[00:00:00] Vanessa Vakharia: How can you reframe that so that when you make a mistake, you're not self-loathing, hating on yourself and feeling like you don't deserve to be there in the room doing math. And we forget that a huge reason that so many kids have math anxiety, and so many kids opt out of math, is the way they were spoken to or the way they speak to themselves.

Hi, I'm Vanessa Vakharia, aka The Math Guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that explores the root causes of math trauma, and the empowering ways we can heal from it.

Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist. But the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry, no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.

Mistakes: villains or heroes?

[00:00:48] Vanessa Vakharia: Hey guys, and welcome to Math Therapy. I have a treat for you today, and by that I mean I have a treat for myself, which is that I am going to rant because you might not know this about me, but I'm actually an outer processor, and that's a thing. It means you need to like, outer process things. That's how you best digest information and come to conclusions about how you feel. So some people like do that internally in their heads, but I'm the type of person that needs to say it out loud a million times. 

So something just happened to me. It is related to math. It's related to math therapy. And I thought, I'm just gonna outer process it on my podcast. So here we go. 

You guys know that one of my biggest philosophies in math is that part of the reason kids develop math trauma at such an early age is because we focus so much on getting the right answer in math class. And by definition, or by association, actually getting the right answer means that we are basically penalized every single time we make a mistake. But, the contradiction is actual mathematics is all about making mistakes. 

Okay, so I'm gonna pause there and tell you what just happened to me. So I was at a conference, I was giving a talk as usual, I was, I do a whole talk called "How to Become Best Friends with Failure", how to teach kids that failure and mistake making is a part of mathematics so they can become less anxious about making mistakes, thus enabling them to take the risks required to actually learn math. 

So I'm talking about this and there was another math educator there, and he was like, I actually call bullshit. And I was like, sorry, what? And he was like, yeah, I actually think we shouldn't be teaching kids that it's a good thing to make mistakes because, and this is what he said, because in the, and I'm using air quotes, in the real world, people would get fired from their job if they made a mistake. 

Okay. You know how like in the moment when this stuff happens, you like don't know what to say? So I was kind of taken aback. I was like, well, I mean that's not necessarily true. And he was like, well, what about being a doctor? And then he went on this whole thing about being a doctor and how like he had gotten a colonoscopy. Okay, maybe this is a bit personal, but you don't know who I'm talking about, so it's fine. Anyways, he was talking about getting a colonoscopy and he was like, you know, the mistake rate is something really, really low. Like, I can't remember what it was, I think it's like one in 15,000, or one in 30,000 let's say.

And he's like, obviously I don't want my doctor to make a mistake, I'm gonna go to the doctor with the best success rate, right? The doctor who's least likely to make a mistake. In the moment, I was kind of like, okay, fine. But what I started thinking about after is, wait a second, do you think your doctor, okay, fine, your doctor's not like puncturing your colon, but do you think that doctor hasn't made a bunch of mistakes in his profession?

Like I'm talking about a mistake, maybe he forgot to write something down. Maybe he, um, was taking a risk on a patient trying to figure out what was wrong with them, and he was trying to diagnose them and the first diagnosis was wrong, which by the way happens all the time in the medical profession, right? At the end of the day, doctors are listening to your symptoms, they're using the tools at their disposal to diagnose you, but they don't always get it right the first time, right? That's completely unrealistic. We never have all of the information we need to diagnose someone completely perfectly the first time. 

Anyways, who cares about being a doctor, the point is, is I'm thinking to myself and I'm like, imagine you're a doctor who is so fucking dope at doing colonoscopies that he never makes a mistake, imagine he had been scared away from the profession because of some of the smaller mistakes he made during training or in med school. Like I'm sure this doctor , that he was talking about didn't get a hundred percent in med school, right? Like along the path of learning he made mistakes, and this doctor had to be able to overcome those mistakes to learn those lessons to get so good at what he does today, which is the main part of his profession.

