Intro

Vanessa Vakharia 0:03

Okay, hi. Hello. I have the coolest episode for you today, and it's actually a two-parter, and you're about to hear part one. Okay, sorry. Before I explain, hello. Hi. Yes, welcome to Math Therapy. I'm Vanessa Vakharia, AKA The Math Guru. Fine, The intro is done. Now listen up. Do you have math trauma? Are you convinced you will never change the way you feel about math? Have you ever wanted to hear what it's like to actually give or get math therapy? Like, do you watch Shrinking or Couples Therapy and wish you could be in the room when someone gets therapized, but, like, about their math trauma? Well, guess what? Today is your lucky day Imagine Learning has a podcast called HeartWork, and they did this three-part series this year on math anxiety. For one of those parts, their podcast team literally flew to Toronto so that I could give their host, Lauren Keeling, some IRL math therapy. Now, throughout the series, Lauren was on a mission to explore her own lifelong math trauma, and that brought her and her team to spend an entire day at my tutoring studio in Toronto. That three-part series came out in the summer. The other episodes featured, Deborah Peart and Peter Liljedahl, and the whole series is like this Wondery true crime podcast, but about healing math trauma. We'll link in the show notes. As a bonus, HeartWork put my full one-on-one math therapy session with Lauren on their YouTube, and today they have agreed to let us share that audio with you in a podcast exclusive. It gets even better, because guys, Lauren Keeling's math story does not end at that one session we had together months ago. Her life, as it turns out, has totally changed in ways she never could have imagined. So I decided to do a follow-up session with her so that we could unpack how math therapy changed her life and her sense of self, and next week you are going to hear that. Like, guys, this is an epic two-parter. We've never done anything like this before, and I can't wait for you to hear it, so buckle up, because you're about to get a seat on my pink velvet couch next to Lauren Keeling. You're gonna hear about why she developed such crippling math anxiety so early on, how that's defined her as a person and limited what she thought she was capable of, and then you're gonna hear growth mindset in action as we work through it in real time. I'm not gonna tell you what happens at the end, because you have to hear it to believe it. And guys, this is the one. This is the episode to text your friend with math anxiety, your friend who's convinced they're not a math person and never will be, the teacher you work with who's like, "Mm, it's ELA or bust. I can't do math," your entire teacher group chat, your students' parents. This is the one. This will give them hope and change their lives. All right, here it is, me and the brave and courageous Lauren Keeling on HeartWork

Math Therapy on Heart Work podcast

Lauren Keeling 2:50

Vanessa, welcome to HeartWork.

Vanessa Vakharia 2:52

And Lauren, welcome to Math Therapy.

Lauren Keeling 2:54

I'm nervous.

Vanessa Vakharia 2:56

Okay, so this is actually a really good starting point. Good. I actually am curious. Your anxiety that you think you're walking in here with is around math. Can you pinpoint what you're nervous about?

Lauren Keeling 3:05

Failure. I am-

Vanessa Vakharia 3:06

Oh, okay. Wow

Lauren Keeling 3:07

terrified that you're going to ask me to do math today, and my entire body is going to lock up, and my brain is going to freeze, and I'm not going to be able to produce anything for you.

Vanessa Vakharia 3:15

Hmm. And what would ha- if that happened, first of all, I am not, there's no, there's, I'm not gonna, like, whip out a time test. So let's go with this. So your literal fear is I'm gonna ask you to do math, you are gonna, like, freeze. You're not gonna be able to produce anything.

Lauren Keeling 3:31

Yes.

Vanessa Vakharia 3:31

Okay.

Lauren Keeling 3:31

And I'm afraid it's going to be really basic math-

Vanessa Vakharia 3:34

Okay

Lauren Keeling 3:34

because it doesn't matter what level of math it is, if you ask me to produce it, and if you put a time capsule on it, I actually would probably melt into the couch.

Vanessa Vakharia 3:43

Here's my question to you. If I asked you what eight plus eight was, and you couldn't get it, and, right, like, your fear came true, your fear, which is that you are gonna lock up, you're gonna be unable to produce. You might even get the wrong answer, even worse, on a public forum- Yes like, people are listening, what would that mean about you?

Lauren Keeling 4:02

That I am a failure. That I am a dummy.

Vanessa Vakharia 4:07

When is the first time you felt this way?

Lauren Keeling 4:09

I, in first grade. It centers on those, those timed tests. That's when we started doing flashcards.

Vanessa Vakharia 4:16

Hmm.

