Bridging the Mathematics Skills Gaps : From Anxiety to Appreciation with Asma Akhras

Imagine a future where students are not just ardent learners of mathematics but are also expert problem solvers. That's what Asma Akhras, an experienced implementation leader for a curriculum nonprofit company, brings to our podcast table today. We delve into the disheartening cycle of math anxiety, and the root causes of the math struggles that our students face today - the lack of appreciation for math as a holistic body of knowledge and the inadequacy of teaching methods that present math as isolated skills rather than interconnected concepts. Asma brings her wealth of experience to bear in sharing strategies that can help students discover the beauty and practicality of math.

But the problem doesn't stop there. Asma takes us deeper into the challenges that teachers face in addressing the widening skills gap among their students. She highlights the importance of sticking to grade-level content while providing just-in-time support to ensure students can access the math curriculum. Listen as Asma paints a picture of math as a powerful problem-solving tool, sharing insights on how to transform the math classroom into a powerhouse of dialogue, discovery, and critical thinking.

Connect with Asma here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aakhras/

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

Connect with Leisa Grace:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.

Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.

Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

Connect with Leisa Grace:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

Hi everyone and welcome to the Teach Middle East podcast. My name is Lisa Grace and I have my guest, asma Akras, with me, and we are going to be talking about bridging the mathematical skills gaps. So mathematics is a very, very important subject, one that we can't live without. Mathematics is all around us, it's everywhere. Everything we do has a little math in it. So we are going to be talking with Asma about how we can bridge that mathematical skills gap that some of our students may have. Now. We're just back from the summer break and that gap might have widened a little bit, but Asma is here to help us.

Speaker 2: 1:15

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Welcome to the podcast, Asma. Please introduce yourself to our audience.

Speaker 3: 1:30

Hi Lisa, how are you? It's good to see you and talk with you. It's a wonderful day here. My name is Asma Akras. As you stated, I work as an implementation leader for a curriculum nonprofit company. We have the most used math curriculum across the continental United States, and so my role is to work with specific schools. Specifically, I work with Los Angeles Unified, which is the US's second largest public school system. I help them implement the math curriculum and then, on the side, I also train professional development of administrators, instructional leaders, teacher leaders in terms of mathematics.

Speaker 1: 2:08

So you are the right person to talk to and give your experience, because mathematics skills are essential they're essential for life really but a lot of us going through school haven't had the best experience with learning mathematics and so I don't know, in your experience that, what are the factors contributing to this mathematical skills gap in students that can sometimes be very evident in how they approach mathematics altogether.

Speaker 3: 2:42

No, definitely. Research has shown that a lot of students unfortunately do struggle with mathematics. We know that there is such a thing as math anxiety and unfortunately, I think what happens is the cycle just continues to regurgitate itself. A lot of us might not be comfortable, especially as teachers. Math might not be our strong suit, it might not be the content that we're very confident in, and so that kind of feeds into our students at times, and then our students have the same experience and then it kind of continues. I recall one time I supervised student teachers when I had a high school student teacher and the way she was teaching, I could tell, was perhaps not the most impactful and she was still trying to get those skills and I thought to myself I remember feeling a little down. I'm like, oh, this is the cycle, is never going to change. How do we change this cycle of how we teach mathematics in the best way that supports students?

Speaker 1: 3:37

Yeah, I think that fear. By the way, I think I have math anxiety.

Speaker 3: 3:43

Oh, I would not be surprised. It is something, like I said, very common. But most folks perhaps don't even recognize that they have math anxiety and we define math anxiety as that. You know, in the same way you might have life anxiety. Your heart starts to pop in, you get a little nervous, your mind starts to freeze up a little bit, you might have some goosebumps, you know some tummy rumbles, and thinking about, like oh, that's not math, right, and so definitely.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Yeah, you know, going back, I think, on my GCEs, which is the exams we do in England, I think math was my lowest grade on my GCE certificate I think now they're called G-C-S-E or something like that, but back when I did them they were called O-Levels and yeah, I think my O-Level math was poor. Sorry, but I do recognize how important it is and I try to really be positive about it around my kids. But what do you believe is the root cause of students' struggles with mathematics?

