Overcoming Math Anxiety Essay Sample

In elementary school, I was not the best at math. I struggled to catch up to the other students and how fast they were learning information. However, I did receive extra help and was able to catch up to my classmates. In middle school, I was able to keep up with my classmates and started to enjoy math. In high school, I did not have the best math teachers which impacted my mathematical career. However, I was still able to get good grades and I received extra help after school which was very beneficial. 

Once I got to college, I have struggled a lot with the math classes I have taken so far. The main struggle I have with college math is how fast-paced the classes are compared to high school. Furthermore, in high school, if the class was not understanding new information that was taught, the teachers would reteach it again. This has not happened in any of the math classes I have taken in college so far. I do not think this could happen often in math classes in college because of how fast-paced they are compared to high school. I know that college math classes are fast paced because they must teach a lot of information in a short amount of time however, I am used to it yet. 

In math class, students build on information that has been previously learned. For me and I believe other students, it can be hard to get caught up when previous information was not fully understood. For me, I feel like I am always trying to catch up when learning math which has impacted my mathematical career. It has made me not enjoy math as much as I used to. Furthermore, not fully understand old information does not make me want to learn new information because then I will have to catch up even more. Overall, I just hope I can get used to the fast-paced math classes in college so I can start enjoying math again. 

Before reading the article, I did not realize how many teachers struggle with math anxiety. Furthermore, I did not know math anxiety was a thing that people struggled with. I have heard of testing anxiety which I have struggled with but not math anxiety before. Honestly, reading the article made me sad for all the teachers struggling with math anxiety because it must be hard wanting to be able to teach their students math, however having anxiety while doing it. 

I learned that a teacher’s attitude and mood towards math can affect the way their students feel about math as well. Furthermore, the article tests this hypothesis which turns out to be true. This just proves how much impact teachers can have on their students, good or bad. It is so important that teachers do not have a bad attitude towards math and show that to their students. If they do, it could affect the student’s relationship with math for the rest of their lives. Once again this made me feel bad for the teachers with math anxiety. I bet a lot of those teachers do not want their relationship with math to affect their student’s relationship with math. However, it can. 

Furthermore, one other point I have taken away is that teachers with math anxiety may be less likely to employ process-oriented teaching practices that send a message to students that all are capable of being good at math. Once again, I was surprised about how much a teacher’s math anxiety can affect the students. Not only can it make them have math anxiety and a dislike towards math but, it can also make them feel like they are not capable of being good at math. This fact is very disheartening because it is part of the teacher’s job to be encouraging and to make the students feel like they can do hard things, like math can sometimes be. Teachers need to be aware of how they are teaching math. Teachers need to teach math in a way that is understandable and make students feel like it is something they can accomplish. Overall, this article was eye-opening. It is one thing for math anxiety to affect teachers however when it starts affecting students and their future, there needs to be changes made to combat math anxiety within teachers. 

The main way I am going to combat math anxiety in my future classroom is by being prepared. I believe part of teachers’ math anxiety comes from a lack of confidence in their ability to do math. Therefore, I will try to be the most prepared for the math concepts that I will be teaching. To accomplish this, I will make read over the math concepts that I am teaching multiple times to fully understand. Furthermore, videos online can be a helpful resource as well. Preparing to teach a new concept to students by refreshing my memory from watching videos online could be helpful to combat math anxiety. 

Another way to combat math anxiety is by always being aware of my attitude and thoughts when thinking about teaching math. If I always have a negative outlook on teaching math, the lesson is most likely not going to go very well. Furthermore, my future students will be able to see the difference between my moods with teaching a subject I am confident in and a subject that I am not confident in teaching.

Another way I will try to combat math anxiety in my students is by being honest with them. Before teaching a harder math lesson, I would state that this is a harder math lesson. However, the most important part is I will tell them that it is okay if they do not fully understand it right away and that they are fully capable of learning it. In elementary school, I remember one of my teachers would tell my classmates and me to say “I can do and learn hard things” before learning a lesson that was more difficult in a subject. I will do this with my students as well because it helps give them the confidence to learn new material and it shows them that you have confidence that they can accomplish it. I believe that is one of the main things I could do to combat math anxiety, by consistently reassuring my future students that they are capable of learning hard things and by doing this hopefully it would help any math anxiety I have as well.