So when I see students who have academic anxiety or math anxiety, I try to give them just confidence. I may know that they're gonna get that answer completely wrong, but what is most important to me as a teacher is that they're at least just trying. If you're not a math person, I challenge you to just realize all the math that you're already doing.
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Vanessa Vicaria, aka the math guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that helps guests work through their math traumas one problem at a time. Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist. But the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry, no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast. Guys, welcome to this week of math therapy. And seriously, I know I say this every week, but this week especially I have a treat for you. Today I'm interviewing Sophie Soverano, who is one of my first students ever. Like, guys, I tutored her over 10 years ago when I was still called the math doctor instead of the guru. Don't worry, we'll dig into that tragic branding mishap over the course of this episode. She's so OG that I actually went to her wedding last summer. Sophie went from daily math meltdowns in high school to becoming a math teacher who leads her class with compassion and creativity. And she is one of the most generous, kind, and inspiring people I know. There's so much to take away from this convo, whether you're a teacher, student, or parent. So let's get into
it. Oh my god, Sophie, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Vanessa, it's so good to be here. I'm so excited to finally be on your show.
SPEAKER_00I'm actually really, really excited. I feel like this is what the fans want. This is what the people want, and it's time for us to deliver. So, what okay, what some people don't know is that you are actually, well, actually, people don't know anything about you. No offense. Like, I do love you, but like That's fair. Okay, so you, before we even get into what you do, but like, spoiler alert, Sophie is an amazing teacher, which we'll talk about in a second. But what a lot of people don't know because we're such good friends now is that you were actually one of my first students ever. So before we even get into like you, let's talk about me. Do you have any like gossip about my first tutoring days that you want to share?
SPEAKER_01I was actually thinking about it prior to this talk, the good old days when you were not the math guru. You were the math doctor. And you had a business card with a little like caricature of you in a Halloween-esque doctor's outfit that like was shooting a needle, like squirting blood all over the place, being like, Come to me, I'm the math doctor. I can like cure you from math. And I remember that business card because I actually still have a bunch of them because you gave me a bunch. We have people and I found a bunch of them when I was moving. Then I have all these math doctor like cards that I would hand out to my friends in like grade eight and grade nine. And I think a bunch of them ended up coming to you and are now like your second, third, fourth students. But it was just like such a throwback to find these business cards and remember you as the doctor before the guru. And I remember sitting with you and you being like, I don't think I want to be the doctor anymore. I think I'm ready to like be more sophisticated and take it to the next level. I'm ready to be a guru.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I would like to clarify for our listeners that I the needle was not squirting blood. It was squirting out like numbers and mathematical symbols. Okay. So just fair. That's fair. Just want to do that. That's fair. I think it was doing that. Okay, but also if you have extras, I would really love a stash because I often think about that and I'm like, oh my God. Like I remember Eva, my old math teacher, being like, This card is really inappropriate. And I was like, why? But like the way you're describing it now, like, yeah, it kind of seems actually really fucking scary. So I want people to realize how how like OG you were. Like, I used to go to Sophie's home. I tutored everyone in the family. And in fact, the dining table that I used to tutor you at is now actually in the math guru. Your mom gave it to me. Like, it's like I have furniture from your house. Like, I just think it's like such a like, you know, when we really think about it. I okay, wait, I'm still driving your car. I bought your old car.
SPEAKER_01I can't believe that car is even still running. Like when I sold you that car, I was like, oh, this is an old piece of crap. Like, just so you know, like it's got a few years left, but that's it. And now here we are, like a decade later, and you're still driving that car.
SPEAKER_00Like, I just put snow tires on that car. And like the car dealership keeps trying to sell me a new car. Like, they're like, Don't you think it's time to let this go? And I'm like, no, I actually don't think it's time to let it go. So yeah, that's how intertwined we are. And I just, I mean, we could go on and on, but no one really cares about our memory lane. But I want to like set the scene for like how integral you were. Like when I was tutoring you, I didn't even know I was gonna start a tutoring company. I was just tutoring you to make money for a trip to India, right? Like, that's the crazy part.