Speaker 3: 4:45

I really believe it's, I think, the way we teach it. You know. I think there's still a lack of appreciation of this body of knowledge. Right, there's a lot of times that first of all, mathematics continues, but at least here in the US we definitely see it being taught as isolated skills. You know, separate skills from one day to another. We're not helping students understand the story of math. So in my line of work we talk about math being a concept of knowledge. There's like a story that should be unfolding for students. So there's connections between one concept to the other. They're not these isolated skills. So I think that's part of it. Another part is we create these larger gaps.

Speaker 3: 5:22

As students start to have gaps, the gaps unfortunately become larger and larger because math is a content built on itself. It layers right, like one year after another. You continue to build the content, unlike English, for example, where it's more you have the same skills but based on different stories or novels or literature. The skills continue to repeat themselves year after year. They're not layered. So I think those things lend themselves to make mathematics a bit challenging. I think another gap that we have is, like I said, teachers' confidence and then knowing how to teach conceptually, I think is not there yet, where we still teach mathematics as very procedural, very skill-based and not concept-based, and so I think these are all factors creating this complexity of how we teach mathematics.

Speaker 1: 6:08

I think if they taught me mathematics as a story, the story of my, I would have loved that because I was a very good literature. Student language is history. So if they taught it to me in a way where it all connected and made sense in a story that unfolded, you know, I think I would have fared better In terms of the strategies that work that work in getting students enthusiastic about mathematics. What are some of those strategies?

Speaker 3: 6:34

So I definitely promote in my line of work. We talk about building mathematical and shape-through models right, manipulative, hands-on models that are conceptually based, allowing students to have more of a discovery type of understanding of mathematics. So in the curriculum I work with, any new concept starts to be built conceptually. It's not built algorithmically right away. So we try to support students moving from that which again is research-based, that giving opportunities for students to have a conceptual understanding, moving to a patrol or representational and then moving into that abstract algorithm Again.

Speaker 3: 7:09

Unfortunately, a lot of time students are just taught this algorithm that is so foreign, that is not connected into a storyline, become very procedural, very skill-based, which kind of does not give that strong foundation of a concept. And so I truly believe that when we give students models such as, you know, unifix-tubed or tape diagram or the array model these are some of the models that we advocate for in our math curriculum Few models so that students aren't overlawn, but strong models that create coherence throughout their academic school years and so it helps build that story right. So we start from a model early years and that model will continue with them all the way to like secondary and that builds some coherence of links for them.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Yeah, I think what is missing as well is the relevance of the talk to their lives and to things around them and making that attachment. I try to do that a little bit with my sons but I leave most of that to my husband, who, by the way, very mathematically inclined as an auditor. But what I think also happens is that students don't see the relevance in later life. What is changing with the mathematics curriculum nowadays to make it more relevant to students' lives and the lives that they will lead? Is anything changing?

Speaker 3: 8:34

Definitely. So I know with again, my work is at a lot of times within the curriculum we first of all talk about access and equity because a lot of times again, for those students who might not be part of their strong suit or they have math anxiety, imagine coming into a math class or the math class starts and they're already shut down. So we really are concerned about how do we create access for all students. So we kind of start with that low floor, high ceiling type of prompt that engages them and that could be as simple as a little digital interactive video that kind of. We have these videos that are no words, no language, not much math, little cartoonish, and that just kind of starts to prompt a conversation that anyone can access, right. And so we start to engage student thinking or we might do an activity which one doesn't belong, and so we show four different types of prompts and then ask students which one doesn't belong. Again, there's no right or wrong answer. We just want students to have that confidence to be part of the conversation.

