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Particularly with my intervention students, we often have conversations about how we sometimes get in the way of our own learning. We talk about how we’re too afraid to ask questions (everyone else gets it, dumb question, etc) or how we’re afraid to try a problem and get it wrong so we sometimes do nothing. We talk about reaching out to classmates, how to help each other, how it’s okay to try even if we aren’t sure we’re right, etc.
Heck, I have these conversations with my honors students, especially when they’re getting stuck or frustrated.
Math might be the language we use to codify patterns and algorithms, but learning is very much rooted in our mindset and our emotional state. We 100% should be talking about confidence, failure, perseverance, sensitivity to others, and support networks in math. For so many students at the high school level, one of the biggest obstacles to learning math is the mental blocks that have built up over time.
Social emotional learning is needed. I teach social skills to a growing number of kids every day. They don't know how to create relationships or find kids that have similar interests, leading to them getting depressed and needing outside counseling. The vast majority of parents are not involved in their kids education of basic life skills so the school system has to pick up the slack. Or guess what?...they get trashed when a kid graduates and uses bullying throughout school as reasoning to kill others. Can we just all agree these classes, books, etc don't harm children? They don't. If anything they help connect them as humans in a growingly disconnected impersonal world.