Vanessa Vakharia: 0:03

The point is we've not defined our terms, which leads to uncertainty, which leads to fear, which leads to anxiety. We have not defined the crucial term here, that term being "thinking". What is thinking? We say show your thinking, but we never teach what thinking actually is. Okay. I need to read you an email that actually lit up my entire brain when I opened it this morning. 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. So here's what the email said. Hi. I just listened to your podcast on five simple Math Therapy strategies for your classroom. I found it very informative. I love that you ask for students to explain their thinking. However, I have so many students who will say. I don't know how I did it, or I don't know how to explain it. What can I do as an educator to help frame my students' minds to be able to explain their thinking? Ooh. whether you're a teacher or not, like whether you were like once the math student, you're probably, yeah, like, yeah. It was so annoying when my teacher asked that, because I don't fucking know, I just knew how to do it. And if you're a teacher, you're probably like, oh my God, that's exactly what my students say. So first of all, to the listener who sent this, thank you. Thank you for saying what we are all thinking. Also, thank you for naming what is maybe the biggest unspoken truth of math class. We all want kids to show their thinking, but literally no one has ever taught them what thinking even is. No one taught us what thinking even was. And this matters not just for the teachers. 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. 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. It can be a huge game changer when we focus on thinking instead of answer getting because. Everyone can think, which means everyone can play the game, which means everybody can get that win. Everybody can feel useful. 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. 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? I've just been like using formulas and getting answers, and now I have to explain my thinking. I don't even know what that even means. Okay, so if you're listening to this and you can relate, I've got you. This is actually what we're gonna talk about in depth in today's episode. 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. All right. So the first thing I wanna talk about is this. The classic, I don't know, moment that I'm about to describe here is never about not knowing. Hear me out. Okay, so let's say you're a teacher, and this is probably gonna feel familiar, possibly triggering. You like kneel beside a student and you ask them, Hey, can you explain how you got that? And you get it. That classic fast twitch response, the, I don't know. I don't know. No eye contact, no hesitation. Just a verbal brick wall. And old school math culture hears that and goes, kids don't know how to think. And actually I would say that old school math culture is like, here's that and goes, this kid cheated. Especially if it's a test. 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. I actually think that still happens. 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. Like they're like not assuming positive Intent. They're assuming the teacher is asking them to explain their work so they can confirm they're not cheating. That is the first red flag that we are not explaining why thinking is important to our students. That's the first thing I'm gonna say. Now, here's the thing. From a Math Therapy lens, this is actually a juicy moment. 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. 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. 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. 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. Or, I don't know, math class taught me that speed matters, not reflection. So why are we even talking about this? 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. Like, do you know what I mean? There are all sorts of things going on, and actually same. Same. Maybe we can relate, like adults do this too. Ask any grownup to explain how they made a decision they arrived at quickly. We all go blank like we've never had a thought in our lives. Like we literally go into freeze mode. One of the trauma responses. We feel unsafe, we shut down. We feel like we're being attacked. Like somebody is like trying to argue with us or be like, well how did you make that decision? Like it's, we go into defensive mode and often we feel trapped. The thing is that thinking out loud is vulnerable. Right. Like it's basically asking someone to unzip their brain and like let you take a look inside. And the other thing is, "I don't know", is often code for "please don't judge me". Like we've been taught how we're supposed to be thinking or like that there's some right way to think. 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. 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. They're unlearning also the concept that no one actually gave a fuck about their thoughts a few years ago. Seriously in math class, we really didn't care. We were like, just get the right answer. Sure. It's not like we weren't asking them to show their work, but like we were really focused on the answer. So they're still trying to unlearn the fact that we don't only care about the answer anymore. 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. My students just don't wanna think. Like the vibe is like they're lazy or like they're trying to take a shortcut and they literally don't wanna think. I get how it feels that way, but it's really important for us to assume positive intent. What's happening is not that they're lazy and they don't wanna think. They're usually overwhelmed. The task seems too daunting. There are not clear instructions. 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. 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. 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. The point is we've not defined our terms, which leads to uncertainty, which leads to fear, which leads to anxiety. We have not defined the crucial term here, that term being "thinking". What is thinking? We say show your thinking, but we never teach what thinking actually is. Here's the part that makes me wanna stand on a table with a megaphone and scream. Kids are not confused because they can't think. Kids are confused because thinking is invisible. It is a mirage, it is a ghost, it is a whatever, and we've never actually taught them the components of thinking. Noticing, deciding, comparing, choosing, changing your mind, checking if something feels weird. Instead, we jump straight to explain yourself. Like, excuse me. There's a difference by the way, between thinking and reporting a procedure. 