Lauren Keeling 4:17

I see Mrs. V walking down the aisles in the rows that we were in, and she sets this paper down in front of me that I have just finished, and it is full of red Xs. And that very moment is the very first moment that I can recall in my life feeling like I wasn't very good at this thing and that something was wrong with me. And then it happened again, and then it happened again

Vanessa Vakharia 4:43

Okay, so that sounds, first of all, very, very hard. And I can, like, feel the emotion, like, coming out of you as you talk about it. It is, it's really interesting, right? How core, like, you, you said it was a core memory- but then the evidence is you literally remember every detail. I do. You remember what she was wearing, you remember, like, how you felt. Can we talk about the mathematics content? Like, so you got the stuff wrong, you got the red Xs. Time te- forget the timed test, were you able to, in a non-timed situation, do what was on the paper?

Lauren Keeling 5:12

Perhaps not perfectly or well, but I felt like I had the time to be able to count on my fingers. I could do touch math. The, the

Vanessa Vakharia 5:19

world's OG manipulative, everyone.

Lauren Keeling 5:22

Yes, the original. I had to do it a completely different way from what the very straightforward way that my teacher was doing it up on the board.

Vanessa Vakharia 5:29

Got it. So there's a few, like, really interesting things, which is that, just from a theoretical point of view, and, like, a scientific point of view, it's really important that we hang onto this moment for a second, because this is years and years, this is decades later, decades later. Decades later. Decades later, and your body remembers that experience. It does. And actually, with math trauma, and any sort of microtrauma or macrotrauma, our bodies do go back into the state we were in when we had the first traumatic incident. So I actually want you to just give yourself some grace as a bigger picture. We're gonna talk about this more later, but to remember that now, every time you're faced with math, you are back to being that six-year-old. It's not just made up. Like, that is what's happening, and how can you possibly perform mathematically when you feel like... Like, you can't. You can't access your working memory. Like, your amygdala is being hijacked. You're back in that trauma memory. And I just wanna reflect back, there's a part of you that's like, "Even though I'm able to work this stuff out, and, like, get the result and get a good grade, it doesn't actually count, because I'm not doing it fast enough. I'm not doing it the way everyone else is. I've gotta use these tools no one else is doing, so it doesn't actually count as me being good at math."

Lauren Keeling 6:37

Yes. I had to figure out, I had to draw the pictures, I had to make the circles. You know, I had to do all of the different strategies.

Vanessa Vakharia 6:43

And is that, is that not being good at math in your mind?

Lauren Keeling 6:45

No, it's not being good at math- Right in my mind.

Vanessa Vakharia 6:47

And, and why?

Lauren Keeling 6:49

Because there's one way to do math. My childhood teaching tells me there's one way to do math, and if you have to do all of this extraneous stuff to get there, you're not doing it right.

Vanessa Vakharia 6:58

Yeah.

Lauren Keeling 6:58

One pathway. But can I tell you one more big piece of math trauma-

Vanessa Vakharia 7:02

Tell me whatever you want, yeah

Lauren Keeling 7:03

that lives in my grown-up life?

Vanessa Vakharia 7:04

Yes.

Lauren Keeling 7:06

from a career perspective, I've done a lot of different things, and when I transitioned out of my very first job as a journalist and moved into... I decided that we were raising girls. I needed a different schedule in my life. I wanted to be a teacher. My mom was a teacher. I knew I loved kindergarten. It was, my heart was called to it. I had to go back to school and get my master's degree, but then came the really difficult part because in Ohio, where I was getting certified, I had to take four different tests in the core subjects, right? So math, reading, uh, science, and social studies. I went to take my math Praxis, and I'm sitting in this little quiet room, and these sweet ladies are on the outside of the glass, and you know you're not allowed to talk when you're taking those tests. Sure. You're, like, in your little cubicle. So I'm working through this test, working through this test, and I'm taking it at the end, and I fail it, this big test that's going to allow me to get my certification. Mm. And I fail it by just a very menial number, less than 10 points.

Vanessa Vakharia 7:59

Oh my God.

Lauren Keeling 8:00

And I was super disappointed, but I knew I could take it again. So I went back to my tutor, and we bought all of the Math for Dummies books and Ma- Praxis Math for Dummies books, and we studied through all of those. Probably in

Vanessa Vakharia 8:11

retrospect, like, not a good name, okay?

Lauren Keeling 8:12

Terrible name.

Vanessa Vakharia 8:13

I know.

Lauren Keeling 8:13

So we did all of those books, and I went back and I took that test again the second time, and I was really trying to focus my brain on, like, "You can do this. This is a really important thing to you. You have the skill," and I failed it again.

Vanessa Vakharia 8:24

Okay.

Lauren Keeling 8:24

By this time, the ladies in the, on the other side of the zoo glass are invested in what I'm doing as well, and they were disappointed for me. So I'm gonna do it again. I'm gonna do it a third time. We're gonna do all the same stuff over again. We're gonna keep practicing. I failed it by two points- Oh my

Vanessa Vakharia 8:39

God

Lauren Keeling 8:39

on the third time. I had one more chance to take it.

