Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math and What Teachers Can Do About It - Softcover

Strong, Sarah; Butterfield, Gigi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1956512187 ISBN 13: 9781956512182

Publisher: Times 10 Publications, 2022

Synopsis

Do your kids hate math?

Many students fail to understand the value of math, and some grow to hate it. Want proof? Read genuine letters students wrote to math, compiled by the authors in this Dear Math book.

Discover the root of this problem.

15-year veteran math teacher, Sarah Strong, and her high school student, Gigi Butterfield, address concerns about negativity around teaching and learning math and why kids hate math (at least some of them).

Digging into the feelings math evoked in hundreds of middle and high school students—that math is unnecessary, oppressive, and intimidating—the authors explore ways to spin student expressions of problem-solving unworthiness into an antidote for their disdain for math.

Using "Dear Math" letters, as well as other teaching math tools in this book, you can help students build a healthy and whole relationship with their inner mathematician.

Learn how to use the most important skill of all—listening—to help students and teachers discover:

• The empowerment of math
• The importance and usefulness of math
• How to help kids love math
• The beauty of mathematics in practice
• The journey from hatred of math, to appreciation of math and, in some cases, a lifelong relationship with math

What do letters to Math look like?

Read Dear Math today and uncover the feelings students are typically unwilling to share with teachers. And how to turn the negative into a positive.

About this title

About the Authors

Sarah Strong is the co-author of Dear Math. She loves hearing people's math stories. She has taught math to grades 6 through 12 at High Tech High in San Diego, and she also works for the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, teaching Math Methods and Advanced Math Pedagogy courses and supporting the new math teachers in the organization. She has led workshops on Project Based Learning in mathematics, student-centered assessment, and alternative grading systems. After designing and facilitating a project on math identity in 2017, Sarah grew interested in the ways students told stories about their experiences in math class. Ever since, she has been accumulating these beautiful stories and using them to design classroom experiences that center students wholly.

Gigi is the co-author of Dear Math. She is currently a screenwriting major at Loyola Marymount University and a former student of the Gary and Jeri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High in San Diego, California. She is recovering from her fraudulent fondness of mathematics and thrives in situations where she can explore math deeply and ask thoughtful questions of her peers and her teachers. Gigi has attended project based learning schools since the age of five and, even in college, is passionate about how PBL plays an integral role in revitalizing heavily antiquated math pedagogies.Gigi was captain of the basketball team, head of student ambassadors, leader of Model United Nations, a member of student senate, and a Jeopardy fanatic hoping to go into comedy writing. No better start to a comedy career than with a dissertation on the reimagining of math education!

Edition details

• Publisher: Times 10 Publications
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1956512187
• ISBN 13: 9781956512182
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264