SPEAKER_01I remember that. And I remember when you came home and we were like, is she gonna tutor again? And it was all up in the air. You thought you might go to a school. Yeah. And then you also told me you were joining, like starting a rock band. Like Vanessa was always filled with these like out of nowhere crazy ideas that you always just pull off. You're like, I'm gonna do something, and you just did it. It was the coolest thing about you.
SPEAKER_00That's so nice. Okay, well, this podcast is about you though, and not me. So now we're done talking about me. I want to start. So I was your tutor. I obviously know a lot about your relationship with math, but it's something that has developed so much since I've known you. I want
you to start by just telling me what was your relationship with math growing up? Like, can you try and summarize? Can you tell us the vibe?
SPEAKER_01I don't remember, but my SK yearbook says that my favorite center growing up was the math center. I would have told you that was complete bullshit until I got older and realized that now that I teach that age, I actually love math at that age. It was just as I got older, I lost my confidence in math and then in turn my ability as well. Um, I don't actually know when my thought process changed to make me think that I wasn't a math person or that I couldn't do math. It was probably around the same time that I met you when I was learning, you know, grade seven, eight, middle school, math was getting a bit harder, a little more algebra, a little bit less uh teacher assistance in the classroom. You know, you had the rotary systems, you were in a different class for each teacher at that age, which was new to me as well, which I found kind of a hard transition. And I don't even remember my teacher's math teacher's name in middle school. That's how much of an impact they made on me. I can't even remember their name. I'm sorry if you remember me, teacher out there, but I apologize. I don't remember any of my middle school math. Um, it was somewhere around there where I just started getting this belief in my head that I wasn't a math person. I couldn't do math, I couldn't do math. I went to a new high school in grade nine, and they immediately put me into applied math class and told me, you know, this is where you belong. We're pigeonholing you here and applied math and sciences. And it just added to my belief that that's where I belonged. I also academically struggled that year, and they were telling me, oh, you need a French tutor and an uh executive functioning tutor, and you need a writing coach, and you need a math tutor. And I just felt so overwhelmed by tutors and very incapable of my own abilities because every outside source who was supposed to help me just kept telling me I needed to have more help academically. So I believed these thoughts that I couldn't do math, I couldn't do science, and that these just were not Sophie subjects. And I really worked with you in grade nine. And then in grade 10, I actually switched schools because the school for me in grade nine wasn't the right fit. And in grade 10, my principal, who I would give a lot of uh credit to, he really did help me in high school navigate my way and academically grow. He um he said to me, you know what, if he's listening, Wayne McKelvey from Metro Prep, you help me. Lots gonna give you a shout out. I I loved you, Wayne, and you were very, very helpful in helping me become the educator I am today. And I owe you a lot of my success with one with Vanessa.
SPEAKER_00This is so cute. Okay, we're gonna make sure Wayne hears this.
SPEAKER_01I like to I like to give credit where credit's due. Um and he said to me, You are not an applied math student. I'm gonna make you redo grade nine math. You're gonna do it the regular stream, and we're gonna get you caught up academically. And this is not this is not the journey you're meant to take mathematically or scientifically. And I remember you teaching me all of grade nine math. I think we did it in like two or three weeks. You were like, I'm gonna get you caught up so that when you're there, you're gonna be comfortable and confident because I was so anxious about redoing it again. And like, I didn't even do that well in the applied course. So, what made me think I could do well in the regular academic level was just beyond me. But we did it and I did very well. And I'm I managed to keep math all the way through to grade 12. I didn't do all the maths, I did whatever the bare minimum was because you took math in grade 12. I did. I think it was just like the You did data. Yeah, data, whatever the early, the easiest math was. I think I did it because I wanted to keep my options open. Okay, but data is easiest for grade 12. I would never say any any high school math is easy.
SPEAKER_00No, but people say data is the easy mouth, but or the easy math, but I think in some ways it's the most challenging. I just want to put that out there because I hate when people just call it the easy math because I actually think it's one of the hardest maths because of all the problem solving. Anyways, go ahead. You should be proud of yourself.