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. We have meant report the procedure you have used. That's what we have meant. Now we're like, we wanna see your thinking. Does that still mean report the procedure or does that mean something else? 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. 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. So what do we do? We have to approach thinking from an emotional perspective as well as a cognitive one. We know this about math in general, like you know this because you listen to this podcast, which is all about this very thing. Math learning and instruction is about humans, and humans have emotions and while thinking seems like this purely cerebral thing, it is not. Our entire selves including our feelings and the embodied memories we bring into math class, lay the foundation for thinking. They are the thinking. They are inseparable. 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. 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. So let's talk about some Math Therapy rooted actions and perspectives we can take. Strategy number one, explain what the fuck thinking is. We throw around the word thinking in math class, like everyone just knows what it means. I've already said that, you know, we say things like, show your thinking. Explain your thinking. Think it through. But here's the truth no one says out loud. Most kids, and honestly, most adults have no idea what thinking actually refers to. They think it means immediately producing a clean, polished explanation with zero confusion and full confidence. aka the exact opposite of how actual human cognition works. 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. 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. Put shape around it. Normalize it. Demystify it. 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. 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. And she was like, explain your thinking. I'd be like, what the fuck? Right? Like, I'd be stumped, like I'm feeling emotional. I'm going through a process. The whole point I'm seeing her is I don't understand what's going on. She will ask me pointed questions. Like, she'll be like, what did that remind you of? Is there a time you can remember when blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, she'll, she'll prompt me. She puts a shape around it. She gives me like a bit of a container to then explore my thoughts. 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. I'll say something like this. Thinking is noticing what's happening in your brain. 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? I won't swear at the kids, I'll say something else. That is thinking. That's it. 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. They're allowed to be imperfect, flawed heroes or whatever the saying is. They're allowed to be learners and not performers. 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. And honestly, guys, when I think about my therapy sessions with my therapist, that is what's happening. Huh? Like that's actually what's happening. The entire point of a therapy session is to help you become more aware of your process. I actually really love that framing looking at thinking as an awareness practice. We want our students to be aware of what is going on for them. 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. She'll be like, this is it. You're doing it. You're doing the work. This is the process. Being confused and working through that confusion, guess what that is? It's thinking. Like sometimes I'll say to her, I'm not thinking anything and she'll name something tiny. She'll be like, interesting you said you're not thinking anything because you just made this point or you just reflected on that. Something that I think is irrelevant, and suddenly I'll realize that my brain has quietly been thinking the whole time. You know, even though it's not this full picture thing, I think I should be coming up with, a little piece is happening. So, an empowerment flip right now for you to try is to just start your class by defining thinking. Define what it is. Even better. If you come up with the definition as a class, ask them what does it mean to think. And then you can come up with a definition, maybe put it on the wall. 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. All of that is valid thinking. Make it a poster, put it on the wall. And now every time you talk about thinking, you can point to that, right? They have some things to grab onto. It makes me think of the way we talk about broadening the definition of math, right? Like if more, we want more people to feel like they're doing math, we have to broaden it. Because right now when we say math, people will say, I can't do math. And what they mean is, I can't do algebra. I can't do calculus. 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. The same is true for thinking. 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. The second Math Therapy, sort of like rooted approach to thinking is that I want you to normalize not knowing how to explain yet. When kids say, I don't know how to explain it, it's rarely the explanation they're afraid of. It's the exposure, right? Like math class has trained them that explaining equals evaluation. And you know what guys? They're not wrong, right? They're not wrong. So I tell students this all the time. Not knowing how to explain something is actually the first sign your brain did something interesting. 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. 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. It reframes explanation from performance to awareness practice. Again, that's what we wanna do, right? The thing is kids often think, if I can't explain it, I must not really understand it. And I think that is one of the biggest misfortunes right now. You know, I wrote this book for Scholastic a while ago, seven years ago, actually in 2016, so almost 10 years ago. It's called Math Hacks. 