Vanessa Vakharia 8:43

This is so stressful.

Lauren Keeling 8:45

So

Vanessa Vakharia 8:46

stressful. Were you stressed in there?

Lauren Keeling 8:47

Yes.

Vanessa Vakharia 8:47

Okay.

Lauren Keeling 8:48

By the third time, I was, I was not, I was not well-

Vanessa Vakharia 8:52

Yeah

Lauren Keeling 8:52

taking that third test.

Vanessa Vakharia 8:53

I got it.

Lauren Keeling 8:54

Because the, the real life, the grown-up pressure was on this. Yeah. This was a career. I was making a huge shift away. I was taking a chance. I- this was the only way I could get a job to teach, is if I passed this thing. After all of that, on the fourth test, I did pass, and I barely passed, and I loudly celebrated in my quiet cubicle, in the space you're not supposed to talk, and the ladies outside the zoo glass celebrated when they saw my arms go up- Oh my God because we were just all living this moment that, like-

Vanessa Vakharia 9:19

Yeah

Lauren Keeling 9:20

here's this poor girl who has come in here 1,000 times and just keeps missing it by, by a mark. So all that to say, that was just another grown-up moment for me that proved, in my mind, that small thing that I knew that I was missing when I was doing that math, that if I could have just done it the way they taught me to do it and I didn't have to do all of the other stuff to get to that answer, I would've been quicker, I could've had more time to check my answers, and I probably would've passed. So there's a lot that's sort of knitted into that.

Vanessa Vakharia 9:53

Okay, love the Like, I don't love it, but, like, this totally makes so much sense.

Lauren Keeling 9:56

I believe that deep in my soul. Even knowing what I know today, even having the experiences I had today, teaching children math as a kindergarten teacher, working with teachers p- to pick and, and put out a curriculum in our district, even knowing all the things I know today, I still, in my soul, when I dig down deep and think about math for Lauren Keeling, there is only one way to solve that problem and you're not doing it right.

Vanessa Vakharia 10:17

It- this is so interesting, 'cause when I work with teachers, I often, like, I do a lot of talks around, like, defining failure and success, and I find educators c- very often will, like, have this d- idea of success for the people they lead, right? Either the teachers they work with or their students, and they'll be like, "Success is just, like You know, it's trying and failing. It's showing up. It's whatever." But their standard for themselves is always, like, completely different. Yep. Right? Like, and it definitely sounds like that for you, because off-screen or mic or whatever, you and I were talking, and you were saying that one of your deep core beliefs is that there are, like, multiple ways to learn things and do things, and even if in math you've gotta get to the one answer, there's so many ways you can do it and all of those are equally valuable. And now it seems like you're just, like, completely gaslighting yourself.

Lauren Keeling 11:02

But not for me. But not- Yeah, not for you everyone else in the world- Yeah. can have all the ways to get to mastery, but for me, nope, there's, there's one way and I don't know how to do it. Okay. So fast-forward, I got my, my licensure. I was hired thankfully, to teach third grade. And the books in third grade are amazing. They're so fun to teach. But do you know what else you teach in third grade?

Vanessa Vakharia 11:23

What?

Lauren Keeling 11:23

Fractions.

Vanessa Vakharia 11:24

Oh my God, do you love that? I hate it- Cool

Lauren Keeling 11:26

deeply.

Vanessa Vakharia 11:28

Yeah. So what happened?

Lauren Keeling 11:30

So I taught fractions, and I'm air quoting, I taught fractions.

Vanessa Vakharia 11:34

Why are you air quoting?

Lauren Keeling 11:35

Because I just had to read directly from the book because that was a style of math that I didn't understand until I started failing forward at cooking and using measuring cups. Fractions finally started, started to make a little bit of sense for me in my 30s when I was practicing it that way, which would've been a great strategy to bring into my classroom- Yeah, like

Vanessa Vakharia 11:53

I'm like-

Lauren Keeling 11:53

for the students so

Vanessa Vakharia 11:54

I don't wanna be, like, sarcastic and snippy, but I'm like, oh, wow, when you encountered the thing in real life and it was actually relevant- Amazing it made sense. Like, shocking.

Lauren Keeling 12:00

Not separate and apart and using strange-

Vanessa Vakharia 12:02

Wow

Lauren Keeling 12:03

things in a book. Yeah. Yeah. So as soon- I- Third grade, the children were wonderful, the books were great, fractions were horrible. I was panicked every day that I was destroying math futures for children because I myself was uncomfortable teaching fractions, and I felt like there was just no possible way that wasn't somehow seeping into a child in the classroom who also was finding it to be a little confusing and uncomfortable. And so I only spent one year in third grade, truly because pointing to, I just, I just could not torture myself through teaching fractions. Yeah. And I got out, and I started teaching kindergarten.