SPEAKER_01I thank you. I I agree. And as a student who had an IEP or an individualized education plan so I could uh have support, I always found it very frustrating when I wasn't allowed to have a calculator in with me at an exam. Why was I have why was I forced to rely on mental math or to memorize equations and formulas? And in my mind, even now when I do math in my everyday life, I look up the formula. I'm not sitting there going, oh, what did I learn in grade 10? How do I figure out this problem? You you solve it as a real, real life example, and you have that homework and that stuff from high school that helps you complete these skills as an adult. But I gained my math confidence more and more and more through high school, and then it kind of dropped after because I went into a field where I didn't really need to use math. I did a year of uh childhood social work studies at Western University and didn't need my math credits. Then I went on to do my early childhood education degree where you're doing math up to a five-year-old's level. So I never really had to branch out or do my math as well. And my math confidence just got lower and lower and lower. I wasn't having my daily, weekly shot of Vanessa, you know, my Vanessa sessions to boost me up. I was, you know, pulling out my calculator at restaurants to like calculate tip and, you know, canceling counting money over and over again and just never believing in my own equations and my own math and my own ability. And then I went back to school. I did my bachelor's, I finished my bachelor's degree, I did my master's, and then I started teaching at an elementary level. I was in a grade two classroom, and the math was actually very difficult. And I found that I had to teach myself things beforehand because if I wasn't confident, how could I ever expect my students to be confident? How could I ever, you know, expect them to have the same excitement for math that I didn't have if I don't bring that level of excitement to it when I'm teaching it or tutoring it or whatever it may be?
SPEAKER_00This is actually like, first of all, you're so good at this. I'm horrible when someone asks me to tell a concise story and I'm like really hanging on to every edge right now because I'm like, wow, this is so well said. And I'm like following the parabola of your of your confidence, right? Like heading up to that peak and then slowly declining because you're not using math. But I want to interrupt for a second because what I find so interesting is I've actually never heard you talk about yourself this way. I've never heard you say, yeah, I actually got good at math and was proud of myself. Because the what I actually remember the most, I suppose, is when I was tutoring you in the beginning and you didn't think you were good at math. And in most recent times, when you would message me saying, Hey, I have to teach grade two math and I don't know what I'm doing because you know I've never been good at math. So hold on a second, because you're saying right now, and I'm very excited about this, but I want to clarify, there was a time, and maybe there is that time again. I think we're gonna get to that, but there was a big chunk of time where you actually felt really good about yourself as a math learner. Is that correct? Like in high school.
SPEAKER_01That is correct. But at the time, I never would have admitted it to you or to whoever it was because I was so afraid of losing that support that made me feel uh feel that way. Had I said, Oh, I'm good at math now, I can handle it, I maybe would have lost the tutor. Obviously, I know this in retrospect, my parents were wonderful, are wonderful people, and they would have never, you know, told me I couldn't have a tutor, I couldn't have a support that I wanted. But it was this fear of almost admitting, okay, I am good at math. And then what if next year I totally bombed math and it was back to being terrible at math, or if I didn't understand something, or you know, it was it was almost being afraid to admit that, okay, I think I get something because tomorrow or the next year, the next step, you may not. And it's much easier to rely back on your old thinking in the old ways you would have labeled yourself.
