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Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.

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This podcast is presented by Educalc Learning and I am your host, Dr. Honora Wall.

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And today I wanted to talk about my first math student.

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I had a parent ask me recently how I got started in this work and what made me focus

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on dyscalculia and students who are really struggling.

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And I thought about my students, current students and a few years back students and the first

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one diagnosed with dyscalculia and using that understanding to think about students I worked

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with before I had ever heard of this math learning disability.

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But honestly the more I went back I realized that my first math student was me.

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The first person I worked with who had no math experience and a terrible attitude about

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themselves as a mathematical thinker was myself.

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The story is that I was an adult, I had two kids, I was going through a divorce and I realized

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that I needed to take control of my finances, my taxes honestly were the catalyst.

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I needed to do my own taxes and that meant I needed to understand my finances and that

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meant I needed to do math.

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And this brought up an absolute panic.

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I had never been seen as a good math student in school.

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I do not have dyscalculia because my understanding of time and working with money and directions

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is fine and my ability to retain math information I've learned over time is fine.

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So those are some of the signs that I know I don't have dyscalculia.

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However my anxiety and really trauma from my K-12 math experiences was so intense that

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the idea of getting into math in any way shape or form was overwhelming.

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My oldest child was in fourth grade at the time.

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So I took his previous textbook, third grade math textbook, we still had lying around the

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house that we had not returned to the school yet.

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And I said that's it, I'm just going to fix this.

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I am too old to still have this hanging over me and I'm going to jump in and just figure

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this out.

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So I sat down with page one of that math textbook and I started working my way through it.

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I would love to tell you it was super easy and painless and next thing you knew I was

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doing math like a genius but that would not be a true story at all.

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It took a very long time mostly because I would cry.

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As I was working it was such an emotionally charged experience.

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I think that's something a lot of teachers and sometimes parents don't really understand.

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For students who are struggling it's very emotionally distressing to feel like there's

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something that you keep working at and you just can't do it.

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Today when I'm working with students of any age that emotional piece is something we absolutely

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address.

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There's a lot of positive reinforcement, there's a lot of reframing, belief systems, there

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is a lot of psychology involved in this work.

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Now for a general education teacher not specializing in learning disabilities you might not have

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to incorporate that kind of social emotional learning and that sort of understanding of

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psychology into your work.

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I would encourage you to try it because I think you'll be amazed for any and all students

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how much a little bit of positive reinforcement really focusing on their successes and reframing

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their belief systems can increase their performance in your class and throughout all of their other

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classes because we all need to feel like we can be successful.

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So when I was going through this math book in the beginning I was not feeling successful.

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I really had to work to feel that this was something I could do.

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A lot of it came through practice problems, doing them over and over again.

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The instructions in the textbooks sometimes helped, sometimes didn't.

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This was before YouTube and before the plethora of resources that we have today.

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But I struggled through.

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And two things happened.

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When I would answer a math problem correctly and think to myself well that's got to be

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the wrong answer because I figured it out pretty fast and it seemed easy.

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And then I would look and it was the right answer.

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And I would say wait a second what just happened?

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All I did was make this one small change and everything clicked and now it's right.

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I have to tell you my initial emotion at that point in time was anger.

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A lot of anger and irritation at every math teacher I had had in my life because no one

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ever said oh you know what you're doing this and just do that instead.

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If someone had seen exactly where my mistakes were, pointed them out and corrected me right

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away.

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It could have been an entirely different story and I could have been helping more students

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from a much earlier point in time.

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So that is my second message to my fellow educators.

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First is you've got to really address that positive psychology and that emotional piece.

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It means more than you know.

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And second you've got to really look and see what your students are doing and tell them

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oh you're doing this and I just want you to do that instead.

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Little tiny tweaks make all of the difference.

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The same way a very small difference in slope creates an entirely different line.

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Over time a small change in slope creates an entirely different graphed line.

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And over time fixing or not fixing small mistakes makes an incredibly huge difference in math

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performance.

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So those were the first two things that I found.

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One was that I needed to work through the emotions of all of the negative math experiences

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I had had and I do find that to be very true with my students today.

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We have to do that piece because they really beat themselves up and have a lot of self-blame

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over their math performance and we have to address that.