Speaker 3: 9:32

A lot of times what we see, students aren't even part of the conversation, which then isolates them and it creates a larger mathematical identity issue, because we know, identity also plays a big part of it. So the relevancy piece is how do we engage all students in the conversation I think is extremely important and not only certain students. And then obviously I completely appreciate what you said the application of how do we engage them in these conversations. So for us, again, it's very inquisitive, of like here's an issue, how can we help, how do we solve this problem? What do you think? And so it creates that open access call which is really important, as opposed to coming into math class thing. All right, friends, here's how we divide. Let's start with repeated subtraction, or here's the quotient, and we just start right into the skill, not even the concept, right. And so that's where we start to see students shutting down and feeling the lack of access into the conversation.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there. So for my friends who are coming back to school now and they come into a classroom, they're teachers of mathematics and they've discovered a class where the skills gap has widened over the summer break, what can they do? Give some practical tips of how they can approach the student, but not only has the gap widened, in front of them are students who lack the foundational skills in mathematics and there are variations in the skill levels in the classroom. Gosh, I'm throwing a lot at you, but really I want to help my teacher friends here. Where do they start?

Speaker 3: 11:08

Yeah, good question. So I heard two questions what do we do with those gaps? And then, how do we support so many different gaps, right? And so let's start that first question, tackle that one, and this is something again we see very common. Especially we know that there's been research about summer gaps. Like students aren't in school, so some of the gaps even get more desperate because of the summer break.

Speaker 3: 11:28

This is why I highly recommend those of you who are parents try to engage your students in any way you can with some type of mathematical. It could be going to the grocery store, it could be refreshing some skills, doing some application facts, something to keep students' brains sharp, but for teachers. So one of the things we've been seeing with research is that usually what happens is students are assessed right in the beginning and identify those gaps right, and then teacher get these reports and then gets a little overwhelming like, oh, my goodness, you know there's so many gaps, where do I go? How do I start? And then we start reteaching. The problem with that is, like I said, it contributes to a larger gap. I'll give you an example. I taught post-secondary college and we had 18-year-old students coming in with a gap from sixth grade. That's eight years of mathematics, and I'm talking about hundreds of students, right? And so am I going to sit there and teach eight years of math in one semester? That's not even possible.

Speaker 3: 12:26

So what we suggest is to have fidelity to your grade level content, focus on your grade level content and give what we call just-in-time support. So, looking at the chapter, the module you're about to teach, and give students enough skills, prerequisite skills, to be able to access that specific chapter at that moment of time. And the reason we think this is first of all, it is research-based. Second, again, it continues to think about the story of math.

Speaker 3: 12:57

So why would I teach a skill that's not going to be relevant at this moment for this chapter, right? Students might not be able to retain it. It creates more anxiety. So let's focus on our grade level content, because if I don't teach my grade level and I spend my whole first month reteaching skills, guess what happened? Right now, I just lost one month of my grade level, and that's how you get students as my experience of eight years of math skills missing, right? So what we support is look at your grade level, make that priority of your content with sprinkling, and this is exactly the words we use sprinkle of prerequisite skills for that chapter and then you go to the next chapter and then you look at what skills would students need for that specific to be able to access. So I don't know if you see a little bit of a shift there, as opposed to like assessing all these skills, getting overwhelmed and then spending the whole first few weeks to reteach. We want to move away from that.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Yeah, I get that. I get that and I see how that makes sense actually, because there's no way way you could go back and build those skills that have been missing. You don't have the time nor the Resource to do that, but I get that. Just time help would make a big difference.

Speaker 3: 14:10

Yeah, and you would do it the service honestly to the students because, again, they're not seeing their own grade level Right. So if they're in fourth grade, fifth grade, they're missing their grade level and then that's just widening the gap further. So we want to be really strategic and analytical. The question about different Skills and this is something we are seeing, we actually Expect now we have so many different types of learners coming into classrooms, different experiences, and so we obviously promote differentiation, differentiate to students needs and a lot of times that could be from small groups. We always advocate for teachers teaching the new content but then, as opposed to the rest of that lesson, think about grouping and how can you group students to be able to differentiate? And not skill grouping, but grouping according to the content into small groups and Then supporting each different student in that way, and again, they take a lot of strategic planning. So I highly, highly recommend we always talk about planning and how important preparation and planning is for a classroom.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Yeah, I think that that is important to highlight that you're not putting them in ability groups. You're putting them work together on specific Concepts at particular times and those groupings remain flexible. So when they've grasped that concept, they can shift and move and you can offer yes as you see fit within the context, within the classroom.

