After

As an elementary educator for nearly 30 years, I always taught mathematics. It was, for me, a matter of personal interest that my students move beyond the “I hate math” mentality toward finding problem-solving interesting and challenging and sometimes even enjoyable. So when I read about the kerfuffle happening in Florida this past week involving approved mathematics textbooks, the news caught my attention. One of the reasons given by Florida official when 41% of elementary school textbooks were rejected was that some of the texts addressed social-emotional learning.

I’m afraid I don’t understand the problem.

What happened with mathematics pedagogy over the course of my career can be characterized as remarkable. Oftentimes at the start of my career there was a pervasive sentiment of “I hate math” or “I can’t do math” or “I’m just not ‘good’ at math”. I know that was how I often felt as a student, and I know from many conversations with my students’ parents, that the ‘can’t’ sentiment was well-ingrained into generations of students. Sometimes even teachers would voice this sentiment.

What changed over time were approaches to mathematics seasoned with a little attirbution theory. And students gradually became more enthusiastic and positive about mathematics.

The approaches to teaching math that I found most effective often required the most teacher pedagogical preparation and skill. Those were cycles of lessons on which students constructed their own mathemtical conceptual meaning and learning. It takes time and some pedagogical self-control not to just hammer in the concept. It takes skilled guidance and time, especially wait-time.

Inquiry-based and rooted in solving problems that engaged students, sharing solutions and strategies in discussion should be on a par with computational accuracy, also known as getting the “right answer” (which, Gov. DeSantis, is NOT my definition of math). In listening to students explain their thought processes, as their teacher, I could then guide students to more efficient and traditional algorithms. To me, this is where the important stuff of learning math could be discovered.

Using the theory of Constructivism (see also Constance Kamii), students learn to understand why applying an algorithm makes sense. Many adults have been subjected to blind formulaic memorization (“Ours is not to reason why; just invert and multiply”), but often don’t know when or why to apply them (also known as incorrect answers, Governor DeSantis). My personal learning journey is aligned with this process: it was when I intuited the process of learning, when I created my own algorithmic sense, that I truly could understand mathematical concepts and apply them with accuracy and efficiency. In other words when a more efficient algorithm or formula was then explained to me and I could track that back to my own understanding, I applied those more standard algorithms correctly.

Controlling the parts of an emotional response to a challenge by shifting focus to what CAN be done when confronted with a task that is hard or challenging alters the outcome. This is the crux of attribution theory and one that I felt enabled students to persevere when confronted with a learning challenge, whether based in mathematics, science, literacy or even the arts.

In fact, directly teaching students that they are capable of asking for help, solving challenges by taking time or persevering is, in my opinion, lessons of far greater value than simply coming up with a correct computational answer. If such instruction is addressing “social emotional learning needs”, then let’s do it.

My suspicion, however, is that Florida’s rejection of certain textbooks has nothing to do with social emotional learning - or Critical Race Theory or Common Core standards, all given as reasons for rejection in Florida. The stated “reasons” for rejecting texts seem to play conveniently into conservatives’ agenda for dismantling public education and the false narrative of failing public schools.

If the real concern is for students to understand mathematics including computing a “right answer”, then allow educators to use materials that empower students to deeply and fully understand the mathematics.