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The second thing is that fixing the mistakes was much easier than I thought it was going

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to be.

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And never having someone look closely at what I was doing and fix my mistakes when I was

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younger made a negative difference in all of my math performance until I got in there

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and fixed those mistakes.

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So the sooner you can really sit down with a student in the classroom or in a tutoring

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experience or when you're taking students out for intervention time, really looking

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at exactly what they're doing, having them explain their steps to you so you can see

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where they go off the rails and then getting them back on track.

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That little tiny bit of work, that's where all of the future mastery comes from.

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That's how I've been able to take students and raise them through three years of math

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and get them on a grade level work because we fixed the tiny things and then their foundation

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was truly solid.

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That's how I've been able to take students who have had very low standardized test scores

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and within one year of working with them, their scores on national standardized math

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test increase.

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And I'm not usually there when my students are taking these other tests.

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I work with students in the classroom teaching remotely and I work with students in a tutoring

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session.

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But when they take their math tests, either in the classroom or state mandated test, Iowa

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test of basic skills, SAT and ACT test, I'm nowhere near.

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They're doing all of that work on their own and I've seen the success translate into those

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test taking situations.

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So don't obsess about the test performance.

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I know that's hard because as educators that's where we get a lot of our performance evaluations

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from, how are our students testing.

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But if you want that kind of result, you don't look at that part.

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You go back to the individual performance and the small areas where students are off track.

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Fix those and you'll see huge differences elsewhere.

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And then the third thing that happened to me as I was going through this process was

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that I was fixing my belief system.

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I was experiencing success.

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I was surprised at how easily I was starting to get things and then I came to word problems.

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I am not afraid or ashamed to tell you that I had a huge setback when I started to teach

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myself how to deal with word problems.

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There were weeks of tears and hours of sitting with elementary school textbooks.

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And facing those word problems was daunting.

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And I'm a big reader.

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I love reading.

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I always have.

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But man, did I hate those word problems.

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And figuring out what the question was asking of me was very difficult.

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And changing my understanding of myself as a person who could approach a word problem

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in math was very difficult.

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I'm happy to say I pushed through.

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They were a terrible couple of weeks.

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It was really awful.

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But I persevered.

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I made it out the other side.

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And now there's not a word problem that ever gets in my way.

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And I'm able to break them down for my students.

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Say OK, what does this question want from you?

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Let's find that.

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When do we know about this question?

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What's missing?

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How are we going to work this out?

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And talking about those word problems to really help students find success.

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I've seen a big change in math textbooks over time as I've been an educator.

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And a lot of it is in this area of word problems.

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If you really work through those with your students, the vocabulary that's used in a

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lot of materials is completely inappropriate as far as using vocabulary words and sentence

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structure that sounds rigorous to adults but makes hardly any sense.

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Sometimes no sense at all to students.

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It's an external barrier we put in place that keeps a lot of our students from getting

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the right answer to word problems that they otherwise would know exactly what to do.

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So for me, I find that in my work, I'll spend a lot of time pointing out to students what

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they already know.

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So we'll be inside of a word problem and we'll really pick apart, okay, you know this is

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the topic, you know this is what they want you to find.

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This is what you know about finding that answer.

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Now let's take that and see if we can apply any of it to the rest of what's happening

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in this word problem.

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So moving them out of the word problem itself, getting them into a place of mastery in their

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own mind and then taking that knowledge you've activated going back to the word problem and

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seeing where it fits.

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That's been a really useful tool to help students understand word problems.

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And for me that word problem piece was set back on my journey to really seeing myself

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as a mathematical thinker.

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So it was worth it for me to push through that very painful trying experience and it's

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helped me when I work with my students now and I see them facing a setback and I see

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them getting to whatever part of math is their particular emotional struggle and talking

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them through that letting them know that we're going to get to the other side together and

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helping them create that bridge.

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As they've crossed that bridge and they felt some success and they've unlocked the secret

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of what they're doing wrong, there's really no stopping them.

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I've seen so many students take off as mathematical thinkers and finding academic success and

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once they get a taste of it, they're not going back.

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It's really a nice thing to see.

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The other piece that I had to do for myself as my first math student was to keep that

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door open.