Okay, so whatever, enough about colonoscopies, cause they're kind of gross. The point is this philosophy actually really bothers me. This idea that, no, it's not a good idea to encourage kids to make mistakes because in the quote unquote real world they get penalized for them, is flawed. And it's flawed for a whole bunch of reasons. 

First of all, in a job, whether we're talking about math or science or any industry, it's not about the mistakes you make, right? It's not about getting penalized for this mistakes you make. What actually gets adults penalized is the way they deal with mistakes. If they can't handle mistakes, if they lie about mistakes, if they actually don't take the risks necessary in their jobs because they're too scared of making a mistake. 

So I kind of wanna back up and call bullshit on what he said and say, first of all, that's not true. You don't actually get fired in a job for making a mistake unless it's a crazy toxic mistake. Most workplaces today encourage mistake making and risk taking and actually have leadership and you know, checks and balances in place so that mistakes are overseen and dealt with. And I'm gonna get more into that in a bit because, uh, as, as part of my outer processing, the first thing I did after this happened to me is I obviously went right to social media and I posted about this and I got like a hundred comments from you guys being like, well, here's how I would've responded to this, and here's what I think about what he said.

So I'm gonna actually get to that later as a little bit of a mail bag, but I wanna back up and really talk about the role of mistakes in math class, why I think they're so important, not just in math class, but in real life, and what educators and parents and anyone like students too, what all of us can do to actually foster a love of and appreciation of the mistakes that are inherent in math.

How to foster mistake-friendly environments

[00:06:29] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. So I talk a lot about the role of mistakes in math class to both students and teachers. And I think it's really interesting because there are so many things that come up when I'm talking to teachers versus students and vice versa.

So the first thing I kind of wanna say, and I would say this no matter what audience I was talking to, if we're talking about the quote unquote real world, and, and in fact anything involving math or science in the real world, basically like hinges on mistake making.

So first of all, if you were actually going to get a job in a STEM field, you would get paid a fucking shit ton of money to literally make mistakes. Like imagine you're a researcher and you're like, okay, I'm gonna find the cure for cancer, and you walk into the lab and on day one you find the cure and you're like, oh, I'm done. You'd be out of a fucking job, like you'd be broke. Like the entire goal of math, science, research, is to be taking risks and trying things that are unknown. 

Now we're not just saying like, get in there and fuck the lab up. No, but the whole goal is you have to be, by the point in your career where you've gone through all those math classes and you're actually in the field, you have to be so comfortable with the fact that most of what you do is not going to work out. That you're going to try random shit and see if it works. If you look at any invention, if you look at any scientific or mathematical discovery, all you will see behind it is a history of failure and mistakes. That's it. So the more familiar you are with something like mistake making, the less scary it is. We all know that in life, the more familiar something is to us, the less scared we are to try it.

And that's my biggest philosophy actually for why we should encourage mistake making in math class. We say, what is the point of math class? Right? A lot of people would say, well, I mean, you can agree with this or not agree with this. I actually don't agree with this at all, but theoretically, the point of math class is to prepare kids for real life, right, for life outside the walls of a school, and life in the field of mathematics or in a field where mathematics is required. 

So there's this story I actually really, really love. I can't remember where I heard it. Maybe it's a lie, it doesn't really matter, I don't think so, I think this is an actual story I heard on a podcast about a guy who had severe social anxiety. Okay. So he has crazy social anxiety and he's like, I'm so scared to leave my house, I'm so scared to talk to anyone because I'm just so scared of getting rejected and feeling like shit. And his therapist is like, okay, here's what you're gonna do. Every single day for the next month, I want you to purposely go out there and get rejected. And he's like, what? And she's like, yep, just do it. By the end of the 30 days, you're not even gonna care anymore. 

So day number one, he like goes to a Starbucks and he goes up to a random stranger and he is like, hey man, like do you have a piece of gum? And the person's like, no, dude, what the fuck? And he is like, okay, fine. 

Next day he goes to a grocery store, he goes up to someone and he's like, hey dude, like do you think you could gimme a ride home? And the person's like, I don't even know you, like, no. 

