The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Fostering Joy and Curiosity in Mathematics: A Conversation with Naneka Brathwaite
Have you ever thought about finding joy in mathematics? We're changing the game in this enlightening discussion with the remarkable Naneka Brathwaite, a National Director at Curriculum Associates. This episode tackles an often-ignored topic—math trauma and the need for cultivating joy and curiosity in math classrooms. You'll be fascinated as we uncover insights on how to reframe math, nurture curiosity, and foster a culture of risk-taking. Math can be a joyful journey, and we're thrilled to share some strategies and mindset shifts that can make that happen. Don't miss out—join us in this important conversation!
Read Naneka's Blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/joy-in-math
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Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!
Curriculum Associates presents The Extraordinary Educators Podcast with hosts Danielle Sullivan and Sari Laberis. Hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you, hey, everyone,
Danielle Sullivan:Hi everyone, it's Danielle. Welcome to The Extraordinary Educator Podcast. And on today's episode we have another one of my colleagues, Naneka Brathwaite. She is one of many national directors at Curriculum Associates and she is such an expert in math, all things math, equity in math, and today we're talking about joy in mathematics.
Sari Laberis:Yes, and if you were someone who didn't find joy in math growing up, this episode is for you as you think about going back to school and teaching math to your students this fall. Nanika provides a lot of really great strategies and mindset shifts and ways that you can explore really fostering joy in your math classroom. So we hope you enjoy our conversation with Nanika. Welcome to Nanika, it is so great to have you here!
Naneka Brathwaite:Hi Sari, and Danielle.
Danielle Sullivan:Doing well, we're so excited to have you on the podcast and you just recently wrote a blog about joy in mathematics. And I would love to start with why are you thinking about joy in mathematics? What started your journey about this?
Naneka Brathwaite:Well, I personally love mathematics. I did enjoy learning it as a child. As a student I excelled in it at all levels. But I know that everyone else's experience wasn't the same and I can also say that I didn't necessarily enjoy my math classes growing up. So I think it helps to love the subject already, because I think it just really came to me pretty naturally, because I always used to look for patterns and things and numbers. So I've always been just kind of inquisitive and curious about the way numbers work. But even though I excelled in it, I can't say that I enjoyed math. And there are a lot of people who also didn't enjoy math, but they also didn't excel in it and it has a lot to do with the trauma that they experienced growing up in math class, right.
Danielle Sullivan:Yeah, let's dig into that a little bit. On the podcast we've talked a little bit about math trauma, but from your perspective, you tell us what you define as math trauma and what do you think is causing that.
Naneka Brathwaite:So I think there was a time, and I can remember, when even I as a teacher, first starting out, really valued getting right answers, correct answers from students, and didn't necessarily give them an opportunity to explore or to talk about the different ways that they see a problem, the different ways that they may solve a problem. Oftentimes our teachers and I might be aging myself here, because my hope is that in recent decades this has changed a little bit but growing up it was just kind of like I do, we do you do type of thing right, and a teacher was the star of the show. The teacher showed you what to do, how to solve the problem. You had no idea why this algorithm worked, but you just knew if you kept doing it over and over again. Of course, if you knew your multiplication tables, it made it a lot easier, but it was just like why does regrouping actually work? What are you actually regrouping? You may not even realize that you're regrouping 110 as opposed to just one.
Naneka Brathwaite:So all of these things didn't really ever get explained to me as a child, and I know that if, even though I did well in math, if there were students who weren't as well versed or as equipped to get the hang of place value. They wouldn't quite understand it, so that algorithm made no sense, and because it made no sense, they often got it wrong. So I just think that a lot of us have experienced classrooms that way. Even when you got it right, it seemed like that was valued and maybe another student was on the right path but been given an opportunity to talk to another student in the class. Maybe that would have helped them clarify their understanding a little bit better, instead of them just kind of getting shut out because they got the answer wrong.
Sari Laberis:Absolutely and really get that deeper conceptual understanding I have just ingrained in my head. Forever carry the one, and I didn't actually realize what I was doing, what that little one was, until I started teaching math. Because for that exact reason, right. And so I'm curious, based on all of your travels working with educators and your expertise, and as teachers head back to school and they're starting off the year, what are some things that teachers can do in the classroom with their students to hopefully avoid their students experiencing their math trauma and really instill that love of math that you have?
Naneka Brathwaite:Well, I think a lot of self-reflection needs to take place. They need to really think about what their math experience was. There are a lot of teachers especially in K5, that are math averse. They don't feel comfortable teaching math and it goes back to some of those traumatic experiences that I just described. But it's also because they didn't quite understand the concept, Like you said, Sarah. Maybe they didn't get it until they started teaching it and had that information broken down to them.