Speaker 3: 15:33

Yes, make sense, definitely yeah, and so we advocate for you know, as different chapters or content, the groups will shift, will change. So, like you said, we're not focusing an ability tracking capital costs. You know, we're supporting differentiation based on needs, based on the context of that content, very, very important.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Yeah, I do get it. I want to take you back to something that I've always been curious about with mathematics teaching and learning. You know I learned a lot of different things in school that I thought were not relevant, and I'm now in my Middle ages and I still have not used them. How do you help students to see the relevance of some of these things, like Pythagoras' theorem, certain algebraic equations, certain things, when it comes on to With these more abstract concepts in mathematics, especially for students who will not be going down that route? How do you get them to understand the need for that? Because I'm still struggling with that and I've had that lesson Some many years ago.

Speaker 3: 16:40

Yeah, no, definitely, and I think that's a huge concern. Is that buying? How do we get students to find out, like, why this content is important, right? I think that's what crux of the mission of, like the part of the matter, and again, it's how we see mathematics. If you teach mathematics in a way of one, it's a body of knowledge that human civilizations have contributed it to, to. It's also the way we set up problem-solving, and I think this is where things get missed a lot of times. When we teach it, it becomes very wrote and skill or memory-based. It's not problem-solving. And so I think if we start to promote our students like this isn't just about math, it's about how we tackle problems in life, right, any type of problem, need that conceptual, mathematical, actually iterations, like if you think about a problem that you're Faced with I'm talking about like everyday problem, like your tire is flat, like it was, like tire right, like how do you deconstruct that problem to be able to solve it? And I believe that's where we're missing that conversation.

Speaker 3: 17:37

That mathematics is about problem-solving, it's about dialogue. I actually do a lot of training with teacher about math discourse and how dialogue and discourse again, big picture, it talks about respecting other person's points of view. You might not solve in the same way that I do, and I'm going to listen to you attentively and respect your pathway of Solving and if you think about that, that's really a human construct, right Like that. I respect your point of view. You didn't do it the same way as I did, so there's really a lot of life lessons. I think a lot of times we don't really focus on it mathematics but if you sit back and you really see problem-solving, dialogue, discourse all of those are great human skills in the big picture of life, and so that's how I like to focus on it, as opposed to I completely agree with you. You know that linear equations or Pythagorean's theorem, or you know all these other. If we focus more on a problem-solving thinking, I think it would definitely give a little bit more time for our students.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Yeah, for sure I wish I had been learning math or had learned math that way, because the things I learned were really abstract and I'm really, you know, wondering if I would have feared better in my mathematics classroom had the teaching been done in a more problem-solving, if there was a lot more storytelling, if the whole thing made a lot more sense. I was just like today we're learning this and then tomorrow we're learning that, and that's how I got taught, and I was taught a method of how I work things out, and sometimes I didn't get the method and so I couldn't work this stuff out and I didn't get much option, and if I worked it out another way, they were like well, that was not the way you were taught, so why did you go and do that? So it was difficult.

Speaker 3: 19:23

Yeah, and I love that you said that, lisa, like that it was only one way, and we know mathematics is not only in one way, right? I love the fact. That's actually one of the issues that a lot of times we're just like this is how you do it and do it, but that's not true. Mathematics actually has a lot of different pathways, of ways to problem solve.

Speaker 1: 19:42

Yeah, I just didn't get the option and I'm glad teachers are changing and all my teachers who are listening to this podcast. Thank you for being keen mathematics teachers who are taking this kind of professional development seriously. But when we look at mathematics teaching and learning now, in the age of technology, where students can just punch things in and get the answer, what role does technology play in a mathematics classroom?

Speaker 3: 20:09

Yeah, definitely so I think it just is a profession. Really, landscape is changing. We see all this artificial intelligence, chat, gpt, all these different things that are coming out, making a lot of folks a bit nervous, and my advice is just let's embrace it, because we know this is just the development of human civilization, and in embracing that means how does that impact our learning and how does it impact our field? And personally I actually think it's very powerful because it gives again that optionality of forcing us to shift on how we teach. And so here we have this technology that's coming in and it's just going to make that change have to be that much more important Because, as you said, students have access to all.