And this goes on and on until by day 30, it's so easy for him to do this, and he's kind of like, I've been rejected 30 days in a row. Nothing horrible happened. He felt fine, and that's what actually quote unquote cured him of his social anxiety. I'm sure he did like some talk therapy and a bunch of other things, but that was a thing that got him over the hump of being like, wow, I'm so familiar with this thing that I'm scared of, that I'm no longer scared to go out there to talk to strangers to make new friends because I now know that if I do get rejected, it's not the end of the world.

And that's how I actually see the idea of encouraging mistakes in math class. We actually actively find ways for kids to make mistakes in a low stakes environment, aka our classrooms, so by the time week 2, 3, 4, 5 rolls around, they're the ones actively raising their hands even though they're not sure they know the answer. Raising their hands, even though they have a question that they think might be embarrassing. Getting that math test, not knowing how to start a question and taking that first step anyway, because they're so familiar with the fact that if you make a mistake it's not the end of the world, life moves on, that they're not scared to take those risks. 

And they need to take those risks because we all know as teachers, okay, and probably as students, that confidence is half the battle, right? Half the battle with math is that a kid is like not really sure what to do, and they would rather not do it, then do it and get it wrong, and feel embarrassed, ashamed, get penalized, whatever the consequence is. So if we can show kids making mistakes is a part of the process, you've made 10 mistakes this past week and everything's fine, that is helping them develop those risk taking skills they need to actually succeed in math. 

Now that kind of gets me to the next point, right? Like again, thinking about this guy and how he's like, oh my God, I don't want my doctor to make mistakes and fail. First of all, very different situations. We're talking about math class. I always say this about education. It is a low stakes way to teach kids how to be okay with something that will inevitably happen in life. So think about this for a second. 

And actually, let's take math completely out of the equation. let's think about math class as a way to train kids on skills they will need in the real world outside of the classroom, regardless of what their profession is. 

So let's say you have a student that's like, I don't give a fuck up about math. I'm gonna be a rockstar. I'm gonna be an author. Like I'm never gonna need math. You can say to that kid, in all honesty, you know what? I see you, I feel you, but I'm gonna teach you a skill in this classroom that is going to get you on that stage as a rockstar, even when you have stage fright. And that skill is, I'm gonna show you that making mistakes, failing, being embarrassed, all of those things are not a big deal. 

And I think in math class, we have the biggest opportunity to do that because the truth is, in math class, you're wrong more often than you're not. Because it's one of the classes that always has a right answer. right in school, in classroom math, there's always a right answer. Most of the time you don't get that answer right away, and a lot of the time you never get that answer at all. So here you have this low stakes opportunity to show kids that being wrong, that taking a risk and making a mistake and failing is okay, and that you gain something from it.

And that is a skill that is important, no matter what career or whatever like anyone decides to do in their life, that is a skill that you see that so many adults don't have, myself included, actually. It took me a really, really long time in my adult life to feel okay with risk taking. And I'm talking something as simple as like, okay, I used to be the kid, and not kid, like I used to be the 20 year old, I wouldn't go into a university lecture or a spin class one minute late. Why? Because I couldn't imagine that feeling of everyone in the room turning around and watching me as I, like, you know what I mean? You know that feeling? It's like when you really had to go to the bathroom, I don't know if this happened to anyone when they were a kid, sometimes I'd really have to go to the bathroom in class, but I wouldn't wanna like raise my hand and be like, I have to go to the bathroom, cause it'd be a whole thing and everyone would stare at me and it'd be so embarrassing.

Obviously now I'd walk into anywhere late. If I had to go to the bathroom, I'd fucking go to the bathroom. But it took me so long to realize, so fucking what if everyone turns around and stares at me? It's not a big deal, but we actually need the opportunities to learn that lesson a lot earlier so we can take risks and like, I don't know, not risk peeing our pants in class because we're too scared to put our hands up and have everyone look at us. Okay. This is kind of a tangent, but I promise it's all related. 

So let's just think about this for a second. We have this low stakes opportunity to show kids that it's okay to make a mistake, and part of doing that is giving them opportunities to make mistakes. And that means giving them opportunities to not get it right the first time. Giving them opportunities to do something like try low floor, high ceiling problems, where like there isn't necessarily a right way to start the problem, there isn't necessarily a right way to even do the problem. Maybe we're all striving for a similar answer, but we wanna show kids, you're gonna fumble, you might try 10 different ways that aren't gonna get you to the right answer, but all of those ways are gonna teach you something. And ultimately, maybe you'll get the right answer. And if you don't, you'll have learned something along the way. 

So that's another thing, like we're not just asking kids willy-nilly to just make the same mistake over and over again and not learn anything. We all know, I mean there are so many quotes about this. We learn so much more from our mistakes than we do from an easy success. 

The impacts of mistake-shaming

[00:14:44] Vanessa Vakharia: Another thing I think a lot of us forget is that when we think about math anxiety, okay, and when we think about math trauma, or kids that are math anxious, or adults that are math anxious, a big, big part of that actually has to do with the way we were either spoken to or spoke to ourselves when we made a mistake. So, so much sneaky trauma comes from things like you were yelled at when you made a mistake, right? Or a teacher, had a really bad reaction when you made a mistake, or kids in your class laughed at you when you made a mistake, all of this stuff that actually resulted from you not getting the right answer.

You not getting the right answer means you made a mistake. So what we have a really, really interesting opportunity for, I think, in the classroom is to show kids how to speak to themselves and how they deserve to be spoken to when they don't get the right answer. It is an incredible opportunity to use things like growth mindset, use mindfulness techniques, use socio-emotional learning and self-love, and all of this stuff around mental health in a really practical way.

And I think we forget that. I don't know about you guys, but I hear my students sit there when they make a mistake, they will say something like, oh my God, that was such a dumb mistake, or, Ugh, I'm such an idiot. And I hear adults do that all the time. I'm definitely guilty of doing that. And one of the biggest opportunities you have, as anyone who's around another person who's doing math, when you watch them make an error, you can say things to them like, hey, that was a really interesting way to approach that problem. I mean, like, I know you didn't get the right answer, but it's kind of cool how you're thinking about it, I never would've thought about something that way. 

You have the opportunity when a kid is like, ugh, I'm such an idiot, to be like, Hey, don't talk about my friend that way, don't talk about my friend that way. How can we reframe that? I always tell kids, if I hear someone say, oh my God, that was such a stupid mistake, I'm like, stop right now and pick a better thought. Was it a stupid mistake or did you learn something from it? Was it a stupid mistake, or are you just a human being that makes mistakes because you're not a robot?

How can you reframe that in the moment so that when you make a mistake, you're not self-loathing, hating on yourself and feeling like you don't deserve to be there in the room doing math. And we forget that a huge reason that so many kids have math anxiety, and so many kids opt out of math, is the way they were spoken to or the way they speak to themselves.

So that I think is another really, really great like, why should we encourage mistake making in class, is because we have the opportunity to teach kids how to react to themselves and others when they make mistakes. And that fucking translates into the real world like nothing else. In any workplace, in any relat, like think about a relationship, you wanna develop that skill that when your partner or your friend makes a mistake or messes something up, you're not snapping at them and making them feel less than, right? Like you're rewarding them for actually taking a risk to do something or you're forgiving of them. So I think that's a big thing we can do as well when we're teaching kids to make mistakes.

And we forget, like I think we do such a great job of preaching growth mindset and talking about neural pathways and being like, yes, we can all grow, like, I'm not there yet, and all of the language, but in practical action, what that means is that you have to celebrate the mistakes that you and your students make. That's actually what it means. You can't just stand up there at the front of the room and be like, yep, I believe in growth mindset, and I believe if you're making mistakes now, it's because you're on your path to success and you'll always improve and get better. You can't actually do that without putting it into practice, and putting it into practice means letting kids make mistakes, celebrating those mistakes. And actually giving them opportunities to grow from those mistakes. 

And that's where I think assessment comes into play. I actually think we have a huge issue with that, because I saw, my friend Melissa Dean actually tweeted this, she said, we preach a growth mindset, yet we assess from a deficit mindset. Melissa, I'm sorry if I butchered that. It was something like that and I thought it was so smart, because we tell kids it's okay to make mistakes, but then we penalize them for making those mistakes. 

