 I remember when I was in high school and then when I started, went through, through college, there's an exception to this that I'll talk about in a minute. But in general, I would walk into tests and quizzes and things and I kind of got this adrenaline rush. Like I kind of like the excitement of walking into a test. It's like a me versus the paper and all that kind of stuff. And so in general, I kind of like tests and I would hear people talk about test anxiety or math anxiety and I was like, ah, you know, lucky, I guess I'm immune to that one. And I just sort of thought I was that good. And so then I went to graduate school and I, you know, tip from the future for you. Graduate school's hard. And yeah, my brain wasn't working quite the way it used to in all those things. And I went to a talk that was on test anxiety and I realized, oh my gosh, all the stuff that I'm feeling in graduate school that I hadn't really felt before. Oh my gosh, I too get test anxiety. I too get stressed out by math. And what that reminded me of is that we all deal with, I guess it's a life lesson. I think we all deal with math and test anxiety. Every one of us. It's just a matter of the where and the when. So everybody's gonna get sort of nervous and stressed out in some situations. Maybe the things that stress you out aren't the same things that stress the person next to you out. Does that make sense? That makes sense. So the good news is that after 25 years of teaching, I think that there's a few tips and tricks that I've picked up that maybe can help you to be a little bit more successful in math and also specifically to combat the math test anxiety. There is no pixie dust that I can sprinkle over your head to magically make these things go away. But maybe with a few ideas, a little hard work this can all come together. So I alluded to the fact that it wasn't always fun and game serving college. So let me tell you about my first quarter at community college. I was a running start student. Who are my running start students here? Usually I don't call you out, but every now and then gotta relate. So I was in my first quarter running start at 16, taking calculus one. And I liked math before I was taking it. It was just a choice. I didn't know I was gonna be a math teacher at that time. I was just like, oh, this is the next class on the list. And I was in a class that had weekly quizzes, like weekly tests. And I went and took my first weekly test in calculus and I got a 65%, 65. And I was like, this is not good. But I was like, okay, next week is gonna come. So next week came around and I took my second quiz and I got a 55%, 55. And I was like, oh snap. Week three I got an 80 and I was thinking, yeah, I figured this college thing out. And week four I got a 50% on my calculus quiz. And I was wanting to give up. I can't remember, I mean there's other times, but that was definitely one of the times I looked back and I was like, I wanted to give up. And two things happened. The first thing that happened was I talked to my dad. And my dad had never taken calculus. He had gone to college. He's a smart, wise guy. And I told him what was going on. I'm like, dad, I'm like failing things and this is not looking good. There is no hope for me in this situation. And he said, Dusty, he's like, when is the last day to withdraw from classes? And I said, it's November the first, about a month away. And he said, that's a month from now. He said, I want you to give this class everything you've got until that deadline. And if when you get to that deadline, you are still failing, well then you'll know what to do. But if you don't give it everything you've got until that deadline, you're not gonna know what you're made of. You're not gonna give yourself a chance to grow into this class. So that was the first thing kind of like the, that you can do at pep talk. The second thing that happened is I was sitting in the library and maybe you've had this experience where you're sitting down you're looking at your book, right? And the books in front of you, like the somehow however the photon thing works, like the information's going into your eyeballs but there is nothing that's happening upstairs, right? And you're trying. It's not like you're sleeping, you're like trying but nothing is making sense. And it's just this horrible feeling I'm in the library and studying. And I feel this tap on my shoulder. And I look around and it was this kid, his name was Gabe Johnson. I haven't talked to Gabe Johnson in over 25 years. I have no idea where he's at. He has no idea that 25 years later I'm still telling this story. Probably knows, never knows, he made a difference in my life at all. So Gabe taps me on the shoulder and he says, hey, we have a study group going on in one of these library study groups. Would you like to join us and talk about calculus? I'm like, this isn't working. And so I joined Gabe and a few other kids. I think there was Roberta and Louise were there. Those were kind of our closest friends there. And we