Vanessa Vakharia 12:33

There are probably a lot of teachers listening that feel the exact way- Mm that you felt in grade three.

Lauren Keeling 12:37

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 12:38

What would you tell those teachers? Like, would you tell them to... What, what would you say?

Lauren Keeling 12:42

It's hard as a first-year teacher to feel like you're doing good work- Yeah in any space because you're just figuring it out. And then it's also extra hard when it's something that you're not confident in yourself. And- If I separate myself from how Lauren Keeling felt, and I look at you as the administrator that I became, I would say, "We're gonna figure it out together." Oh. "And I'm gonna give you all the supports that you need, and I actually know a teacher just right across the hall from you who is really doing great work teaching children fractions and can maybe support you in this." As a grown-up who has had great people in her life and who has raised daughters and lived in the world, that what that person needs is just really what you're doing for me right here, providing an opening for them to talk about it and think about it and actually connect to what the real root issue is. And then how do we figure it out? You love third grade. Let's pretend that that's what it is. You love third grade. Oh, but I cannot- This is the space you wanna be in

Vanessa Vakharia 13:36

imagine teaching third grade, but yes.

Lauren Keeling 13:38

Yeah, there's a lot that's happening in, in and with third graders.

Vanessa Vakharia 13:40

No, but I love it. I love it so much. Yeah. Okay? So let's say you love it. I

Lauren Keeling 13:42

love large rooms of chi- little

Vanessa Vakharia 13:44

children.

Lauren Keeling 13:44

You're just... Yes. You, you love that. Tons of people are cut for third grade, and that's where they wanna be. The math is hard, and that's not gonna change. But you're smart. You're a teacher. You passed all these hard tests. You've done all of these things, and you have a really big heart for helping these children figure it out. So let's also have a really big heart for you figuring it out, and let your heart be big for yourself to figure it out. What kind of grappling work can we do to get there? How can I help you?

Vanessa Vakharia 14:11

I... We're gonna need, once this is done, for you to play ba- that back to yourself- to the grade, the third-grade teacher you were, and I wish someone had said that to you. But also, I fully support being like, "I don't wanna torture myself."

Lauren Keeling 14:25

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 14:25

We are adults.

Lauren Keeling 14:26

Yes.

Vanessa Vakharia 14:26

Okay? We get to choose now. We don't have to do anything we don't like. Yeah. Right? So, so you are, uh, uh, fully able to be like, "I actually... This..." Like, there are tons of things I do where I'm like, "I could do this- but it's gonna take a lot of work, and I don't wanna put in that work," or, "This is gonna make me miserable, and I don't wanna do it." Yeah. It doesn't mean I don't think I can do it, but I think that is a bit of the difference, and you as an administrator, and all the administrators listening to this who probably have teachers that they are leading who feel this way, I think this is really important to hear. You're not the only one who thinks this. This is one of the key arguments we will hear from students and from teachers. They will say, "It just didn't come naturally for me." But what I like the most about math is that it is a gateway into really highlighting how someone feels about themselves, and it is a gateway to changing the way somebody feels about themselves as a core identity shift. Like, I think math can do that because math is so weighted, and it gives people such visceral experiences, often negative- often so identity-based because we do use it as this identity piece, like you're either a math person or not- that we can use it to, like, leverage this incredible identity shift with people. Most of us learned that failure is really bad- at some point. Definitely failure in school is really bad. And so math was, like, this perfect storm for you- Yeah that has formed this childhood protector part, as, like, IFS would say, that now lives within you and wants to make sure you never feel that way again. But, like, the core story is untrue because your core story is, "Unless I do math in this specific exact way, I can't be good at it." "And, and if I'm not good at it, I'm a failure." In our society, math is the thing we associate with intelligence.

Lauren Keeling 16:19

Yes.

Vanessa Vakharia 16:20

Right? Like, we don't- Yes, absolutely call Picasso smart. We don't call LeBron James smart. Like, we call ma- Like, when you're good at math, you are smart.

Lauren Keeling 16:27

That's so true.

Vanessa Vakharia 16:28

I'm tr- I don't wanna make this gendered, but I am My master's thesis was called Imagining a World Where Paris Hilton Loves Math. And it is specifically about women and math. I-

Lauren Keeling 16:37

That's a fantastic title-

Vanessa Vakharia 16:38

Thank you- by the way so much. It was about media representation, you know, of mathematicians and of women, and how so many women self-select out of mathematics- because they feel like there's no room for their full identity to merge with the identity of mathematician.