So something I actually think we really need to start thinking about, if you guys agree with me, you know if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, we really need to encourage mistake making a math class, we need to find ways to do that, and I'm gonna actually share some of my favorite ways in a bit, we have to really look at our assessment practices. That's something that we're responsible for as educators. Even though we're often bound within like the confines of a curriculum or pedagogy or our boards, we've gotta find ways to celebrate mistake making in an actual way that's valuable to students. 

I read this somewhere as well. I can't remember where, but at the end of the day, kids are taught that what's valuable is what's graded. So if we give them a 10 out of 10 for a question on fractions that they get the correct answer on, that shows them that their process and the answer they got have value. If we don't assign value, grade or mark value to mistakes, we are telling them, yeah, we stand up here and we preach that mistakes are valuable, but they're not actually valuable because you don't actually get anything for them.

So I, I think this is like gonna be a part two because I know assessment is a whole tricky topic right now, but we have to find ways in our assessment practices to make a little bit of wiggle room so that kids get marks for making mistakes. And that might just mean by the way, they get marks for the growth that comes from mistakes. I'm not suggesting that like, a kid does something, they get the wrong answer, and you're like A plus. No. But are you giving them the opportunity to learn from that mistake and to rewrite that test or re hand in their assignment with the lesson they learn from that mistake because that is actually celebrating and putting value on the mistake they made and the lesson they learned from it.

Reading comments/tweets

[00:20:29] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Just to circle back because I've been thinking about this a lot and I, I kind of wanna read some of the tweets and comments I got from you guys. Cause I thought, when I was faced with that guy being like, what job encourages mistakes? I really had nothing to say. Like, I was kind of like, any job in math and science. But from the like hundred plus comments I got from you guys, I felt so excited actually to find that most of the people commenting were adults in jobs who were like, my workplace encourages mistakes, the place I work actually has a whole structure in place to encourage us to take risks. 

So I wanna read some of the stuff I got from you guys.

So for context, I posted: 

"Today an educator told me he doesn't agree with my philosophy of encouraging mistake making in math class because in the real world, if you make a mistake at your job, you would likely get fired. How would you respond to this?" 

And I asked it this way because, as I said, I always have so much trouble with like what to say in the moment, and there were actually some really insightful responses. So the first response was from Stef Bradley and she wrote this, 

"I'm in the corporate world and you don't get fired for mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. It's part of learning and growing. The person who claims to not make mistakes likely has an ego that will get them fired."

I love that. There were actually a lot of comments like this, like you don't get fired for making a mistake, if you're going to get fired for anything related to mistake making, it's the way you handle yourself when you make mistakes. So if, we're teaching kids it's so bad to make a mistake, you should be ashamed of it, you should try to avoid it at all costs, either you end up not taking the risks you need to in your job to advance or to, you know, get that promotion or to be a standout member of the team, or you end up being that person who, like Stef says, has an ego, claims to never make mistakes even though they do because they're human, and no one wants to work with them because they're not a team player. So I thought that was amazing. 

Okay. The next one comes from Francesca Arley and she says, 

"I used to work in a non-profit office job, and when I made a mistake, usually a math mistake, I got in lots of trouble and I had to explain myself. It led to me trying to cover up my mistakes, which was so much worse. I changed careers and I work in healthcare where I'm fully encouraged to come forward with mistakes as soon as they happen because lives are on the line. We aren't punished when we come forward with errors. We are thanked for our professionalism. We have opportunities to learn and those responsible for our education look for ways to update medical directives, to minimize potential mistakes. We have lots of support, and the medical world I work in is safer for patients."

Oh my God, I'm like getting goosebumps reading this because. Yes. Yes. You know what I was thinking actually, when this guy, after this guy said this, I was like, what world does he envision us living in, if it's not one where we encourage mistakes? Is it one where we discourage mistakes? Because exactly, I just don't see how discouraging someone to make a mistake in math is going to make them any more or less likely to make a mistake. Either way you're gonna make a mistake, so you might as well teach somebody how to deal with and manage and learn from that mistake.

