Professor Joan Smeltzer invited me to her Math 21 and Math 4 sections last Friday to present resilience information to the students. It was a very timely talk at this point in the semester as students are getting tired and feeling especially vulnerable if math isn’t their strong suit.

I geared the presentation toward math specifically and included Dweck’s work on mindset as students often think of themselves as “not being good at math.” So we challenged those assumptions and asked them to consider changing their mindset to include the following::

From this mindset to….	To this…
1.Being good at math means doing as well as others 2.Being good at math means learning it should come easily 3.If I have to work hard at it all the time, it means I’m not good at it 4.Being good at math means getting the right answer	Struggle is a NORMAL part of learning With EFFORT and the RIGHT STRATEGIES everyone can improve beyond their CURRENT ability BELIEVING THAT MATTERS The RIGHT answer isn’t always as important as the LEARNING PROCESS You can IMPROVE from where you are now Don’t say, “I’m not good at math,” say “I’m not good at math YET.” or I’m getting better at math every day!

Found a really useful article on math resilience highlighting the challenges that even those who are math majors face!

WARD-PENNY, R., JOHNSTON-WILDER, S., & LEE, C. (2011). EXIT INTERVIEWS: UNDERGRADUATES WHO LEAVE MATHEMATICS BEHIND. For the Learning of Mathematics, 31(2), 21-26. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41319562

I also had a chance to update the presentation in terms of student engagement – added this activity(Strategies Cup) as a metaphor for the work we can do all the time to strengthen our overall inner resources and have solidified this approach which seems to make sense at this point: