet, or the like, wait, what the fuck is this stage?
• 12:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: I won't swear at the kids, I'll say something else.
• 12:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: That is thinking.
• 12:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's it.
• 12:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you can feel the air pressure change in the room when I tell them that because suddenly they're like allowed to be themselves.
• 12:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're allowed to be imperfect, flawed heroes or whatever the saying is.
• 12:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're allowed to be learners and not performers.
• 12:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're allowed to bring the messy middle like to the table, and it shifts the entire room from thinking equals correctness to thinking equals awareness practice.
• 12:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: And honestly, guys, when I think about my therapy sessions with my therapist, that is what's happening.
• 12:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Huh?
• 12:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like that's actually what's happening.
• 12:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: The entire point of a therapy session is to help you become more aware of your process.
• 12:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: I actually really love that framing looking at thinking as an awareness practice.
• 13:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: We want our students to be aware of what is going on for them.
• 13:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: One thing my therapist will do when I'm like, I dunno, I'm really, really confused and I've got all these like muddled up thoughts in my head and I'm trying to process them.
• 13:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: She'll be like, this is it.
• 13:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're doing it.
• 13:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're doing the work.
• 13:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is the process.
• 13:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Being confused and working through that confusion, guess what that is?
• 13:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's thinking.
• 13:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like sometimes I'll say to her, I'm not thinking anything and she'll name something tiny.
• 13:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: She'll be like, interesting you said you're not thinking anything because you just made this point or you just reflected on that.
• 13:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Something that I think is irrelevant, and suddenly I'll realize that my brain has quietly been thinking the whole time.
• 13:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, even though it's not this full picture thing, I think I should be coming up with, a little piece is happening.
• 13:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: So, an empowerment flip right now for you to try is to just start your class by defining thinking.
• 13:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Define what it is.
• 13:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Even better.
• 13:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: If you come up with the definition as a class, ask them what does it mean to think.
• 13:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: And then you can come up with a definition, maybe put it on the wall.
• 14:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Something like thinking includes noticing confusion, making a guess, trying a step you're unsure about, spotting a pattern you can't explain yet, saying what you wish you understood.
• 14:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: All of that is valid thinking.
• 14:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Make it a poster, put it on the wall.
• 14:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: And now every time you talk about thinking, you can point to that, right?
• 14:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: They have some things to grab onto.
• 14:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: It makes me think of the way we talk about broadening the definition of math, right?
• 14:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like if more, we want more people to feel like they're doing math, we have to broaden it.
• 14:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because right now when we say math, people will say, I can't do math.
• 14:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: And what they mean is, I can't do algebra.
• 14:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can't do calculus.
• 14:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: When we give them the opportunity to see that math is packing a car, it's spatial reasoning, it's finding directions on a map, it's noticing patterns and trends, whenever I do that with students and teachers, this is one of my favorite activities, they start being like, oh, I guess I am doing math.
• 14:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: The same is true for thinking.
• 14:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: We need to broaden the definition of thinking so students can see what thinking entails and can start to identify the parts of thinking that they're already doing, and then we need to celebrate it every time we see them doing it.
• 15:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: The second Math Therapy, sort of like rooted approach to thinking is that I want you to normalize not knowing how to explain yet.
• 15:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: When kids say, I don't know how to explain it, it's rarely the explanation they're afraid of.
• 15:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's the exposure, right?
• 15:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like math class has trained them that explaining equals evaluation.
• 15:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you know what guys?
• 15:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're not wrong, right?
• 15:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're not wrong.
• 15:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I tell students this all the time.
• 15:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Not knowing how to explain something is actually the first sign your brain did something interesting.
• 15:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Not knowing how to explain something is a little hint that your brain was low key thinking something and you don't even know what that process was.
• 15:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you can kind of feel the relief when they hear that because not knowing how to explain suddenly isn't a deficit, but it's an asset.
• 15:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: It reframes explanation from performance to awareness practice.
• 15:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: Again, that's what we wanna do, right?
• 16:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: The thing is kids often think, if I can't explain it, I must not really understand it.
• 16:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I think that is one of the biggest misfortunes right now.
• 16:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, I wrote this book for Scholastic a while ago, seven years ago, actually in 2016, so almost 10 years ago.
• 16:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's called Math Hacks.
• 16:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's a series for elementary kids, and it was, I'm a high school math teacher and I was writing an elementary math book for kids, and the entire point was like, pep talks.