Lauren Keeling 16:53

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 16:54

There is a lot of research around this. So it's not You know, I, I, I bring it up because women tend to be so much harder on themselves than they are with those around them, and this is a, a large reason we see a discrepancy when it comes to gender and mathematics- is because of a wh- a, a whole range of things here, but this being one of them, this idea of if you can't achieve perfection- then it means that you are a failure, and there is nothing worse than being a failure, so you stick to the things you're good at. Kids know that. They know that they are literally one wrong answer away from getting written off. And I hope you're seeing these major themes coming out. That math symbolizes so much more for us, right? It symbolizes what intelligence is.

Lauren Keeling 17:40

Yes. We just bought a house. We were talking all about mortgages, and numbers, and percentages, but I certainly didn't wanna have any hands in trying to actually do the numbers, and think about the numbers, and look at the numbers. It just, one, made me super nervous because what if I got it wrong? I just hated the fact that even if I were going to sit down and try to suss those numbers out and figure out what it might or could be, I could be wrong, and that could have given us a poor picture of what- Sure we were going to do, right?

Vanessa Vakharia 18:06

That's, like, an actual risk.

Lauren Keeling 18:07

Yeah. So there's- Yeah there are, there are real consequences connected to the math that I would be responsible for doing, or thinking through, or putting on paper and actually sharing today. And so when I say I feel indifferent, I feel indifferent because I'm just saying, "Okay, someone else can figure this out. I can put this on someone else's plate who is going to get it right because they are math smart, and I don't have to worry about the outcome." If I do it, we gotta worry about the outcome 'cause we're gonna have to look at it with a magnifying glass and have somebody else check my work, right?

Vanessa Vakharia 18:38

My goal with anyone, e- even with students, is like, I don't need you to like go into STEM or do math. I actually really do not care. I care that you believe that you could if you wanted to or needed to. That's actually what I care about. Like, like right now you're not in a position to be figuring out mortgages, right? Right. Like you like have math trauma from grade one. You don't like it. It sucks, and there's someone who can do it. So like, it's really, there's nothing... I don't want us feeling bad about that. Yeah. Like you don't need to be like doing your own math. It's like when somebody uses a calculator I'm like, "Don't feel bad about it." Yeah. "Maybe you just didn't feel like thinking about it in the moment." Like I don't care what you're doing, I just want you to know you're capable of doing it. Again, uh, when I was talking about my master's thesis, the, the big finding from that was that for young girls, like the girls that I was working at, in order to become math people it meant they had to shed the identity they had. For example, a lot of them were, were like cheerleaders. We have never seen a cheerleader represented as being good at math in the media. The two are the opposite. We all know the movie, right? Like you're either the cheerleader who needs like the like, uh, the, the smart girl to like help her with math, and then you give the smart girl a makeover and then she be- like whatever. So there was a very big identity conflict. These girls were great at math. They were getting 90s. They were getting As in my, my grade 10 classroom, but they were deter- they were like, "We are not good at math." And when we really dug down to it, it was kind of like this conversation we're having here. Yeah. Where like the proof, the evidence was that they were good at math. But it was like, but if they became good at math, did, did they have to let go of something else? Yes. Did it mean that they had to engage in different behavior? And I think we really disregard the identity. You know, we talk about math identity a lot. But I think we're missing a very key component of math identity which is how does math identity, like in the Venn diagram of identities, how does math identity intersect with our own identity? Mm. Is it diametrically opposed to it? What, what happens, right? Like math identity isn't just about math. Is, it's about what math means in relationship with all the other identities we hold.

Lauren Keeling 20:42

I, you have struck me speechless. Which has never happened-

Vanessa Vakharia 20:48

Okay, I

Lauren Keeling 20:48

know in the history of this podcast. Don't believe that.

Vanessa Vakharia 20:53

The problem is, what being a math person also means, whether we choose to accept it or not, is it means things like you don't like creative things. Like, think about every stereotype of what- Yes a math person. You definitely don't like music and the arts. You're a logical thinker. You're boring. You always get the right answer. You sit and study all the time. There's so many things the term means. So the problem is, I'm not surprised when you're like, "You know what? I kind of... Being not a math person is part of my core identity." I think that it's a really interesting question to ask because the question is, should we be pushing people to become a math person? Or is there, is it perhaps, counterproductive to our goal, which is to... Like, my goal is to show every single student that they can build an, a better relationship with math. It's for people to just feel capable and to be like, "Hey, you know what? I'm capable of more than I thought I was, including these fractions."

Lauren Keeling 21:53

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 21:53

But my agenda is not to be like, "No, you need to call yourselves a, yourself a math person." I, I hate labeling in general, so why are we now using this as a label?

Lauren Keeling 22:04

I don't have to become a math person to just be able to do math.

Vanessa Vakharia 22:08

Exactly.

Lauren Keeling 22:09

I even think about that from a school perspective, to release children from, and teachers from, are you this person or are you that person?

Vanessa Vakharia 22:19

Why are we doing that? Ew.