SPEAKER_00Oh my God. But like that, I actually think that's
a real, like, take math out of it. We're so scared to say that in so many areas of life, right? That's even when someone compliments you and you're like, oh, it's nothing, or like it was just a fluke, or like, da-da-da. I mean, I've always found that is that, you know, like we're scared to say we're good at something for fear that the next day we won't be, and then we'll feel like ashamed or something. When really like being good at something or understanding something is a spectrum and it's a roller coaster. It's not just like, oh, you're good at something and you're good at it forever, right? Normally when you're good at something, you're gonna try something harder the next day, which means there's a bigger chance you're gonna fail at that thing, right? So like I think that's like that's cool that you can admit that. But so admitting it now and then saying, okay, so yes, actually, there was a point I felt good at math, and then I started my confidence started decreasing because I wasn't using it, right? So you kind of went back into your old headspace of being like, maybe I'm not good at it anymore, la la la la. And then you get into the grade two math class. And again, I think it's a misconception for people to sort of think, well, if I'm good at math and I can't even do grade two math, like what the fuck is wrong with me? But grade two math is hard. Number one, because you're literally having to teach someone something you know so well. Like you know how to add numbers together, and now you have to like explain how that works. Like as an author of a kid's math book, to me, that's the hardest stuff to do, right? Like to figure out how to explain something you know so well. And number two, like you haven't actually done, like, there's stuff in grade two math that like you haven't done in forever, right? Like it's like there's you haven't done since grade two. You haven't done since grade two. So, how did you navigate that? Like, explain. So, first of all, like how you went into that classroom being like, you know what, fuck it. I want to be a teacher and I'm gonna have to teach math. How did you reconcile that with feeling anxious about your own math abilities?
SPEAKER_01For starters, I always showed confidence about math in front of kids. I always showed enthusiasm. I have so many memories growing up of teachers saying things like, okay, you guys, now it's math time, or this is a really hard unit. Everyone needs to pay attention. We're we're all gonna focus because this one's a big uh building step for what comes next or what's next year. And that would immediately make me anxious and like feel keyed up and be like, oh, I'm not gonna get this, and then I'm not gonna get it next year. And the the anxiety spiral would sort of roll. And it took a lot of me building up my own confidence. Like I am a teacher, and I always say, if I can't teach myself something, I'm probably not a very good teacher if I can't even teach it to my own self. So I teach myself things all the time. One of my bigger fears isn't actually teaching in the classroom, it's tutoring. So I give a lot of applause, like kudos to your teachers and your tutors at your at the math guru. Because when I tutor a student and they go, This is my math homework. I have no time to prepare for what they're about to show me. I don't know what unit they're on. I know they're grade level, but they're showing me something that I'm going, huh? I haven't seen this since I did this, you know, 15, 20 years ago. So for me, it's about I have to teach myself that whole unit of math in about 30 seconds before I open my mouth and start talking to that student. And sometimes I'll say, Let me just Google something real quick and I'll look it up on my phone and I go, Oh, oh, oh, right. I was tutoring a student in grade four. And I was like, when's the last time you did long division? Like, seriously. Oh my god. Everyone out there. We all have it in us, but like I don't remember. What is it?
SPEAKER_00No, me neither.
SPEAKER_01What is it?
SPEAKER_00Where does that decimal place go? Who knows?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It's so confusing. But I figured it out in three and a half seconds. You do a little review of place value, and you know, it comes back to you in two and a half seconds. And now I'm sitting here years later, even after tutoring the student, and I can't do long division again because I find it easier than pulling out my phone and dividing it. I trust my own math more than not that I'm more than I trust a calculator. That's a big statement, but I trust I trust my math enough to not need to double check it with a calculator. Right. And that took a lot of maturing and aging and confidence and working with a lot of different types of students and learners and showing enthusiasm for a subject that I didn't necessarily feel confident in. And when I recognize students who have, I don't want to say math anxiety, but I'll say academic anxiety. I I know we try to prove here the math anxiety doesn't exist, but academic anxiety.
SPEAKER_00Math people don't exist, is what I math people. But math anxiety, I think, definitely, definitely exists. Which I'm we're gonna talk about it more in a second.
All right. So when I see students who have academic anxiety or math anxiety, I try to give them just confidence. I may know that they're gonna get that answer completely wrong. I may know that they're gonna do it absolutely terribly. But what is most important to me as a teacher is that they're at least just trying. And I'm not gonna tear them down for trying. I'm gonna applaud them. I've had students who have tried and then they cry, and I'll just go outside and we'll have a whole long talk about how what they did was brave and courageous and how proud I am of them and how proud they should be of themselves for trying something that they knew was gonna be very difficult and succeeded. I think that the way to make math people and academic people is to start first with building up someone's confidence in who they are as a learner and developing a love of learning. Because unless you love to learn, you're not gonna, you're not gonna learn very well. You learn best when you love what you're learning. So why not love it all?