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. It was the first book that ever had like Math Therapy, before I called it Math Therapy. It was like pep talks, mindfulness, all these emotional components to help students as they were learning math. And then alongside of it, I was teaching the math and guys, don't cancel me. It was mostly tricks, like it was called Math Hacks. The point was like these shortcuts, like, you know, move the decimal plays over, add a zero. I know we don't like that stuff now, but it is what it is. So let's not focus on that. The point is, I remember getting to the chapter on decimals and I was like, I can't explain this. Like how do I explain what a decimal is. I don't even know how to do that. Now I wanna be very clear. I know what a decimal is. Like I know what it is, I know how it functions. I deeply understand it. And I do wanna throw in a little thing here. 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. I don't think that's true. Yes, we did do a lot of that. It doesn't mean we have zero understanding of math. 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. 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. You know what I mean? It was like second nature to me, and I didn't know how to break something down that I felt was so obvious. Kids think that if they can't explain it, they must not really understand it, and that's not always true. Sometimes it's true, but it's not always true. 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. 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. And I would actually give them like a non-curricular example. Like can you explain like, the sun rises and sets. Like I understand that. I get it. If you wanted me to explain it, I'd really have to think about it. 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. It rises and sets. 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. So a little like empowerment flip of something you can do to help broach this area. 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. Practice explaining. Seriously, it is an art to be able to explain something. You can start a lesson by saying something like, guys, today we're gonna practice explaining. Explanations can be messy. They can be incorrect. They can be incomplete. These are all valid. Now, the key is practice explaining something non-curricular. Honestly, explaining is hard enough. 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. And math alone is challenging on its own to many kids for different reasons. So take the math out of it. Focus on the explaining thinking thing. So you know, do it with something simple like, um, today you're gonna explain something that seems really obvious to you. Give them a list of ideas. Of prompts, like, explain why the sun rises and sets. Explain why it's important to drink water. Explain why. Uh. You get itchy when a mosquito bites you. I, a lot of this involves science, but do you know what I mean? Like, explain, okay, you know what? Here, do it like this. Explain why you like your friend. Explain why you like puppies. Explain why your hobby is your favorite. Do it that way because now we have emotions entering and it's something personal and something they can't get wrong. That's actually what I would do. Start really low bar with explain an opinion you have, because we're trying to get them to practice the art of explaining. We're not worrying about correctness here, right, that's the whole point to take correctness off the table. Okay. Onto the third one. My third Math Therapy rooted strategy is this. Give sentence starters that feel like handrails, not traps. Okay. Students freeze because they think explanations have to be long, fancy, academic, basically like a Netflix special. Like let's democratize the vibes, give them starter stems like"I noticed" dot, dot, dot."At first I thought", dot, dot, dot."Something that confused me was"."I changed my mind when". These are magic. Not just because like the language is special, but because it gives students something to hold onto. This is kind of actually like the task scaling method I learned from Chris Luzniak. 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. 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? We are asking for an answer. There, that question has one answer. If a student doesn't think they're gonna get that one answer, they're not even gonna try. 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. So you could say something like, um, if you were Susie and her pal over there, what kind of apples would you buy? Or what kind of fruit would you even pick? And, what number is too many pieces of fruit to have. Like things that are just about opinions that get someone engaged in the question. It's one of my favorite things to do. It works like magic. This is kind of the same thing, right? Like you are giving students an entry point into the task of explaining on their own. They can't do it yet. If we say something too broad, like explain your thinking, they might freeze and shut down. So we just say something like, use one of these sentence stems and fill in the blank. That's it. Right? 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. 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. So these sentence starters really shift the culture from being right to being curious, right? And you can model this, right? Do a problem in front of kids and be like, all right, let's try one of these. Okay, so my brain first noticed, dot, dot, dot. Then you can say something like, I don't know guys, my brain first noticed that this number and this question seemed really big. Or my brain first noticed that Susie had a weird number of apples, like where was she going with that? You are modeling that that is what thinking is. 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. Use one of these sentence stems. 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. We're narrowing the starting point, which is the hardest part for an anxious brain, right? When we're in overwhelm and someone says, explain our thinking, it's just a lot, right? So start with a sentence stem, see what happens. And remember to really celebrate. Point out constantly, there we go, that was a great way to explain your thinking. You are thinking. 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. Number four is let them talk before they write. Honestly, guys, writing is like the decathlon of cognition. Language, memory, spelling, organization, it's a lot. Talking is a warmup. Talking is a rehearsal. Talking is low pressure. I promise you, if students talk first, their written explanations become a bajillion percent clearer. And guys, this is literally me. I can tell you from experience I literally now talk to ChatGPT. Instead of writing, I'm like, I just wanna outer process my thoughts to ChatGPT. 