Lauren Keeling 22:22

And it's okay to like math, and it's okay to like reading. But to like those things does not make you that person.

Vanessa Vakharia 22:30

And to like those things doesn't mean all of a sudden you have to go into a STEM career.

Lauren Keeling 22:34

So what is it, Vanessa, that you do? What did I come here needing from you today?

Vanessa Vakharia 22:40

I, I mean, you should tell me that probably. It probably shouldn't be for you. But no, I think that, the number one thing people need in my experience is validation.

Lauren Keeling 22:54

Mm.

Vanessa Vakharia 22:55

They need to feel val- feel validated. They need to see that they're not alone. And the reason I like to always start opening the conversation, and whenever I do a talk I do this, I say, I, I frame it as I would like everyone to think about whether they've ever had a negative experience with math. That's my number one teacher move, and we did it here today. The reason that can be so groundbreaking for people is when they start talking about it, which you did, right? And I hope for you it's really empowering because it shows you that you were not born with these feelings. You developed these feelings, right? Emotions encode experience. When we have an experience that is very emotional, we remember that experience. It forms a memory that it's very hard to let go of. Neuroscience shows us that the percentage of people born with a natural aptitude for mathematics is so small. Like, like, you know when you think about like a prodigy or something like that? The It exists, but the percentage is so, so, so, so, so small, and other than that subset of people Math ability being something that you are born with, like nature versus nurture- the nature part of it, it is so, so, so small- in terms of its effect on your future math ability, and the biggest predictor of math ability is nurture. It's practice. Like, have you read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell?

Lauren Keeling 24:19

No.

Vanessa Vakharia 24:20

Oh my God, what? Okay, no, stop. Okay, we, like, just, this book, it's about, like, the most famous hockey players, the most famous mathematicians, the most famous mu- musicians, the ones that you would believe, like, they must have been born with an exceptionality, they're so good at it. And he did all this research and found that the one thing all of these people had in common, they had one thing in common, and the one thing they had in common was that they had all spent over 10,000 hours practicing their craft. Wow. So, and if you think about it that way, to put in 10,000 hours, it would help if you started at a young age. It's a lot of hours to put in, right? So often, it- we, we conflate nature and nurture because the conversation would be like, "Well, from a, from a young age, they were so good at this thing," but it would often be someone who was, like, tinkering with the piano when they, like, were three years old- or, like, you know, Eugenia Cheng talks about how her parents, like, would read her math stories at night. Like, instead of story time, they had math games. Like, so w- we have been shown time and time again that nurture plays a larger role, yet we love, we love the juicy story of people born with this crazy thing, and it also gives us an excuse- right? To be like, "Well, I just was born at a deficit."

Lauren Keeling 25:30

Yep. But it's just, it's not true. So tell me how this feeds into the work that you do.

Vanessa Vakharia 25:35

Okay. So I feel like I wrote Math Therapy after years and years and years of, you know... I, I think if you talk to most teachers, they're like, "Yeah, I'm doing therapy in the math classroom," right? Sure. Like, a lot of the work I'm doing is really therapeutic. so I wrote it after years and years and years, over 20 years of teaching and tutoring and working one-on-one with kids, and, Really realizing that the, the number one thing, I mean, I've had so many different types of students in this space, and the number one thing that makes a difference is actually not whether they're taught through the algorithm or not, or with worksheets or not. It's, I mean, those things matter, but the number one thing that mattered was actually the therapeutic element of interacting with them. It was doing stuff like this. It was having these conversations. It was h- it was so emotional. One of the biggest strategies is when somebody says they feel bad at math or they're not, they're not good at math, I often start arguing with them. I'll be like, "But you're doing math, but you do this. Like look, you took down the Christmas tree, like, that's math." And what I'll find is what they actually really mean is, "I wasn't good at school math."

Lauren Keeling 26:41

Mm.

Vanessa Vakharia 26:42

Like, "I wasn't good at the math that got graded, that got evaluated." So I wanna sit with you, and we're gonna actually do a little skills analysis. Okay. Okay? So I want you to name me math skills. Like, or, I, so here's the count. It's math skills or things that are math. So I'm gonna write the f- one thing on here. I'm gonna say mental math.

Lauren Keeling 27:02

Okay.

Vanessa Vakharia 27:03

Okay? Give me one.

Lauren Keeling 27:05

Uh, addition.

Vanessa Vakharia 27:06

Addition. Okay, great. I'm gonna say, baking

Lauren Keeling 27:14

Mm. Planting my garden

Vanessa Vakharia 27:16

What do, like, what do you do?

Lauren Keeling 27:18

Making my rows, figuring out the distances and the, the distances between each of my flowers that I'm planting- How

Vanessa Vakharia 27:23

do you do

Lauren Keeling 27:24

that? the depth of putting the bulbs in the ground. I,

Vanessa Vakharia 27:27

I use- Oh, like, do you use a ruler?

