Did you know that math anxiety affects 93% of US Americans?* Considering this, why isn’t math anxiety more openly discussed? Surely being bad at math is joked about, but why aren’t teachers more informed in identifying and helping students work through math anxiety? 

Math anxiety causes emotional and physical distress when students do math. The anxiety freezes the mind, blocking students from remembering and piecing together information they have learned.

One study** found that math anxiety is linked with negative experiences with math in early education, such as overly critical teachers, pressure to perform, or being ridiculed for mistakes. 

Math Anxiety, a dread of math, that can manifest in the following ways:

• Physical Reactions:  feeling tense, sweating, or having a racing heartbeat 
• Avoidance: Skipping math homework, avoiding math classes, or dreading math tests.
• Negative Self-Talk: Thoughts like “I’m just not a math person” or “I can’t do this.”
• Emotional Reactions: Experiencing frustration, helplessness, or even fear when dealing with math.

How to Combat Math Anxiety

• Effective practice. Become overly confident in the content. Be able to do it in your sleep. This way, the process will come naturally despite the anxiety. 
• Pray (or meditate) before the exam. Ask God to call to mind any information which will be useful. He hears our prayers. 
• Complete ten minutes of expressive writing before the test where you address the sources of worry and the potential negative consequences. This helps you see the full picture and interrogates the need to worry in the first place. (Ramirez and Beilock, 2011; Park et al., 2014). Also, by writing down your worries, you free up space in the working memory— a function that allows you to synthesize information in the short term.
• Attend tutoring sessions. As a tutor, I strive to be your biggest cheerleader and mentor. I provide personalized attention, lots of practice, and a safe space to ask questions. This can give you confidence that will conquer your math anxiety. Additionally, If students are willing, I will also use Sarah Strong’s approach:
  • Unpack the “why” behind students’ dread of math. Sarah Strong, an amazing Math teacher at High Tech High, has her students write “Dear Math…” letters at the start of the school year, and I think this is a wonderful idea. Through the letters, students express all their feelings toward math– from explaining how satisfying (or frustrating) math is to questioning why math even exists. Like a therapist helps patients combat a mental illness by analyzing their past and helping heal broken areas, a math educator must provide the freedom to express triggers when it comes to math anxiety, to then allow students to heal. Strong explains, “Mathematics classrooms are an easy space to become ‘one story.’ There is a math problem, there is a way to solve it, everyone tries it and does well or doesn’t, and then we move on to the next problem. Dear Math letters hold space for and give voice to all the different math stories in the room. They allow healing for those with traumatic math stories and encourage the co-creation of stories that are whole and complete.”
  • Recognize students’ negative experiences with math and help them work through them. This varies from student to student. Take for example, a student who believes that math is “useless.” In this case, I will be intentional about connecting concepts to real world situations. After a lesson, I might ask the student if what we did felt valuable, and we will talk through that. Another example is a student that feels like math is “impossible.” With this student I will break problems down into simple steps, and praise success at each stage. This encouragement and simple approach allows the student to feel successful. 

It is time to raise awareness about math anxiety and the potential solutions. Addressing this issue can transform how students perceive math, leading to a generation of confident problem-solvers who will drive the technological and scientific breakthroughs that shape our future world.

* Blazer C. Strategies for Reducing Math Anxiety [Information capsule] 2011. [Accessed February 19, 2018]. 1102. Available from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED536509

**Dowker A, Sarkar A, Looi CY. Mathematics anxiety: What have we learned in 60 years? Front Psychol. 2016;7:508.