SPEAKER_00Oh my God. I have like full body goosebumps. I am so proud of you. Like this is incredible. I'm I'm getting so inspired listening to you. And I actually am just like the more you're talking, I'm like, wow, like this is taking like a turn I didn't really expect it to, but I actually think a lot of listeners, and especially a lot of our teacher listeners, are gonna really appreciate hearing this because what I get so often, especially from elementary teachers, two things. Number one, so many teachers are anxious around math, and that is okay. Like Sophie is right now telling you guys, basically, right? Like she's all the time, right? So it's like I always say you can actually use that anxiety to A, relate to your students and understand what you're going through, but B, to like you can develop those strategies. So I'm really, really glad you're sharing some of your strategies, right? Googling something, looking it up beforehand, saying, Hey, can you just give me a second? Acting confident even when you're not feeling confident. All of those actually are strategies that you can use when you're feeling anxious in the classroom or in a tutoring situation. So that's the first thing that I get asked about a lot. And the other thing I get asked about a lot is how do you deal with those students who are are are demonstrating some anxiety or trauma around math? How do you encourage them? And you've really I I love that, right? Like acting confident and I want to hear a bit more about what you do. Like if a student, I love that saying, like, you know, a student's gonna get the answer wrong. It's not about like I need them to get a 90% or I need them to get it right, but you want them to leave that situation feeling really good that they tried. I can you tell me a bit more about what you do there? Like, I love that. Like, what do you do when you take them into the hall and give them a pep talk? What are you saying to them?
SPEAKER_01It it depends on the student, depends on the situation, depends on what what it was they were trying to do. But it's for me, no matter what age I teach, I always sort of think of, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and you sort of have to deal with the social emotional before they can actually start learning. And if a student is so in their head with anxiety and worried about getting the right or wrong answer, they're never actually going to learn how to get the right answer. So it's about calming students down, doing deep breathing. I know this is silly, but I do it every day with my students. Yeah, tell us what you do. What do you do? We do mindfulness games. We've started this game in our class. We call it the coin listening game. It's very simple. We put a plastic bag on the floor and I take a quarter, a nickel, and I make all the students close their eyes and we just listen. And then I drop the coin, and when they hear the coin fall and the little rustle, they lift their hand up and they raise their hand. I've played these games with two-year-olds to 12-year-olds. I've played this game with everyone, and it actually just forces children to take a moment, breathe, and turn on their listening skills. And they're they're excited. They want to raise their hand, they want to be the first one to hear that sound, but it actually just takes them a few seconds to just slow their breathing so they can actually listen. And they don't realize that when they come up from that game, we play it for five minutes or so, they're so much more attentive and willing to learn. They're sitting more still, they're more receptive to hearing whatever it is that I'm going to share. And I find that not enough time is often allocated to getting students ready to actually learn. They come, you sit in the class, and you get started right into the lesson because you only have so much time. And I get it, you can actually get it all done in a day. It is too much to do if you constantly have to reset your students. But sometimes those students really need it, especially those really anxious learners. And you don't necessarily like to single them out. Cause I've been at schools where you take them on a walk or you do a sensory activity quickly, or you give them fidget toys or fidget tools. Sorry, I hate the word fidget toys, fidget tools. Um, I think I can do that rant another time. And, you know, it's about helping them regulate their own emotions. It's it's very hard as an adult to even regulate your own emotions. So we should start giving these children these tools as young as possible where they can feel a sense of failure and able to build themselves back up. It's okay to have all different levels of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, self-consciousness is a spectrum that ranges from like embarrassment and shame all the way up to like pride and excitement. And it's about helping them like navigate that spectrum of how they feel about themselves. And you want them to always be on the more positive side. So even if you're doing it wrong, you gotta feel good about it. You gotta fake it till you make it, sort of.