started studying calculus together. And what I quickly learned is that I had a few small holes in my understanding, a few small concepts that I didn't get. And once I was able to fill in those holes, I started to do really well. And there were enough drops and assignments to that first quarter that I was able to pull myself up to a pretty good grade. And by winter quarter, I was doing really well. But that happened because somebody, like Gabe wasn't thinking, oh, I'm gonna make a difference in this guy's life. He just was like, hey, here's somebody studying calculus. We're studying calculus. Do you want to join us? Somebody reached out to me. So those are two things that happened to me. We need, but it reminds me, we need people like Gabe in our life that invite us in, right? Sometimes we need to be the Gabe, right? Somebody on the shoulder and says, hey, would you like to join me? We need to be able to have the courage to reach out to somebody else. And we also need people in our lives, maybe their family, like my dad, maybe their friends, people that will encourage us and challenge us and push us to be our best. So that was my experience in calculus. And I wanna bring, so those are my student experiences. I wanna bring this together kind of in my teaching context. And I'd like to do this by telling a story. Does anybody have, do you guys have water bottles or at least some props? Do you guys have some water bottles? I got one, if you have water bottles, I'd love them. Don't give me the blank one. Because then there will be no label. You'll never know until it's yours. We've all done that. What do you got? So we just got cool ones. Sweet. So I have one brother. My brother's name is Moe. And he's two years younger than me and he's a quarter inch shorter than me. That's what kind of is really important. But as far as this story is concerned, my brother lived in Bellingham. That's about an hour north of here, a couple hours north of here. And he calls me up on the phone and he says, hey Dusty, I bought a piece of property. And I was like, cool. He's like, I bought a piece of property. I wanna build a house on the property and it's really cool, it's beautiful. And I was like, sweet, this is cool. And I'm a little bit like have older brother jealousy. And like, why is it that he's getting by the cool piece of property and blah, blah, blah. So he invites me up, he invites our family up. And so at this time we had small kids, my brother had small kids. So we pile into our minivan, drive up to Bellingham and go to his current house. He's like, hey, do you wanna see this piece of property? I'm like, yeah, well I didn't think I drove two hours with my ankle biters. Think it was to see you? No, I don't see this land. And so the next morning we get me, my kids in our minivan, he gets his, I think his wife and my brother and their two or three ankle biters are there and we drive out to this piece of property. And it is in the woods. It's like this big old piece of property is like two acres and it is like covered with all of like trees. It is forest, like from one side to the other. And there's bushes and there's blackberries and there's branches down. It is just forest. It's not like, it's not jungle. There's no vicious animals. It's just forest, okay? And we get there and this piece of property, like I said, is about two acres. That's like the size of a soccer field, okay? It's not, this isn't huge, but it's big, right? Bigger than a city lot. And we drive down the main road. We come in here and we park right here. And on this little gravel road, and he says, Dusty, I have never seen my whole piece of property. Like it's got these trees on it. I can't see what's there. So he said, what I wanna do is I wanna cut a trail across this piece of property, okay? So that I can understand what it is that I purchased. Like you can see the outside, but he hasn't seen the inside. You guys got a picture of this? Okay, so now this is a trail like of, like just trying to scout things out. We're not trying to build interstate five. Okay, we're not Boy Scouts. I didn't know what he bought. Well, he knew because he could see it from the outside. He knew it's a forest. He could see the dimensions, but he hadn't physically walked the whole thing. So there wasn't a house on it? No, it's just an empty forested lot. There's no house. He's gonna build the house. Good question. So we start working on our trail and from one side, and we're cutting our way across this lot. When we get to a big tree, we don't cut it down. We just go around the tree. When we get to the blackberries or whatever, we don't cut through the blackberries. We're like, oh, go around them. We're kind of cutting our way through. We got little kids. They're going, you know, like all that kind of stuff. We're not, we're not machetes. We got like little clippers. A little shelf, you know, every now and then you move something out of the way of the branches. This is like low key chill trail building. You got a picture in your head? Okay, so