• 16:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was the first book that ever had like Math Therapy, before I called it Math Therapy.
• 16:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was like pep talks, mindfulness, all these emotional components to help students as they were learning math.
• 16:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: And then alongside of it, I was teaching the math and guys, don't cancel me.
• 16:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was mostly tricks, like it was called Math Hacks.
• 16:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: The point was like these shortcuts, like, you know, move the decimal plays over, add a zero.
• 16:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know we don't like that stuff now, but it is what it is.
• 16:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So let's not focus on that.
• 16:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: The point is, I remember getting to the chapter on decimals and I was like, I can't explain this.
• 16:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like how do I explain what a decimal is.
• 16:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't even know how to do that.
• 16:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now I wanna be very clear.
• 17:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know what a decimal is.
• 17:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I know what it is, I know how it functions.
• 17:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: I deeply understand it.
• 17:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I do wanna throw in a little thing here.
• 17:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'll make it really short that I think we've really gone too far with saying that the way we previously learned math, like the way adults today learned math has led to zero understanding and all they're doing is mimicking and copying and following procedures.
• 17:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't think that's true.
• 17:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes, we did do a lot of that.
• 17:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: It doesn't mean we have zero understanding of math.
• 17:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've personally felt kind of attacked by those statements, so if you're listening and you feel the same way, I just wanna throw that out there.
• 17:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: What was happening for me when I couldn't explain the decimal is I actually understood it so well that it was like second nature to me.
• 17:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know what I mean?
• 17:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was like second nature to me, and I didn't know how to break something down that I felt was so obvious.
• 17:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Kids think that if they can't explain it, they must not really understand it, and that's not always true.
• 17:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sometimes it's true, but it's not always true.
• 17:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I actually think that a reframe for kids is to be like, just because you can't explain it, it doesn't mean you're not smart or you don't understand it.
• 18:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: It just means your brain like did something really fast or secretly that seemed like second nature to you because maybe you really understand it more than, you know, you've just never had to dissect why you do that thing.
• 18:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I would actually give them like a non-curricular example.
• 18:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like can you explain like, the sun rises and sets.
• 18:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I understand that.
• 18:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: I get it.
• 18:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: If you wanted me to explain it, I'd really have to think about it.
• 18:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: I actually probably could, but I, you know, it's just so obvious to me, I just take it for granted that I'm like, I don't know.
• 18:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: It rises and sets.
• 18:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: The point is, I think we need to do a bit of a, a bit of legwork so that students don't feel bad when they can't explain something and they don't feel like it's pointing to them, not knowing, but give them an alternative of being like, maybe you just can't explain because you just know it so well and you've never had to think about it.
• 18:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So a little like empowerment flip of something you can do to help broach this area.
• 18:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like to help break the barrier down of feeling like not explaining means, I don't know, and I don't wanna get in trouble for not knowing.
• 19:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Practice explaining.
• 19:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Seriously, it is an art to be able to explain something.
• 19:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can start a lesson by saying something like, guys, today we're gonna practice explaining.
• 19:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explanations can be messy.
• 19:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: They can be incorrect.
• 19:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: They can be incomplete.
• 19:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: These are all valid.
• 19:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now, the key is practice explaining something non-curricular.
• 19:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, explaining is hard enough.
• 19:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know we don't think about it, but explaining your thinking is challenging on its own because it's not something we're used to.
• 19:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: And math alone is challenging on its own to many kids for different reasons.
• 19:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: So take the math out of it.
• 19:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Focus on the explaining thinking thing.
• 19:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you know, do it with something simple like, um, today you're gonna explain something that seems really obvious to you.
• 19:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Give them a list of ideas.
• 19:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Of prompts, like, explain why the sun rises and sets.
• 19:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explain why it's important to drink water.
• 19:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explain why.
• 19:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Uh.
• 19:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: You get itchy when a mosquito bites you.
• 19:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, a lot of this involves science, but do you know what I mean?
• 20:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, explain, okay, you know what?
• 20:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Here, do it like this.
• 20:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explain why you like your friend.
• 20:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explain why you like puppies.
• 20:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Explain why your hobby is your favorite.
• 20:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do it that way because now we have emotions entering and it's something personal and something they can't get wrong.
• 20:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's actually what I would do.
• 20:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Start really low bar with explain an opinion you have, because we're trying to get them to practice the art of explaining.
• 20:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're not worrying about correctness here, right, that's the whole point to take correctness off the table.