Speaker 3: 20:51

Why should I have to sit there and solve this problem If I can just put it in my artificial intelligence tutor here and solve this quadratic equation? And then there's my prompt. And so this is again it will force us to think about, well, what's really are we trying to teach? Are we just trying to teach a procedure? Are we teaching a concept? And so again, I would argue that if we're teaching more conceptual, problem-solving phase, that those types of technologies should not be seen as, I guess, a threat, I want to say, but perceived as something like well, what do we do now? Because we are, as teachers, beyond spoon feeding.

Speaker 3: 21:25

I believe we bring so much more to a mathematical classroom understanding that concept, the problem-solving discourse, the dialogue, the various pathways that can come out from technology that you know, keeping my fingers crossed, we have a long way to think and develop in that way yet, and so it's really going to put us in a place of reflection as professionals. Right, what does this mean for me? How am I going to teach this content now? And that's going to put us in a way where we're going to have to really make some key shift, I believe, and so I suggest embracing it, laugh with it, go with it, have a growth mindset, learn and start to make some of those key ship things we're all going to have to do as human beings.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Yeah, Superb answer, Embrace it. It wouldn't be me if I didn't ask for some resources, your top resources that you would recommend for teachers of mathematics. Like you know what's in your toolkit, Asma? Share your toolkit with our listeners. Where's your go-to website? What's your go-to tool?

Speaker 3: 22:26

So definitely within our own company. I work for Great Minds and I'm no intentional marketing or anything, but we have such a great team of resources internally we have web, blogs, webinars. We have great experts that I continuously tap into internally. So I don't really ever feel that I need to go external because we are a company of over a thousand people and we have content, expertise and, like I said, we develop blogs, webinars. So I definitely go to our website, greatmindsorg. I also follow some of our leading math education, such as Joe Boller coming in from the US and then definitely stay on tap of Lisa here yourself.

Speaker 3: 23:03

What are the global conversations? Yes, what are those conversations? What are we talking about as a resource? I really do appreciate a lot of the networking that you bring into the conversation. So definitely have a few at the tip of my fingers. But I do really heavily rely internally on my own colleagues in our own company, just because I know the caliber we're bringing is such high quality and don't really feel the need to expand too much to outside resources. But those are a couple of definitely, you know, at week reading the week news journals and trying to keep abreast to what is going on, especially in the mathematics world. You know, here in the US we've got a couple of states because I work with Los Angeles. Unified California is changing its framework, some of the states are adjusting standards, so all of that gives me very busy on my toes of making sure we are on top of what's going on.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Yeah, and I think it's a good opportunity to invite people to the STEM MENA conference in October, october 28th so you will meet fellow mathematics educators there, math resource providers, et cetera. It's a good place to make a network. It's on a Saturday, so you don't need permission from school. Yay, it's at the Copthorne Hotel, green Community, dubai. It's a good time. It's a good time to be had for all it's fun, it's relaxed, and then there's also the awards section of that conference. So the daytime is the conference and the evening is the STEM MENA Awards as well, and I think it's just good for making networks and for seeing what's fresh, what's new, what's out there, and also making sure that your voice is added to the conversation in the workshops and stuff like that. So, asma, when you look into sort of like your crystal ball, if you like, where is it all going for mathematics teaching and learning? I know we talked a little bit about AI and we talked about sort of like harnessing the resources, but in an ideal world, what would you like to see happen?

Speaker 3: 24:57

Oh, I would love to see us really creating students that just are passionate and really enjoy the content of mathematics, making these key shifts that, just like I said, really need to happen. Sometimes the amazing man would say we're in 2023 and we're still talking about out here. When our standards came out, when the Common Core standards came, and there was a big shift in teaching mathematics, it was called the new math and here we're almost like 15 years or 10 plus years into it and people still call it the new math. So I hope we stop calling it the new math because we're like so into it. But my crystal ball would hope to see students loving mathematics, not having dynecs lowering, bringing in back that, you know. Passion of learning, which unfortunately is decreasing more and more in time, of just wanting to learn way of problem solving and the content itself, and having that love of the mathematics itself.

Speaker 1: 25:50

Brilliant. That's a fabulous place to end the part. Thanks, asma. Thank you Lisa. This was great. Thank you so much.