And that's exactly it. Francesca saying like, because she was so ashamed for making mistakes, because she was treated poorly when she made a mistake, it didn't lead her to making less mistakes. It led her to feeling shitty and trying to cover up the mistakes. So I really, really love that, that it's like, we're going to make mistakes, so we might as well encourage kids to make them and show them how to handle themselves with grace when they make them. 

Next, Math Coach Canada says,

"Certain jobs do have a very low tolerance for error. For example, surgeons, astronauts, et cetera. But even these professions have learned what they know through many errors. Once they've mastered their skills, they're perhaps expected to use the skills without error, but certainly not in the learning phase. Similarly, students should embrace all of their mistakes along the learning path because it is strengthening their understanding and will lead to less mistakes later on. Discouraging mistakes in math will completely discourage most kids from even trying and will create so much anxiety."

Yes, this is the, one of the things I was trying to get at, well not get at, because I didn't say anything intelligible in response to this guy in the first place, but okay. I don't know about you guys, but most of us grew up in a math class and a math environment where mistakes were discouraged. Like what he's saying is what happens, math education forever has been like, only celebrate the right answer, don't make a mistake, be disciplined, follow rules, get everything perfect. And look how that turned out. Right? We have generations upon generations of people with math anxiety, so like that already isn't working. So I really, really love this comment. 

Okay, I'm just gonna rapid fire some of my absolute favorite comments. You're not gonna hear anything from me, but I just wanna read you some of the highlights of what you guys said.

Lauren Eckert says, "if you're part of a culture where people are terrified of making mistakes, you're likely to make them and then not admit to them. Accepting that we're humans who make mistakes makes for less shame and more accountability."

Ashley Aoki says, "I would be super curious about the cultures that are created when mistakes aren't permitted. It's our own humanness. I'm reflecting on what's offered when people are asked to rethink, reframe, reflect in professional spaces. It's the open door to innovation and creativity." 

Sunil Singh, former guest of Math Therapy by the way, says "the history of mathematics has been about mistakes and failure. This educator obviously has no clue what math is about. Also, the correlation between math and the workplace is a false equivalence."

And in closing, John Keating says, "Penicillin. Fuck off. You can probably tell I've got no time for that nonsense."

Strategies to encourage mistakes

[00:25:58] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay guys, I have to say thank you so much. Seriously, this was like math therapy for me, because I really needed to out process this and I feel like I have just a better handle on my emotions about this whole thing and my thoughts, and I hope you all learned something from this. 

But I also, before we close, I wanna actually share some of my favourite strategies, like if you're listening to this and you're like, yes, we need to do more to encourage mistakes in math class, what can I do? Here are some of my favorite strategies. 

Okay, so my first one, this is one of my favorite things.

It's called Mistake Show and Tell, or I've heard it called My Favorite Mistake, and this is where if you're a math educator, you showcase your favorite mistake, once a week or a couple of times a week. 

So what this might be is this might be a student who has tried to solve a problem and has not gotten to the right answer, maybe somewhere in their process was a little flawed, or they took the wrong route, or maybe they messed up a number and you celebrate that mistake. I mean, obviously ask the students permission and make sure they know that you wanna showcase this creative and very unique way of thinking that maybe hadn't crossed your mind, or you wanna showcase how creative and intelligent their process was, but how a tiny little mathematical error can get in the way of getting to the right answer and you actually showcase this mistake. Like it's a show and tell, you celebrate it, you show the class. 

Or, oh my God, I love this too. You can do show and tell with your own mistake, right? So you can do something on the board, either purposefully or not, and ask your students to find your mistake, right? And to figure out what they've learned from that mistake or what you as a teacher could learn from that mistake or what anyone might learn from that mistake. So, I love Mistake Show and Tell, it's all about celebrating mistakes, it's about finding your favorite mistake, and about showing kids that there's a lot to be gained and learned from making mistakes. 