• 20:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 20:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Onto the third one.
• 20:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: My third Math Therapy rooted strategy is this.
• 20:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Give sentence starters that feel like handrails, not traps.
• 20:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 20:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Students freeze because they think explanations have to be long, fancy, academic, basically like a Netflix special.
• 20:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like let's democratize the vibes, give them starter stems like"I noticed" dot, dot, dot.
• 20:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: "At first I thought", dot, dot, dot.
• 20:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: "Something that confused me was".
• 20:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: "I changed my mind when".
• 20:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: These are magic.
• 21:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Not just because like the language is special, but because it gives students something to hold onto.
• 21:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is kind of actually like the task scaling method I learned from Chris Luzniak.
• 21:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I, I use this all the time, like when we want to give students like a lower floor to enter a question, part of the barrier to a question, especially if a student is carrying math trauma, is they're so worried they're not gonna get the right answer, they don't even attempt the question.
• 21:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: If the question is something like, you know, Susie had four apples and whatever his name is had six apples, how many do they have in total?
• 21:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: We are asking for an answer.
• 21:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: There, that question has one answer.
• 21:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: If a student doesn't think they're gonna get that one answer, they're not even gonna try.
• 21:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: And Chris Luzniak has this amazing art where you add a prompt to the question to turn it into an opinion question instead of an answer question, because there is no wrong way to have an opinion.
• 21:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you could say something like, um, if you were Susie and her pal over there, what kind of apples would you buy?
• 22:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or what kind of fruit would you even pick?
• 22:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: And, what number is too many pieces of fruit to have.
• 22:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like things that are just about opinions that get someone engaged in the question.
• 22:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's one of my favorite things to do.
• 22:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: It works like magic.
• 22:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is kind of the same thing, right?
• 22:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like you are giving students an entry point into the task of explaining on their own.
• 22:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: They can't do it yet.
• 22:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: If we say something too broad, like explain your thinking, they might freeze and shut down.
• 22:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: So we just say something like, use one of these sentence stems and fill in the blank.
• 22:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's it.
• 22:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 22:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: And a sentence stem, like, "something that confused me was" they're gonna get all excited because they think when we mean, explain their thinking, we're talking about getting something right.
• 22:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: But starting with a stem like something that confused me was, shows them that explaining your thinking includes simply percolating on your thoughts, regardless if it's about an answer or not.
• 22:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: So these sentence starters really shift the culture from being right to being curious, right?
• 23:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you can model this, right?
• 23:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do a problem in front of kids and be like, all right, let's try one of these.
• 23:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so my brain first noticed, dot, dot, dot.
• 23:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Then you can say something like, I don't know guys, my brain first noticed that this number and this question seemed really big.
• 23:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or my brain first noticed that Susie had a weird number of apples, like where was she going with that?
• 23:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: You are modeling that that is what thinking is.
• 23:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: So your empowerment flip here is to just put one thinking stem on the board, maybe two max, and say, all right guys, today we're gonna explain our thinking with regards to this problem or this task, or whatever.
• 23:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Use one of these sentence stems.
• 23:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, we want few options because simplicity reduces overwhelm, but maybe like a couple of options is good, so if students feel stumped with one, they can use the other.
• 23:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're narrowing the starting point, which is the hardest part for an anxious brain, right?
• 23:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: When we're in overwhelm and someone says, explain our thinking, it's just a lot, right?
• 23:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: So start with a sentence stem, see what happens.
• 23:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: And remember to really celebrate.
• 23:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Point out constantly, there we go, that was a great way to explain your thinking.
• 24:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: You are thinking.
• 24:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're trying to label as many things as possible as thinking, so when students ultimately get to the goal where they need to explain on their own their thinking, they remember all the wins they've had, all the things that have been labeled as thinking, all of the things they've done that have been celebrated as thinking.
• 24:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Number four is let them talk before they write.
• 24:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, guys, writing is like the decathlon of cognition.
• 24:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Language, memory, spelling, organization, it's a lot.
• 24:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Talking is a warmup.
• 24:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Talking is a rehearsal.
• 24:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Talking is low pressure.
• 24:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I promise you, if students talk first, their written explanations become a bajillion percent clearer.
• 24:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: And guys, this is literally me.
• 24:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can tell you from experience I literally now talk to ChatGPT.
• 24:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Instead of writing, I'm like, I just wanna outer process my thoughts to ChatGPT.
