Math Justice League Blog

Dear Math Justice League,

"I'm just not good at math." These words defined my early school years. In sixth grade, I was relegated to the back of the classroom with friends who shared my skepticism about our mathematical abilities. It felt like a silent protest against a system that seemed to reserve math prowess for a select few.

Raised in a household where hard work and perseverance were paramount, I absorbed the belief that success required relentless effort. Yet, alongside this invaluable lesson came an unintended message: "I'm not a math person." This notion echoed within my family and among peers, teachers, and mentors.

Through years of bumps and bruises, I began to see myself as a math person. I had my first Aha moment with Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) or “The Problem Solving Routine (PSR).” Teaching using the PSR method is hard; it requires teachers like me to relinquish learning control and allow students to lead the work. It requires that, as a practitioner, I know how my students think. Most challengingly, it requires me to allow my students to feel failure.  

So many of my students make minor calculation errors or struggle with stamina, such as being able to attend to a task through the zones of proximal development. I understood these skills as an ELA teacher, but these topics should have also been discussed in the math world. See, when you think you are not a math person, it is usually because of trauma around mistakes. I was now at a school with a math coach who supported me in understanding that mistakes are where learning happens. She also had high expectations about my understanding of my content. I learned about productive struggle and how to infuse that with executive functioning. 

By 2022, I was a new middle school math teacher and had my second Aha moment. I was at the stage where I could see how the early learning of math practices set the stage for the deeper abstract learning of middle grades. At this point in my career, where I am excited about teaching math more than ever, I have a few tips that have helped me grow exponentially; see what I did there!

1. Make sure that you are a learner first. Allowing myself the grace to see myself as a learner takes so much pressure off of me needing to know everything. My students know that for every unit, I spend hours practicing the math. This helps them understand that there is no end point; even their teacher is still learning.

2. Mistakes are where the learning happens. I love starting the new year with some of the most challenging tasks. I explain that I believe my students can, and when they are at the cusp of frustration, I stop them and roll out “Productive Struggle.” I make connections to their lives as athletes, musicians, and crafters. If you spend hours practicing for football or piano, you will want to do the same in math. And guess what? You will fail and make mistakes; as you do in sports and arts, you learn from your mistakes.

3. Reframing your family's mindsets around math is critical! At the start of the year and the beginning of every unit, I talk to families about what we are learning, why we are learning it, and how families can help. Having a mindset that every parent and guardian wants their child to be successful in math means I am always looking for ways to engage my family in math practices at home.

I work hard daily to support students who are scared of math. I am most successful with kids who are avoidant to math practice and helpful to parents who say, “I know the old math." I can say, Parents, was math easy for you? If it wasn’t, I want you to understand that Math is accessible to all kids—even us who think “We aren’t math people.” We know that math is challenging, and we have been conditioned to believe that only some people are good at it, but if we take a different approach to our thinking, we can help everyone see that we are all brilliant learners.

I now understand that I am, have always been, and will always be a math person!

In Crew,

Sarena Griffin

5/6th grade crew leader

Polaris Charter Academy in Chicago, IL