Another one of my favorite exercises is called, "I Used to Think, and Now I Think". It's a growth mindset exercise, and what you do in this scenario is, this one is more about helping kids realize that mistakes are not absolutes. So for example, what you're doing in this is you're asking each student, and you should do this yourself, by the way, when they feel really, really stuck on a math problem or a concept, and they're just kind of like, I am never going to get any better at this, I keep messing it up, I keep making mistakes, you invite them to think of something they thought they would never be able to do. 

Okay, so something they thought they would never be able to do. It might be like, I never thought I'd be able to ride a bike, I never thought I'd be able to like wiggle my left eyebrow, I never thought I'd be able to add fractions. Something they thought at one point in their lives they'd never be able to do, that now they can do, no problem. 

I encourage kids to either write one out, put it on a piece of poster board and frame it. You know, again, I would fully show and tell this. Every time I do this in a group of students, we get pumped up. Like, kids will raise their hands and be like, I thought I'd never make the soccer team. Or like, I thought I'd never be able to beat my brother at chess. Or I thought I'd never understand integers, and now I can. 

And we take that moment to celebrate it, because what often happens is kids, you know, they'll fail and they'll make mistakes over and over. So for example, like let's say you're trying to ride a bike. You'll try it over and over and you won't get it, and you won't get it, and you won't get it. And then finally you get it, you're excited for one day, and then all of a sudden you can just ride a bike. And you forget about the path it took you to get there. You're just like, great, I can ride a bike now, onto the next thing. Instead of being like, oh my God, can we celebrate the fact that you skinned your knee, that you fell a ton of times, that you almost gave up and you didn't, and now you can do it.

So that's another way of showcasing to students that mistakes are part of the learning process, and all of those mistakes they made eventually pay off in the end. 

So those are two of my absolute favorite activities to do to encourage mistake making in math class, but now I wanna hear from you. So whether you're an educator, a student, a parent, like a student of life, just a human being, whatever, find the Instagram or Twitter post about this episode and just comment below. Let me know what some of your favorite things are to do, how you love to encourage mistakes. I'm always looking for new ideas on how to encourage mistake making in math class.

Conclusion

[00:30:03] Vanessa Vakharia: And finally, the irony is not lost on me that I created this whole episode in response to feeling like I made a mistake. I kind of felt like that guy was making me, I felt ashamed and unsure as a result of him sort of calling me out and being like, I don't like what you're saying. And, even though it felt kind of shitty in the moment, and I may not have known how to respond, I have to say just like any mistake, and this isn't lip service, for real, I learned so much because even just crowdsourcing with you guys, outer processing this, it made me really rethink the way I'm talking about making mistakes in math class.

I feel, and I could be wrong, but I feel like he kind of caught me on a technicality and he was kind of like, mm, we shouldn't just tell people to randomly make mistakes. By the way, he never even saw my presentation, he just heard what it was about. So I feel like he just kind of took issue with the idea that in the educational discourse right now, we are very much about encouraging mistakes in math class and he kind of had beef with that bigger issue, but it made me sort of retweak my presentation and think, okay, I'm just gonna make sure I'm really, really specific, when I'm talking about making mistakes, I'm gonna make sure I record an episode like this to really clarify what I mean when I'm talking about encouraging mistakes, how that benefits students, what a mistake actually entails. How can we, we can be responsible with that language, and it helped me out in the end.

So like it all goes to show that we always learn from our mistakes. We always learn more from our mistakes than we do from our quick and easy successes. So thank you random guy that I will not name for helping me learn from this, I don't, is it a mistake? I don't know. Just for helping me learn something. Helping me learn something today.

Episode outro

[00:31:51] Vanessa Vakharia: If something in this episode inspired you, please tweet us @maththerapy, and you can also follow me personally @themathguru on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. 

Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia, it was created by me and Sabina Wex, and it's produced and edited by David Kochberg. Our theme music is by Goodnight Sunrise.

And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or just needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please, please, please share this podcast, and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use. Those things actually make such a big difference for us. I'm determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help, so spread the word. Until next time, peace, love, and pi.

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