• 24:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: As I'm telling ChatGPT what I'm thinking and what I want, I often come to the solution before I even press the enter button.
• 24:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need to hear myself just saying stuff, I need to let it coming out.
• 25:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know what?
• 25:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Writing has always stress me out.
• 25:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have English anxiety.
• 25:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'll be honest right now, my anxiety was always about writing.
• 25:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because I felt when I wrote something, it had to be this like finished thing and the right punctuation, there were so many other things on my mind other than getting the idea out.
• 25:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: You might also notice that the energy shifts in your room when you get a room full of kids to turn and talk, right?
• 25:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're talking, they might not know the answer, but in talking, things start coming up, right?
• 25:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Especially when you have someone else to bounce your ideas off.
• 25:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: That kid who like talks through an idea with a partner and is suddenly like, oh, wait a second, that's what I did.
• 25:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, and we do the same thing, like think about meetings.
• 25:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: When we have meetings, what are we doing?
• 25:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: We come in, we're like, I don't know, things are a bit stagnant, and all of a sudden there's this synergy in the room, right?
• 25:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: People are bouncing things off of one another.
• 25:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like people are getting prompts.
• 25:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: People are like, oh, that made me think of that.
• 25:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Talking is the, like the, the, not the kryptonite, the opposite of the kryptonite.
• 25:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've never actually seen Superman.
• 25:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know what kryptonite means, but you know what I mean, like talking as the, like the fuel to the thinking fire.
• 26:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: It really is.
• 26:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: So an empowerment flip for you is before you ask for a single written explanation, say, turn to your partner and explain your first step out loud.
• 26:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just the first step.
• 26:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Literally, or any step, right?
• 26:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like just the first step that comes to mind, explain that out loud.
• 26:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: This works because social engagement literally calms the nervous system.
• 26:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: It unlocks verbal processing.
• 26:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: It, uh, it frees you up as you start talking, things start coming to you, like outer processing is a real thing.
• 26:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's a real thing, like, and once you have someone asking you questions, like a partner might start explaining something and the person they're talking to might be like, wait, hold on, how did you do that?
• 26:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that prompts somebody to, again, I just go back to therapy.
• 26:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is therapy?
• 26:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Therapy is a person in front of you asking you questions and prompting you and going, aha, hmm, which feeds you, right, it gives you that cue to keep going, to keep thinking out loud.
• 26:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: When we encourage out loud thinking, that's when things happen.
• 26:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: One more thing I'll throw out here if you want, is to allow students to explain things orally.
• 27:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Either to you or they can record, you know, an explanation of something with a voice note.
• 27:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like you can get really creative with this, the point is you don't want something finished, so you don't wanna necessarily be like, make me like a video, right, that can feel like a bit vulnerable.
• 27:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: But to be like, you're allowed to explain to me orally, you're allowed to for this assignment, record a voice note of you explaining, that can be a really nice on-ramp to ultimately asking students to provide written explanations.
• 27:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: And finally, the final Math Therapy tip I have for you is to model your own messy thinking.
• 27:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: This honestly changes everything.
• 27:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Kids believe adults have like linear, perfect movie trailer style thinking.
• 27:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we're making these flawless thought processes, we have all these mic drops.
• 27:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: But we all know our thoughts are chaotic squirrels half the time.
• 27:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: So say it out loud in front of your students.
• 27:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is just like how we always ask teachers to model making mistakes, right?
• 28:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: We want kids to feel good about making mistakes, but then, we, you know, we don't wanna make mistakes in front of them because we're all feeling the same vulnerability.
• 28:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're all humans, we're just different sized and aged humans.
• 28:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: None of us wanna look flawed in front of one another.
• 28:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: But kids listen to what we do, not what we say.
• 28:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: So if we say, thinking can be messy and there's no wrong way to think, and then we constantly show them that our thinking is like perfect and planned out, they think that that's what they have to do.
• 28:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: So do, you know, get in front of the class and when you're, when you're trying to explain things, say something like, all right, let me try to explain what my brain just did.
• 28:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's actually hard to figure this out.
• 28:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or, okay, wait, hold on, I think I started here, but maybe I didn't, or I need to rewind, I think I mixed something up, it's hard for me to figure out what my brain just did.
• 28:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like when they see you wobble like low key, somewhat gracefully, they learn that wobbling is literally part of the job of a thinker.