Lauren Keeling 27:28

I use non-standard measurement, my arm, but-

Vanessa Vakharia 27:31

But you-

Lauren Keeling 27:31

I told you I love non-standard measurement.

Vanessa Vakharia 27:33

No, but that's really good. Okay, plant-

Lauren Keeling 27:34

So yes, it's gardening, you know.

Vanessa Vakharia 27:37

Planting a garden. Now, if I had a student who felt bad at math, I would do this with them, and then I'd be like, "Okay, I would look up how these tied to the content I was teaching right now." Mm. So I'd be like, "Planting a garden. Here are all the units that I'm teaching this year. Tell me exactly how this ties in." Why would I do that? Because you, Lauren, are sitting here being like, "Yeah, I guess I do this math, but I didn't really qualify it as math."

Lauren Keeling 28:00

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 28:00

In your mind, I bet you're like, "It doesn't really count." And that is where we start seeing that it is not math the problem. It- that's the problem. It's the way we are treating math in a school setting that is ruining math for everyone. Yes. Like, you were never graded at this, and that is the only thing that counts. Okay, so now I'm gonna give you this. Okay. And I want you to, with this pink pen, I want you to circle, like, anything you feel good at.

Lauren Keeling 28:23

I feel good at?

Vanessa Vakharia 28:23

Yeah.

Lauren Keeling 28:23

Well, planting a garden is first.

Vanessa Vakharia 28:25

Okay. And you feel, like, satisfied after or

Lauren Keeling 28:27

something? I do. I feel really great after I plant my garden. Just the way that it looks like it fits in the space- Okay that's a real puzzle to me that I love putting together. Oh

Vanessa Vakharia 28:36

my God, you put puzzles on the list. Puzzles. Yeah. Okay. So I want us to look at this. So we have 19 items on here, and you circled one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. 11 out of 19. Hmm. Over a half of the things on here you circled, okay? I would now like you to look at this and ask yourself, do you believe everything you circled has some sort of mathematical component?

Lauren Keeling 29:03

I do.

Vanessa Vakharia 29:03

You've circled a lot of math stuff. And there's a lot of stuff you circled that I wouldn't be able to circle. Does this change in any way the way you feel about your math ability? And you can say no, I'm just curious, looking at all the math things you circled.

Lauren Keeling 29:15

It does because it's what I think, I don't think about sneaky math. So for me, sneaky math is where-

Vanessa Vakharia 29:23

I'm sorry, pardon?

Lauren Keeling 29:26

Sneaky math, where we're, where we're looking at angles and thinking about putting together, uh, my garden or arranging my furniture. I'm not actively working and manipulating numbers.

Vanessa Vakharia 29:39

Sneaky math.

Lauren Keeling 29:41

I don't mind putting my garden together because I don't actually have to come into contact with numbers when I'm doing it. Okay.

Vanessa Vakharia 29:47

I fully get what you mean, 100%.

Lauren Keeling 29:49

Measuring and baking is sneaky math. It's sneaky math. I didn't realize I was doing fractions until I had a moment where I thought, "Wait, three quarters of a cup is the same as a..."

Vanessa Vakharia 29:56

If we made more sneaky math, so can we call it implicit math just for what I'm gonna say? Sure. It's gonna sound like more of a mic drop. Okay, so if we made more implicit math explicit, more people would realize how much math they were doing and how good they were at it.

Lauren Keeling 30:11

Yes.

Vanessa Vakharia 30:12

Think about how much discussion we can now be having with kids. And kids are like, "Oh my God, well, I do this," and then just like we were, we're like, "Okay, well, what about this? And what... Okay, fine, if you're gonna say baking, I'm gonna say measuring." Now we're realizing how much math we're doing. For a lot of kids, and probably for you a little, you're like, "Okay, but it's not feeling like it's, I didn't say algebra, and I didn't say sine and cosine." So we wanna tie it to the things we're doing in our curriculum and the content we're teaching. We do wanna tie it in- and, and give it that language. That really helps. As we've established, on this sheet here, you have so many math superpowers that I don't have. And every single person has these latent math skills, these, sorry, implicit sneaky math skills- that are not necessarily brought to the fore. And part of what you were saying earlier is you felt like you weren't good at math 'cause you weren't doing it the way you were supposed to or the way other people do it. And what I want everyone to know is that is actually your math superpower.

Lauren Keeling 31:08

Mm.