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. I need to hear myself just saying stuff, I need to let it coming out. You know what? Writing has always stress me out. I have English anxiety. I'll be honest right now, my anxiety was always about writing. 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. You might also notice that the energy shifts in your room when you get a room full of kids to turn and talk, right? They're talking, they might not know the answer, but in talking, things start coming up, right? Especially when you have someone else to bounce your ideas off. That kid who like talks through an idea with a partner and is suddenly like, oh, wait a second, that's what I did. Like, and we do the same thing, like think about meetings. When we have meetings, what are we doing? 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? People are bouncing things off of one another. Like people are getting prompts. People are like, oh, that made me think of that. Talking is the, like the, the, not the kryptonite, the opposite of the kryptonite. I've never actually seen Superman. I don't know what kryptonite means, but you know what I mean, like talking as the, like the fuel to the thinking fire. It really is. 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. Just the first step. Literally, or any step, right? Like just the first step that comes to mind, explain that out loud. This works because social engagement literally calms the nervous system. It unlocks verbal processing. It, uh, it frees you up as you start talking, things start coming to you, like outer processing is a real thing. 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? And that prompts somebody to, again, I just go back to therapy. What is therapy? 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. When we encourage out loud thinking, that's when things happen. One more thing I'll throw out here if you want, is to allow students to explain things orally. Either to you or they can record, you know, an explanation of something with a voice note. 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. 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. And finally, the final Math Therapy tip I have for you is to model your own messy thinking. This honestly changes everything. Kids believe adults have like linear, perfect movie trailer style thinking. Like we're making these flawless thought processes, we have all these mic drops. But we all know our thoughts are chaotic squirrels half the time. So say it out loud in front of your students. This is just like how we always ask teachers to model making mistakes, right? 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. We're all humans, we're just different sized and aged humans. None of us wanna look flawed in front of one another. But kids listen to what we do, not what we say. 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. 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. It's actually hard to figure this out. 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. Like when they see you wobble like low key, somewhat gracefully, they learn that wobbling is literally part of the job of a thinker. 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. That thinking is the goal is, like we said, awareness practice, right? Awareness practice. That is the goal. So an empowerment flip for you to take away is once per lesson, narrate one messy thought you are having in real time. No polishing. No prep, just reality. Like this is your improv moment. This is it. And remember, this has the added benefit of co-regulation. You know, our nervous systems are designed to co-regulate. When you are calmly imperfect, it signals that an imperfection is safety. 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? It's, I mean, it is stressful because we've made it stressful and we've been taught that it's stressful. 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. They co-regulate and they take that away as well. They see it as something fun and exploratory. 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. So I'm gonna recap them here. You pick one and report back. Okay. Strategy number one is to explain what the fuck thinking is. Your micro move is to say to students, thinking is noticing what's happening in your brain. 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. Right? 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. Strategy number two is normalize not knowing how to explain yet. And your micro move is when a kid says something like, I don't know, ask them just for the first thing they noticed. That's it."I totally get that you don't know. What's the first thing you noticed?" Strategy number three is to give sentence starters that act as handrails. 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. Math Therapy strategy number four is to let them talk before they write. And your Math Therapy micro move is to have kids talk out the first step before writing anything down. They can talk it out with a friend, they can talk to themselves, with a friend is better. Just talk, chat, outer process before you even attempt to write anything down. And strategy number five is to model your own messy thinking. So your micro move for this week will be to narrate one messy thought out loud each lesson this week. So I just want you to pick one of those. One. Small is sustainable. Try it out, see how it feels. See what you notice, and text the podcast and let us know how it goes. Thinking is vulnerable, guys. Honestly, showing thinking is even more vulnerable, like that's deeply vulnerable. We're exposing ourselves. We're exposing our minds. And most of our students have never even been invited to notice their own minds, let alone describe them to us. We've historically not even cared. 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. And thank you for doing this work. Like for real. The healing work, the culture shifting work, the Math Therapy work, the, Hey, let's make thinking not terrifying work. You're amazing, we need you here. And I wanna hear from you, so stay in touch. Email me at vanessa@themathguru.ca. DM me on Instagram @themathguru. Text the podcast with your thoughts. You can find the link in the show notes of whatever podcast player you're using. And make sure to like, subscribe, follow, leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend. All of these things help the whole message, your message, our message, get out to the greater community. I love you, I'm cheering for you, see you next time.