• 28:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think we like dread, you know, a kid being like, my teacher just made a mistake, or adults don't always know anything either, but it's actually a crucial learning moment for them to see that and to see that the goal is not like this perfect, concise explanation.
• 29:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: That thinking is the goal is, like we said, awareness practice, right?
• 29:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Awareness practice.
• 29:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: That is the goal.
• 29:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: So an empowerment flip for you to take away is once per lesson, narrate one messy thought you are having in real time.
• 29:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: No polishing.
• 29:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: No prep, just reality.
• 29:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like this is your improv moment.
• 29:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is it.
• 29:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: And remember, this has the added benefit of co-regulation.
• 29:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, our nervous systems are designed to co-regulate.
• 29:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: When you are calmly imperfect, it signals that an imperfection is safety.
• 29:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like when you're not getting all like frazzled and being like, I can't explain this, but you're like almost enjoying the process and being like, oh my God, guys, like I don't really even know what I was thinking here, hold on, let me try to, explain it, and you model that curiosity and the joy of trying to understand what your own brain is doing because it's fun, right?
• 29:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's, I mean, it is stressful because we've made it stressful and we've been taught that it's stressful.
• 30:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: But when you're modeling how fun it is and like how you're kind of like discovering the magic of your own mind, students feel that.
• 30:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: They co-regulate and they take that away as well.
• 30:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: They see it as something fun and exploratory.
• 30:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so we have five Math Therapy strategies, and this week for your Math Therapy homework, I want you to pick one strategy and one of the Math Therapy micro moves associated with it.
• 30:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I'm gonna recap them here.
• 30:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: You pick one and report back.
• 30:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 30:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Strategy number one is to explain what the fuck thinking is.
• 30:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Your micro move is to say to students, thinking is noticing what's happening in your brain.
• 30:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Even if what's happening is confusion, guessing, half ideas, patterns you can't name yet, or the wait, WTF is this stage, that is thinking.
• 30:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 30:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: So explain to them what thinking is, give them things to choose from, or crowdsource the definition of thinking with them, so you have a classroom community definition of thinking.
• 31:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Strategy number two is normalize not knowing how to explain yet.
• 31:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: And your micro move is when a kid says something like, I don't know, ask them just for the first thing they noticed.
• 31:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's it.
• 31:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: "I totally get that you don't know.
• 31:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's the first thing you noticed?" Strategy number three is to give sentence starters that act as handrails.
• 31:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: So your micro move is to put one sentence starter, maybe two, on the board, and say, today when we explain our thinking, I want you to start with one of these sentence starters.
• 31:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Math Therapy strategy number four is to let them talk before they write.
• 31:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: And your Math Therapy micro move is to have kids talk out the first step before writing anything down.
• 31:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: They can talk it out with a friend, they can talk to themselves, with a friend is better.
• 31:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just talk, chat, outer process before you even attempt to write anything down.
• 31:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: And strategy number five is to model your own messy thinking.
• 31:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: So your micro move for this week will be to narrate one messy thought out loud each lesson this week.
• 31:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I just want you to pick one of those.
• 31:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: One.
• 31:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: Small is sustainable.
• 32:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Try it out, see how it feels.
• 32:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: See what you notice, and text the podcast and let us know how it goes.
• 32:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thinking is vulnerable, guys.
• 32:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, showing thinking is even more vulnerable, like that's deeply vulnerable.
• 32:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're exposing ourselves.
• 32:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're exposing our minds.
• 32:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: And most of our students have never even been invited to notice their own minds, let alone describe them to us.
• 32:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: We've historically not even cared.
• 32:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that's why the moment we make thinking safe, like even a little, kids start doing the most beautiful, surprising, like deeply human sense making, and that's the math culture shift we're all here for.
• 32:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: And thank you for doing this work.
• 32:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like for real.
• 32:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: The healing work, the culture shifting work, the Math Therapy work, the, Hey, let's make thinking not terrifying work.
• 32:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're amazing, we need you here.
• 32:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I wanna hear from you, so stay in touch.
• 32:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Email me at vanessa@themathguru.ca.
• 32:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: DM me on Instagram @themathguru.
• 32:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Text the podcast with your thoughts.
• 32:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can find the link in the show notes of whatever podcast player you're using.
• 32:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: And make sure to like, subscribe, follow, leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend.
• 33:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: All of these things help the whole message, your message, our message, get out to the greater community.
• 33:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love you, I'm cheering for you, see you next time.