we keep cutting our way across the forest. Oh, I gotta move this out of the way. Okay, so we cut our way out and eventually we make it to the other side where there's another gravel road and we push the bushes aside, step out onto the other gravel road. We're like, huh, it's a gravel road. And then we're like, nice. And so then we turn around and we walk back along our trail, pushing the kids along the way, right? We get back to the, to the Armini Vans. We load the kids up, buckle them into their stupid car seats and all the routine, drive back to my brother's house and have some hot cocoa. And we're like, hey, it's a nice piece of property. Guys got a vision in your head? How long do you think it took us from when we left Armini Vans the first time to when we made it to the other side of the piece of property? I got it two hours. Six hours. Six hours. We had kids with us. If you've done things with little kids, huh? Three hours. Three hours. Eight hours. Eight hours. One and a half. One and a half. Remember, this distance is like here to the turtle building, here to the student union. Like this is not that far. I don't remember, I'm guessing it was, let's call it an hour, right? For the sake of conversation. Takes us an hour. So we get there. An hour. Turn around. We heard all the kids back. How long do you think it took us to get back to our vehicle? Along the trail, we just, 15 minutes. Five minutes. Probably depends on whether the kids wanted, if the kids were hungry and wanted to get back in the car, it took us like three minutes. If the kids were being like, nah, never mind. Then it probably took us 15. But a lot, lot shorter. You tracking? Okay. So then, my brother's like, it was a gorgeous piece of property. It still is. He's like, this is a gorgeous piece of property. I'm really excited to build my house. And so he started to work on the plans that he could submit to the city. And so the piece of property just sat there for like six months to a year. I don't remember how long. Nothing, like he didn't go visit it. What's he gonna do? Oh, I'm gonna go look at a tree. Like there's nothing to do. So he just goes and he does his thing. The land does its thing. What's gonna happen to that trail over time? Disappear. It's gonna disappear. Now, it's not going to get overgrown like it was originally, right? That took many, many years. But those branches are going to, more branches are gonna fall. The creepers are gonna creep. You know, all of that kind of stuff's gonna happen, right? So what would it take if he was to go back to re-clear that trail? Like how long do you think it took? I'm gonna take it. You said an hour the first time. How long was it? 30 minutes to get it back into shape. You tracking? Okay. So here's what my theory is. My theory is that learning mathematics is like cutting a trail through a forest. Learning math is like cutting a trail through the forest. And what oftentimes happens is that you do all of the hard work to cut the trail the first time. You come to class. You take notes. You do your homework, right? You're doing all of those, the hard work. And then you get to the other side. You press submit. You wipe your hands with the whole thing. You wash your hands with the whole thing. And then you don't even go back over the trail at all. You walk out to the main street. You walk down the main street. And then you come down the other gravel road and you get back in your car. And then when test time comes and you're trying to go back over that path, it's all overgrown. And you're like, what happened? I did all the hard work. And so what my claim is, is that being successful in math is less about doing more hard work. I mean, it is work. But it's more about doing the easy work of making this path smooth and fast. Does that make sense? So what would my brother have needed to do to make the path in the forest smooth and fast? And I don't wanna hear anything about bulldozers and gravel. This is just a path through the woods. Like. You came back once a month, once a week? Yeah, if you came back once a month, once a week, once a day, if he walked the path regularly, then it would become developed. Every now and then something gets in the way, but it's pretty easy to move the one or two branches. Right? Like that regular walking over the path will make a difference. And is that hard? Not particularly, but it is really important if you want something to be fast and smooth. So what is some of the easy work that we do as students that helps us to, if you will, go back over the path? You do the same problem, but with different scenarios? Keep repeating the same formula till you have a professional idea? Yeah, I like what you're saying, Harago, that we did our homework the first time and now we're gonna go back over different variants of the same question until we can fine, until we can fine-tune it until we really get what's going on. Nice. Others? Reviewing, like reviewing material. Okay, tell us, say more a little bit about that. Reviewing. So like if