SPEAKER_00It's you know, old school advice, but you gotta do it. I love that advice. It's I call it the Britney method, it's the Britney Spears method. Just fake it till you make it. Okay, although now that I've seen the documentary, I'm actually feel like it's not true anymore. I feel like she actually worked really hard. I have a question, and she was actually talented from the beginning, but this is not. Britney podcast,
two things. I love what you said about getting students ready to learn. Like I really love that. I think I've never thought about it that way. But even at like, let's say the math guru, so we're not doing this, although I kind of love this idea of starting with a quick little mindfulness exercise. Even something like, hey, let's start um the lesson with like two minutes of small talk, right? Really getting to know your tutor or your tutor just being like, how was your day? What's going on? How are you feeling? And getting into a different mindset. So when you sit down to your math tutoring session, it's not just like, hi, shut up, open the book, learn, right? You're getting into a different headspace, you're talking about your feelings around math. You're totally right. When we get into class, the bell rings, it's like, open your books. There's none of that. And I really like what you're saying that we need to do something, some sort of thing to get students into the right mindset to learn. And I completely agree that we do not focus on that enough. We're so focused on content that we're not thinking that like content cannot be absorbed by a cluttered mind, right? Or an anxious mind, like you said. So I love that. I love the coin activity. I feel like we should do that before we record these episodes, to be honest. Also, like, sorry, this is a weird question. Where like you have dropped so many gems. Where are you learning this stuff? Like, where did you learn this self-consciousness as a spectrum from shame to pride? What's that from?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I do a lot of reading. I I don't even know where I would have read that, but I read a lot of books on the power of play and on, you know, the importance of play in the early years and all these things, all the early childhood development talks about these oncoming feelings of self-consciousness and how to foster those. And I find that it's very apparent in early learners. And it's something that does set the tone for learning later in life, is when children are very early on told that they're getting answers wrong. We know they're getting answers wrong, but you don't need to say no. It's the verbal red pen, it's the verbal red X that children are getting at a very early age that starts to hinder their confidence in learning that you don't realize happens over so many years, over so many times, and so many teachers and different schools. And it's about stopping it early on. For me, as an early childhood educator, for me, it's about stopping it early on and sending them into elementary school and into school with a strong confidence and love of learning.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's so cool because, like, yeah, again, this podcast is math therapy, and so much of we deal with is people's math trauma, right? So I love what you said, like that verbal red X or whatever it is, like all of those things are causes of math trauma. And you're in such a I it's it's interesting because you're in such an interesting position because you're getting them so early. It's almost like, like you said, you can A, prevent the buildup of math trauma, but B, equip them with skills so that when they're in potentially math traumatizing events, they are resilient, you know, they have that mindset and resilience so they don't actually get so affected by them. Like, so that's such an interesting position to be in. And it sounds like you're just doing an amazing job. And I want to ask you a million more questions, but we already kind of have to wrap up and move on to the final two, which I honestly love you so much and I think you're so great. But I just feel so lucky for your students and I feel like lucky to have been a part of this journey at all. Anyways, who cares? Back to you.
Final two questions. I know there's a lot, but if you had to pick one thing to change about the way math is taught in schools, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01Oh my God, that is such a loaded question. You told me we don't have a lot of time left. Why would you save this to the end? Um one of my biggest, like I guess you could say it's pet peeves, is that you have to follow the curriculum, not necessarily to the T, but that you have these objectives that you have to reach each year. And you're not really supposed to go ahead, and you're not really supposed to go back. And I've I've had students who are so ready for years ahead of where they are. And I have students who need to go much slower than the pace that we're moving at. And I think that learning should almost move at a child's own own speed and should be scaffolded more thoughtfully than it is done now, and that maybe a little some units should go a little bit deeper each year so that students can see how things build on each other. Instead of you doing this quick two-week unit and then the next year you do a two-week unit. I'd rather do a four-week unit and see how that whole skill develops and learn it in one year, like they do in some uh split classes. But yeah, I don't know. I don't control the curriculum. I don't want to be known as the person who doesn't. I love the Ontario curriculum. It does great things and it's a great guideline to follow. Oh, right. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, you know, not lose any jobs here.
