It’s probably not a great start for my first Early Math Counts Blog entry to tell you all that used to dislike math. Like, really dislike it. I can still feel tears of frustration welling up while my face got hot when I couldn’t finish all the questions on a math test before the class period ended. I can see the the words in my math textbooks getting fuzzy in front of me as I tried to make sense of them, even though I was a gifted reader.

You can imagine that as a Child Development Professor at Truman College, I agreed to teach our Math and Science for Young Children course with a bit of reluctance. But this is a success story, this is a story about why that course is now one of my favorite courses to teach. Throughout the next four weeks, I’ll be telling you about what I believe is the power of teaching math to young children and the special charge we have as early childhood educators and care providers.

Leslie Layman instructing professional development students about the relationship between tinkering and math skills.

You have within your hands the power to prevent children in your care from experiencing those hot tears of frustration and self doubt. Like most stories in early childhood, this one starts with relationships and self reflection. You have to know your children well enough to identify their strengths and weakness and support them with rich opportunities that support both. You also have to respect young children enough to want to empower them with knowledge and experiences, even if you never had them yourself.

Truman College students built different the sized beds from the fairy tale, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

For me, the ability to understand, teach, and even take joy in math started with a critical look at myself and what I was bringing to the table. I could not lay all of the blame on my math struggles on my teachers. When I looked closely I saw that I had expected math to come easily to me because reading had. When it did not, I became frustrated and at times gave up rather than embracing an interesting challenge. I also saw that part of the reason that I didn’t enjoy math as I did other subjects was because I was searching desperately for a why. When I looked again as an adult, the why was there all along. Math explains millions of whys in the world around us: why do certain instruments make certain noises, why do certain blocks make stronger structures than others? Math is a shared language to describe the wonders of why and how the world fits together the way that it does.

Professional development students doing a loose parts activity that focuses on sets and sorting.

Once I had taken this critical self-reflection journey I could see what my purpose was as a Child Development Professor teaching Math for Young Children to early childhood professionals. That’s when I began to love teaching math. Like, really love it. I realized as math-phobic educator, I had a special gift. A gift of compassion and understanding for people for whom math does not come easily and a gift of awe and respect for those for which it does. I could use that gift to find the magic and the why in math instruction and pass that on to others. So this is a success story, and a call to action for all my math-phobic educators out there. You have the power to interrupt the cycle of math phobia. You are specially equipped to support young children who doubt themselves and struggle. We know from research that one of the most important indicators of children’s success in math  is the attitude of their teacher toward math (Ernest, 1989). Someone very important to me says if something scares you, run towards it. This is your charge.

References

Ernest, P. (1989). The knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of the mathematics teacher: A model. Journal of education for teaching, 15(1), 13-33