you learn something for the first time and then you use it, like going into school. Yeah, so one of the ways that we learn information or try to learn it is we take notes in class. So one, like a common way of reviewing would be to read your notes, right? When you go through and you reread your notes, you are walking back over that trail. Another way to learn is feedback and self-reflection. It's hard to do because when you look at it, you made a mistake and then you go back and you acknowledge that you made a mistake as far. Yeah, that's really deep. That when you get the feedback from, maybe it's from the online homework and you get a red check mark, it's really tempting to just be like, oh, I'll just change something really fast and try to get the green check mark rather than understanding what you've done. Or when you get the feedback on a test or quiz or paper that you actually read what the teacher wrote, you go, what can I do so that I actually understand not just feel like the points were fair? Another example I can give is like, let's say you're a grand chess master, your game's only gonna last like 30 minutes or so or even like a ball of chess. But then analyzing that goes behind it, like the coordinates and everything in the planning, that's like endless hours over. Right, it's a lot of work to go into that one event. How much time do you put in, sees it in practice for every basketball game that you play in? It's like three to four hours. A practice for how long is a game for you? Like it depends, if you're doing 25 minute quarters or halves, it's like 15 minutes. Yeah. Or if you're doing 10 for high school, it's eight minute quarters. Okay, so four hours of practice for a 32 minute game, right? It's a lot of prep for one game, right? If that was a one game a week. Yeah, so what do we do? We can go over our notes. We can practice more questions. What are other things we do that are going over the trail a second time? Stake, existence, existence. There's like a consistency. So it's sort of like putting these things together. Like if you try to cram everything in all at once, it's hard for the material to stick in your brain, right? But if you can stick at it a little bit at a time, that can make a big difference. One thing that I've seen that can be successful is to pre-read your textbook, right? Who's taking math right now? What's, do you know what section you're going to be talking about next? Give a quiz today. So what will you be talking about next week? That's, derivatives of inverse trig functions. So you're like, okay, derivatives of inverse trig functions. I don't know what that is. I don't know what we're gonna learn. But what you could do is you get into class, show up five minutes early, open your textbook, and just page through the book. Like what are the questions look like? Are there a lot of, is it a place where there's a lot of examples? Are there a lot of formulas that I'm gonna need to memorize? And you're just trying to familiarize yourself with what's the big picture that's happening here? And if you know that big picture, that will help you to then pay attention and get more out of the class period itself. A lot of the things we're doing is trying to get the most out of the class period itself. It's like stretching before you go do athletics. I guess it keeps you safe, but it also helps prep your body for what you're gonna do. Let me grab some of my notes to see if there's any other examples that I don't want to bring out yet. So let me just hit some of these, the things that we haven't hit. Who here uses the Math Resource Center? So Jonathan gets his mail delivered there, he's there so often, right? So you go to the Math Resource Center and the Math Resource Center, which is where I mean you guys have been there, or tutoring, it's a good place for you to go individually and bring your questions. Or it's also a good place to go with your study group. Like why not form that study group? Remember, Gabe tapped me on my shoulder. Why not have that study group at the Math Resource Center where when your study group gets dumped, you can just raise your hand and you can collectively get help on. So that would be one, I think about going through a forest. The forest can be dangerous places, right? And it's nice when you don't have to walk through the forest alone, right? And so I think about the classmates, your study groups, all these resources is something that's gonna come along with you so that you're not walking the forest at night. Okay, so far so good, you like the story? All right, I'd like to share a second illustration with you. The computer's still alive. The projector's not, we'll let that warm up. So we're talking about success in math, but we're also talking about math anxiety. And I feel like we're in a culture where sometimes we talk about anxiety and we act as though it's the end of a story. But I don't think it has to be the end of a story. And so I'm hoping that this metaphor that I will share with you when the projector warms up will perhaps help put some of these things into perspective. The projectors are so funny to go, nothing, nothing, nothing. A lot of math anxiety when I'm focused on a problem and I just can't understand it, it's like a different language. And the teacher's telling you what to do, but you still, it's just like a completely different language. That's where math really gets me. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, I really appreciate you sharing that. Anybody relate to that? Yeah, I've seen a lot of nods, uh-huh. I feel like if you hire your stress tolerance, you're gonna be more calmer, the most successful you'll be in a situation. What was the beginning of your statement? The more of our stress tolerances. Oh, yeah. Like stress in situations, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, is it? I used to take math, I used to have math, anxiety. I just got over with it, I just take a deep breath. Yeah, makes a difference. Yeah, I have my non pro tip, my pro tip is bring a bag of chips to a test. And when you start to freak out, open the bag of chips and everybody will look over you and be like, say what? And you just take a big old crunchy bite of chips and everybody thinks you're like, I am so relaxed, I can just eat my bag of chips right here in the test. And kind of like, everybody's gonna think you got it. You are all that and. Okay, here's my illustration. I think that there are facts that are related to how we're doing on math. Let's talk about some of the ones that we've already mentioned. Do you go to class every day? That is a fact, a true or false objective statement. There's the, do you do your homework? That is a fact, like an objective type of answer. What are other facts that are related to your success in mathematics? Are you studying? Yeah, yeah, I am studying two hours a day for every hour inside a class. So I'm putting in my time outside a class. Good, it's a fact. I spent time to review what I learned. I pre-read my textbook before class, I went over my notes after class, I re-copied my notes in preparation for the test. What else, what are other? Those are, they're facts, right? They either happened or it didn't happen. Mm-hmm. Do you self-equip with descriptions? Yeah, I thought about what I was doing after the fact. I'm honest with myself about what I know and what I don't know. Yeah, these are facts. I have a study group and I meet with my study group, right? I did extra practice questions to make sure that I understood this concept. I visited office hours, right? These are all very objective things. These are facts, okay? And then what are the feelings that are associated with tests? Anybody get excited on testing? I got one like this, okay? Anybody get feel overwhelmed by existential dread? A little bit there, okay? And then what are some of the feelings in between? I just want to get this over with, yeah. We have all these feelings, probably the overarching one that we're talking about today is anxiety, right? Just the stress of the situation, right? It's real. It is real and it legitimately does impact us. So these are the feelings and what I'm suggesting is that sometimes if this is a train, we let the feelings of the situation drive the train. And our feelings can go all over the place, right? You can be really high one moment and somebody cuts you off in traffic and you are feeling really low the next moment, right? You can feel really good. You look at the first question on a test and you're like, oh yeah, I know what I'm doing. And you look at the second question and you question your very existence, right? You're like, what happened? Like I literally put from here to here on a page and my emotions did all these things, right? And so when we let our feelings drive our lives, we tend to be going all over the place. And so what I'm suggesting is that we let the facts of the situation drive our lives, the feelings are real, but we're gonna let the feelings follow. And what they're joined together by are these faith or belief statements. And so let me give you an example, okay? So a faith or belief statement would be I believe that hard work pays off. Like that's not a fact. It's a belief, right? I believe that, maybe we'll go Disney, I believe that I can do it, right? Like our Nike slogan, you know? I believe that I can do it. I believe that my prep work that I had prepared well. I believe that I can learn from my, picking up on what Ghashan was saying, Ghashan was saying, I believe that I can learn from failure, right? I believe that I am more than my GPA, right? I believe that my teacher knows what they're doing and wants to prepare me. I believe that my family wants me to succeed. Are there other belief statements? Are there other belief statements that you can think of here? These are beliefs, they're not facts, they're not feelings, they're sort of these statements about how we view reality. And so what I'm saying is that if we let the facts of the situation drive the train, our feelings will follow, our