On Friday, January 9th my students had to take an online assessment. I told them I would give them 40 minutes but in reality I made sure they had an hour to complete the assessment. I wanted to make sure they had enough time to think, process, and complete each part of the test.

I realized that once they started the assessment they immediately looked defeated. The first question was a two part question. They had to read, respond, and model. It was in that moment they realized, I might need more time to complete this test.

Now in class we typically don’t take that long to complete assignments to this extent. We work through the problems together, collaborate with partners possible solutions, create a solution path to make sure we know how to solve the problem, and then share how we completes it together. For assessments everything is independent to see if they know how to complete the same steps in class in groups, now on their own.

My goal as a teacher is to encourage my students to productively struggle. I have seen them learn from their mistakes, work through the math, and discuss their solutions with confidence in their work.

After everyone completed the assessment we reviewed our responses together and discussed how we modeled and answered the questions. This has become apart of my teaching practice, I want all of my students to learn that if they make a mistake it’s okay because they’ll learn how to fix them by reviewing their work. The discussion around the challenges they faced with the assessment helped me realize that they needed more support with answering the word problems in its entirety.

It was in this moment that I realized that my students were now mathematicians! They were discussing their challenges in math and learning from their mistakes. They didn’t show signs of defeat or confusion. They began discussing next steps, what they should do the next time they had to complete similar problems. This is why I believe that we’re ALL MATH PEOPLE. It just takes time, patience, and effort. 🫶🏽