Naneka Brathwaite:So I feel like what teachers need to think about is, if they didn't enjoy their experience in math class, do they want to continue giving their students a similar experience, or do they want to foster more joy in the classroom by giving them opportunities to have discussions, to even be able to share with each other or in a whole class discussion, a different way that they may have gone about solving a problem, so that other students can now say maybe I'm willing to take a risk to try this way that my classmates just showed us. I never even thought of doing this. It seems like a cool way to do it. Oh, wow, I get it now, because I never saw it that way before. Until you know, I don't know, maybe my classmates' name is Paul or something, until Paul showed me this cute, like really cool, way to set up an array to get an understanding of multiplication. I mean, there's so many different things out there. How can we limit our students to just the way that we learned it or the way that we'd solve it? And that's a big problem for parents while they're working with their kids at home with math, because they learned it this way, Carry the one, how come you're not doing that? What's this? Make a 10 business right? So it's really giving teachers opportunities to self-reflect and know.
Naneka Brathwaite:Okay, I don't want my students' experience to be what mine was meaning. If it was a bad experience, obviously. If it was a great experience, they're wonderful, but let's think about what wasn't happening in our classrooms many years ago and what we'd love to see happening. So oftentimes I ask my fellow educators hey, what are three things that you would say that you want for your dream classroom? What are three words that you would use to describe it? Fun, engaging. Another one that came up oftentimes were fun, engaging and loud. Well, if you want it to be loud, that's because you're allowing discussion to take place. But some teachers are afraid, even though they want those kinds of classrooms they're not always able to like. They relinquish the control of allowing students to have that experience in class.
Danielle Sullivan:Right, they're nervous. They're nervous, like you just said, relinquish the control. So I want us to dig in a little bit about the operationalization of joy in math classrooms, because research points to if students are enjoying something, if students are having fun, it'll deepen their learning. Based on your blog, one of the points you said shared was around rich conversations around mathematics. What is a framework or a methodology that teachers can think about to encourage more math discussions in their classrooms?
Naneka Brathwaite:Well, one of my favorites would be the try, discuss, connect teaching and learning framework Giving students an opportunity to enter into a problem in a way that is most accessible for them, most comfortable for them. I just don't want us to think that it's all about the destination and not the journey that it takes to get there. So it's about giving students an opportunity to really try a problem first before showing them hey, this is how I would solve it, right? So I'm giving some of that control and giving it to them, giving them an opportunity for a few minutes at the beginning of looking at this problem. Let's make sense of this problem together. Now that we've made sense of it, I want you to try and solve it and then, of course, be able to justify why you did it this way. Even if you're a little stuck, it's okay.
Naneka Brathwaite:Why did you start this way? Because maybe now, when you move into that discussed portion of the framework, you can share your ideas with someone else and they might actually be able to help you get out of that little stumble that you made. Maybe you just did something very minor that someone else will catch, because oftentimes it's hard for us to catch our own mistakes, but someone else can say hey, I know what you did, you did that a little bit differently. Maybe this is something that you could try, just giving them an opportunity to have those discussions before seeking the teacher's approval of how they saw that problem. And then, of course, the teacher is then required to help them make those connections.
Naneka Brathwaite:What are some things that you noticed that you did that maybe your partner, your shoulder partner, didn't do. That might work or not work. Is there a strategy that you've learned that you're like, hey, maybe I'll try that. Moving forward, it's really giving them an opportunity to make the connections between the concrete, the presentational, the abstract, and not just jumping into an algorithm that doesn't necessarily make sense. They memorize it but they don't really know how it works. And I think that engaging thing that you're talking about with kids a lot of it is because they want to learn or they want to know how something works.
Sari Laberis:Great and thinking about everything you just said. This is going to be so helpful for them just in life. Forget about math class, right, the teacher's not going to be there to do I do, we do, you do, when they're calculating a tip, or in college or whatever it is, and so just thinking about, like, the problem solving skills and the confidence to take that risk or that challenge. So, anyways, thank you so much, anika, for being here. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today, but we really appreciate your insights and everything you shared. Thank you so much for having me.
Danielle Sullivan:It's been great talking with you and listeners. If you want to learn more, please check out Anika's blog, and if you want some resources on the framework that Anika was talking about, we do have a website, wwwmathdiscoursecom. We will link it in the show notes, where you can find a lot of free resources to help your students talk in math. Thanks so much, anika.
Sari Laberis:Bye. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, at curriculumassoch, and on Instagram at myirety. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you, join the conversation. Please leave a review.
Danielle Sullivan:Remember, be you be true, be extraordinary.
Danielle Sullivan:The Extraordinary Educator Podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atzity Hannan, guest booking by Sarri LaBeiris, production by Haley Browning. The podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.