feelings will, they're real, they'll happen. There's nothing disingenuous about them, but they move all over the place and when we let those feelings drive, we can end up in a train. Ghashan. I mean facts are a bit backed up by actual statements, but faith is backed up by you and how much you want to contribute to it. That's what's backed up. It's coming from your strength, however much you want to strengthen your faith then that's how much you'll strengthen whatever you believe in. I thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that we gain faith a lot of different ways. That sometimes it is like a willpower, like a choice that we make. I choose to have faith in the situation. Sometimes it's experience, right? I, you know, I dusty remember what happened to me when I was taking calculus and how I was able to work through that and that gives me confidence that I can figure it out myself in this new situation. You're reading, for your readings, you're reading that book about first-gen college students, right? How many of you are first-gen college students? Half-ish. So you're a first-gen college student, you're like, oh, I can read this story of another first-gen college students. You know, life wasn't easy for that person but I can see that they were able to overcome and when you read those stories and those anecdotes, that helps you to believe that you can do it too, right? Who here is a, is not a first-gen college student, okay? So are you encouraged knowing that your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister was able to make it through college? Is that something that helps to keep you, to keep you motivated? Like even if you don't think about it, it probably is a little bit. I feel like the one I keep hearing is, your son's like, I have this brother, uncle, cousin? Who's your, who's it that you keep talking about? The, oh yeah, somebody's a lawyer. Oh, a cousin, yeah. Your cousin. It's like, my cousin did this path and is really successful and he's, I hear him, he's like, you have a belief that because my cousin can do it, I can do it too. Now is that a fact? Oh, tell us in five years. Right, like when these things work. But at this stage it's just a fact or it's just a faith statement, a belief statement and it's helping to, it's helping to guide the choices that he makes and helping to get through the dark times. Good? I've been even for one of them, like you said, it relates to kind of your story where he used to work at like Best Fire or something and he just wanted to stick to it and do some martial arts but his dad and his parents pushed him and they were like, we want you to pursue your education. He'd feel the bar exam first time and he got it the second time. I mean, that's failing the bar exam for like a loss of a year. That's like, it takes like six months to just train for the bar exam. Right, that's a big deal. Yeah, yeah. And that took a lot of faith on his part because I'm sure he was feeling really low at that point. Okay, so let me hit some reminders and then let me see if I can pull this all together with one last thing. So reminder number one, we can make good choices that help us do and feel better, right? We can go to the Math Resource Center, we study, we practice. These are actions that we take that add to the facts of the situation, right? Reminder number two, all these tips, these techniques on active learning that we've been learning throughout this class, the review processes, they are preparing the path, right? They are making that path faster and smoother for us. That's a good thing. These are these, they're called retrieval practices that are in action. Three, your teachers, right? Your community, right? We are on your side. Like we want to see you succeed. We want to see you thrive, okay? And finally, whether it's in math, it's in chemistry, it's in other parts of life, I would encourage you to let the facts of the situation drive the train. But the facts of the situation, coupled to those feelings by those faith statements, okay? Drive the train of your life, okay? Because your feelings are going to fluctuate, okay? But you do have control over some of the facts, okay? And I think that it will be a smoother and safer ride if you're able to invest in the driven by those facts. Uh-huh. This is an example of a fact statement. Well, a fact statement is, I am coming to class every day and I'm participating. I'm engaged. A fact statement is, I had the prerequisite for the class that I'm taking. A fact statement is, I had all my materials prepared on the first day of class. A fact statement would be, I sit in the front of the room because I read somewhere that students do better when they sit in the front of the room, it's front of the classroom. A fact statement would be, I read through the whole syllabus, I actually understand the rules of this class. Is that, I mean, those are kind of boringish classrooms, but I think there's many, many, and they're not just about class, right? They're about a lot of other situations.