Vanessa Vakharia 31:08

Is that when you're planning the garden, you're using your- You've made up this whole method, right? Like, you're doing, you have all these skills that not everybody in the class has. And in a classroom of students, you are gonna have kids who have all circled different things on this page, and that is not bad. That is the blessing in it, is to be like, "Guys, look, you guys all have these different skills. And in our room combined, we have, like, 30-plus math superpowers. We have all something different to bring to the table." It also create, helps create this collaborative environment where instead of kids competing to one another, you can be like, "Hey, you need help with that? Well, like, Sally circled this thing. Their, their math superpower is problem-solving. Go talk to them about this. Oh, you need help with counting? Didn't somebody..." Like, right? And so everyone is now not competing with one another, but realizing that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Mm. Okay, the last thing I wanted us to do is on your phone, give me your phone.

Lauren Keeling 32:02

Yes.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:03

Open up Duolingo. They have now added math as a language, okay? I see that. So add math to your thing. And great. So we're not... Do you wanna do a lesson right now?

Lauren Keeling 32:13

Sure.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:13

Oh, okay. We're now suddenly doing math. Okay, go for it. I'm not even looking. Okay, keep going.

Lauren Keeling 32:18

Okay.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:18

I think there's only a few. It'll take, like, one minute. Okay. But you do that. See how it goes, and I'm gonna- Tell

Lauren Keeling 32:23

me if this is a, while I'm working on this- Yeah maybe tell me, is this a practical strategy for-

Vanessa Vakharia 32:28

I have gotten-

Lauren Keeling 32:28

parents, teachers?

Vanessa Vakharia 32:29

The reason I love it is, is it's, so when we go into avoidance with math, like you were saying, you avoid math.

Lauren Keeling 32:35

I do.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:35

We're not gonna get better at something when we avoid it. That's just, like, how life works.

Lauren Keeling 32:40

I'm doing really well.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:42

Just, sorry, I can't hear my lo- my voice over all the loud bings and bops- happening from Lauren's mastery of mathematics right now. so it's three minutes a day, and it starts building confidence, and but more than that, it shows you, it rewires the thing in your brain that you have, which is, "When I do math, a horrible thing happens." Whether you get the answers right or wrong on the app, you're seeing that when you do math, a horrible thing does not happen.

Lauren Keeling 33:07

Actually, a really joyful thing happens.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:08

A joyful thing happens, and even if you get something wrong, you're just gonna try again the next day. When we have math anxiety, we get stuck in the anxiety avoidance cycle. And we are never gonna get out of it unless we break the cycle out of avoidance, which means we need to do some math, and it's a great way to do math. You are really crushing here.

Lauren Keeling 33:23

I'm really doing a great job.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:24

What is happening? Okay, we're almost done.

Lauren Keeling 33:26

Yep. I pulled something out of this that you just said- Yeah that Duolingo's doing. Math is a language.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:33

Well, I, right? Can, can I just tell you what they added? They added math and music. Those were the two new languages, and I was like, "Again- Yes this is a language issue." It is a language. It is. And it is okay for language to be hard to learn. Preach. And we're also now really-

Lauren Keeling 33:50

I think I'm done. I don't feel stressed because I...

Vanessa Vakharia 33:54

I mean, I'm done here. I'm finished.

Lauren Keeling 33:57

Well, I'm a learning legend.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:59

Is that what it says? Uh-huh. Okay, so every day, just do it for two weeks and see what happens. Can I just point out that you just not only did math, you did math while we're all actually kind of now impatiently waiting. At this point, we're on the third battery. I am staring at you. You actually were talking at the same time, and you're being recorded. You did not seem stressed.

Lauren Keeling 34:17

Landing on the fact that math is a language-

Vanessa Vakharia 34:20

That's crazy

Lauren Keeling 34:21

that we speak is a big deal for me personally as a learner, as a teacher, as a thinker. It lifts, releases, throws away, pushes out the window a lot of the pressure around just having to show up and be good at it because we don't expect anyone to show up and just be good at a language. We teach really explicitly and thoughtfully and with full hearts. It's the same with math. Math is a language. Should we just end with the Duolingo beep being like, "Good job"?

Vanessa Vakharia 34:53

Yay. Should we crown Lauren? Oh! There you go. There you go, the, the unicorn of understanding.

Lauren Keeling 34:59

Oh. I love it.

Vanessa Vakharia 35:01

There she is, our queen. Our math queen.

Lauren Keeling 35:05

Oh, I do love a crown.

Outro

Vanessa Vakharia 35:10

​Oh my God, guys. Was that not insane? I am dying to know what you think, so text the podcast now by hitting the link in your show notes. And I don't wanna say too much because remember, next week I follow up with Lauren to see how she's doing four months later. So put a reminder in your calendar for next Thursday at 6:00 AM EST, because you are going to want to be the first to hear this. Thanks again to Imagine Learning for letting us share this audio. Go check them out and the three-part Heart Work series on math anxiety. Link in the show notes. And guys, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and thank you for believing that everyone can build a happier, healthier relationship with math