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Once I had figured out that I really could do math and I figured out how to do math and

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I figured out what I had been doing wrong and what had been in my way in the past, once

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I changed my belief system about myself as a math person, then I had to keep that door

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open.

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I had to look for more math challenges.

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I learned to find resources that worked best for me and not all of them are perfect for

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all students, the same way not all teachers are the right teacher for every student.

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It would be exhausting if you had to be the perfect teacher for every student.

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It would be impossible to create one material or one resource that would be perfect for

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all students and that's fine.

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Some beings are very different people, of course, we think differently, learn differently,

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understand differently and we need different resources for that very reason.

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So learning to look at resources with an eye for my best way of understanding was my next

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and final piece because now I had something I could take with me into all future math

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experiences and other parts of life as well.

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So learning about myself as a student really helped me in all areas to learn how to find

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the best resources for myself, how to find the best way of learning for myself, how to

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analyze where I was off track and get myself back on track.

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All of those components are the strategies and tools we want to use with our students.

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When you're working with students who have dyscalculia, you're going to find that they

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have a lot of emotional baggage tied to their math experiences.

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Don't shy away from it.

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Get in there, address it, acknowledge it, help them change those belief systems.

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You're going to find that for students with dyscalculia, there are one or two things

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that are very small that they're doing wrong.

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In them, look for them, point them out, stop and sit in that moment of that tiny mistake

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until you fix it.

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And once you know the student has fixed that piece and has a solid mastery of it, then

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you can move on.

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I do not mean that students need to be doing grade level work below the grade level that

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they're in before they can move on.

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I do not think students have to master, let's say, the two's times tables or those crazy

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worksheets before they're allowed to do the next level of math work.

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I'm saying that in your individual sessions discussing a problem with a student, find

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the mistake in that one problem and don't let those go.

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But regardless of how a student with dyscalculia is performing with that dyscalculia trifecta,

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or regardless of how many times they're forgetting the basic facts that they've learned already,

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that's fine.

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We use external support so that they can find their mastery, so that they can fix their

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mistakes, so that they have precision and accuracy.

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So don't sit with a topic that you don't use a support tool for.

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If you're fixing mistakes, use external support systems, that's going to develop the mastery,

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and then your students will be fine doing grade level work.

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Also for students with dyscalculia, make sure you let them know that they truly are mathematical

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thinkers already.

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The part of math that they're struggling with is the part that sits well in a K-12 container.

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And that's really what we want to address for these students.

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Because once we do, they find success in math classes without our help.

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They can truly move on because they know how they best learn and what kind of support tools

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they need to find their own success.

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Thinking back to myself as my first math student, that was a long time ago.

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I'm so glad that I went through that process, although it was very painful at the time.

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But I'm glad that I did because it's opened up a whole world of succeeding in math, having

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my career based in math, and helping other people find that success much earlier than

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I did.

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So that is my final message in this story, is that no matter how old a person is, if

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you are listening to this and you are an adult in the workplace and you feel like your dyscalculia

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is holding you back, it can still be fixed, you can turn that around.

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If you are seeing your student, if you are the parent or the teacher and you are thinking

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oh no, they are moving ahead and the math is not moving ahead, what's going to happen

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in the future, everything can be fixed.

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And their math experience can be entirely different.

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Moving ahead.

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Whatever experiences you have had in math in the past, you don't have to continue those

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in the future.

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You can have whatever math future you want to have.

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And it really can be very life changing.

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Certainly for me it was life changing the way I thought of myself as a person and it

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changed my entire career and my study.

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Changed me as a student, sent me back into school, now I have a doctorate in curriculum

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and instruction because this has become such a passion.

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So take the lesson of addressing the emotional piece, fixing the small mistakes before they

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continue, changing the mindset about yourself as a math learner, use whatever resources

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and support systems are appropriate for you and then nothing can hold you back.

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Thank you for listening to my story of how I helped my first math student who was myself.

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I'm Dr. Honora Wall, I can be reached at Honora H-O-N-O-R-A at educalclearning.com.

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Please visit our website educalclearning.com and check out our Dyscalculia Specialist Certification

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Program.

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Very excited to have that launched and available for you.

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And if you would like to know more about dyscalculia, please contact us.

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And I look forward to helping you on your journey through this math learning disability.