The Power of Belief

 This past school year was an amazing learning experience for me. To see the power of belief overcome the doubts of self is so amazing. There were several examples of how believing in self changed the direction of students in my class.

On the first day of school, I received an email from a mom. She started off by saying her daughter came home from school in tears. These are not the words you want to hear after the first day of school. I continued reading and was surprised. The mom said that her daughter came home and said: “Mr. Hawley told me that I would learn everything I need to know for math in 5^th grade. For the first time, I believe it.” The mom said this brought tears to her eyes as well. Not only was she able to master 5^th grade math, but she was also able to be admitted into 6^th grade accelerated math.

There was a student who I had connected with in fourth grade in my class. She also had self-doubt. She struggled in the beginning of the school year, however, the atmosphere and encouragement in the classroom allowed her to move into the realm of understanding. She believed in herself.

I had another student who could not multiply at all. The first thing I did was show him that his test scores from fourth grade to the start of fifth grade showed him in the 95% of growth. He was able to explain and understand the calculation of volume but could not do the math. We proceeded to tackle the challenge of multiplication.  It took him two weeks to complete a multiplication chart. With some praise and encouragement, he was able to increase the understanding and ability to complete a multiplication chart in one class period. Encouragement to belief.

I had a set of twins that could not multiply. I struggled with them and found that every effort I was making was not resulting in understanding. I asked the second student mentioned above to help them one day while I was working with some advanced students. When I came back to check on them, I noticed that the student was demonstrating the box method and not the algorithm. Two things became clear to me. The first was that if they could not do the box method, they could not understand the standard algorithm. They were engaged and getting the work done. The second thing that became clear to me was that the student helping them was becoming more empowered in her understanding and confident in her math work.

These same twins could not understand the division algorithm. We had already been working together for more than half a year and I had seen them grow and learn. I finally had them put their markers down and said to them that they were in the gifted program. They were in advance math, though they were desperate to be taken out of it. They were the highest leveled readers in my class. I then said to them that they are telling themselves they can’t do it. I told them that the reasons mentioned above were the reasons that they should not have problems. Within an hour they not only understood division, they mastered it.

We test our students in math at the beginning, middle and end of the school year on their understanding and growth. I had an awakening when I found most of my advanced students showed no growth. This concerned me. I was so focused on those students that had been challenged by the past three COVID years that I had not spent the time I needed on the advanced students. I set about working on targeted lessons based on their test data and they were flying through the material. I had multiple students doing eighth grade math. I would get questions I was having trouble answering. I would direct students to each other for answers and this worked well. I could tell they were working with linear equations, I just could not explain it to them clearly at the time.

What makes the difference? The classroom culture. The first thing I do each school year is to ask questions. I engage and show patterns. I start by asking a difficult question. I ask who does not understand. Maybe one person raises their hand. I then point out that for each person who raises their hand, there are at least five others who are not understanding. They are raising their hands for those people too. My students learn quickly without hesitation to express their need for clarification. A safe place is created.

I never say “no” or “wrong answer” in math class. I answer with “that’s the right answer to the wrong question.” We then proceed to work together to find the mistake.  

Most importantly, I share with my students my own personal story. I struggled with math as a child. I remember moving to Florida and experiencing “new math” in fifth grade. It was a disaster that I did not recover from until I became a teacher. I Share with them that I failed math many years. I did not understand math well.  I tell them that the last class I took for my master’s degree in education was teaching math. What hit me was an exercise that turned on a switch for me. I suddenly realized that nobody explained math to me growing up. Suddenly a new world opened for me. If I can be here understanding math, you can too.

My first job as a teacher I was asked what I preferred to teach, I said anything, knowing of a certainty that it would be math. I just did not know it would be 75 students and teaching nothing but math. I vowed to not let my students have the same experience I had. I wanted to find their switch that gives me the most important sound in my classroom. The magic that occurs when a student says “ohhh!” with a revelation of understanding.