Anyone who knows me knows that I can talk for a zillion hours about the negative effects of math anxiety and stereotype threat.  However, when I work with schools, the feeling is that only math teachers would or should be interested in the topic.  I passionately disagree.  We should all care that 93% of our country identifies as hating math or being bad at it, or that somehow as a culture we won’t admit that we can’t read, but we’re AOK with (almost proud of) saying we can’t do math.

Regardless of whether you personally see math as valuable or not, we should ALL care when students feel beaten down by a subject, especially when a collaborative approach to a solution is likely the only one that will work.  I want my children to feel like they can do math, even if they eventually choose to pursue a career outside of the STEM industry.  And outside of any potential career, I want them to understand mortgages, balance a budget, and calculate a tip.  So I sincerely hope that tomorrow’s talk is as multidisciplinary as possible.