SPEAKER_00Stephen Ace is not listening to the podcast, I don't think.
SPEAKER_01You never know. We might get them one day to listen. It's true. Um, but yeah, I definitely find that there are the it's more of a limitation. It it makes me feel boxed in when I feel like this is what I'm supposed to teach this year when I know that a student can achieve so much more or really needs support in other areas. And that's where my focus and their focus should be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. We definitely have curriculum issues, and it's definitely basically impossible to teach a class of 35 kids the exact same thing at the exact same pace. So I love that. Exactly. Final question that we ask every guest
what would you say to someone who says, But Sophie, I'm just not a math person.
SPEAKER_01I had someone say that to me this morning, and I told them about this podcast, and they are listening to it right now. Oh my gosh. We're so excited to hear about it. And what I said to her when she said to me, But I'm not a math person, I said, That's not true for starters. Let my friend Vanessa get through with you. And then after, I said, You just don't realize how much math is all around you, and then you do use your math every single day. And you just this friend who was talking to me, she's an OR scrub nurse. This woman literally had takes the inventory for what's in the room when someone's having surgery and has to make sure that every gauze comes in and out of someone's body and whatever it is. And I'm going, I I know it's a gross job. I would never do it, but I'm going, how do you not think that you're good at math? Your whole job revolves around math. The doctor tells you to hand him a needle with this much fluid in it, shows me how much I know about medical things. You know, you're good at math. You have math in your career, you do math every day, and you just don't realize that you're literally living in math. Math, there's no way to avoid doing math. It's just recognizing and having the confidence to be like, oh yeah, I did just do that math. I did get at that. And like having those little moments of pride. You gotta, you gotta boost your own self-confidence and have those moments of pride when you are, when you're feeling that there's no hope in math. When you're if you're not a math person, I challenge you to just realize all the math that you're already doing. You already are a math person. You just gotta gotta open your eyes.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god. And I want to give that advice back to you, TBH, because it's so true. Like it's like just because you're not, you know, doing calculus or doing quadratic equations, you are doing math all the time. You teaching grade two kids math is hard. Like that would be very, very hard for me. You are amazing. You're such an inspiration. I mean, I wanna like, I feel like I can't take credit for any of this, but I want to take, you know, I just I feel lucky.
SPEAKER_01Vanessa, I just want to clarify, you know, I don't teach grade two anymore, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. But you teach you're teaching like two-year-olds and three-year-olds math, right?
SPEAKER_01Like you are no, and you you always say you don't even know what that is, but I'm telling you, that's the most basic of basic. What's a shape? How many sides, edges, corners, the attributes of shapes, the attributes of colors? What is a number? The number, the number one is one people online doing. Like that is hard, I think. Oh, to me, it's like I get so much joy out of it. I love the aha moments when they finally know that like the number three, like I'm three years old. Oh my god, that's what the number three looks like. It's like the cutest. I gotta have you over to like my class sometime as a special guest. You'll love all the little learners.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god. Oh my god, I will definitely do that. But I think that's the point, though. Like, really to take a moment. There is no, um, I think people are often like, oh, fine, I'm doing math, but I'm not doing real math. So I really love the way you've kind of said that. That like open your eyes to the math around you. Trust me, you are doing math. You're capable of math in some way in your own creative, personal, unique way. You are actually mathematically literate. And that's really important for us to all internalize because that is where the confidence comes from. It's from realizing you have the capacity to do it. Whether or not you choose to become a doctor or a scientist or whatever, that's your own personal choice, right? But like you have that choice. It's totally cool to be like, fuck that. I'm not interested in doing any higher math, but at least realize that you are mathematically literate and you've got it. So,
Sophie, thank you so much. You're such an inspiration. I'm so excited that everyone's like, I feel like you should be in charge of education. Like, I just, I feel so lucky to have had you on the podcast. I feel so lucky to be any part of your math journey. If I had any role in making you into this, or not making you, but in inspiring you in any way to be the amazing teacher you are today. Like, wow, we're so aligned on our views on education that it, I really have full body goosebumps. So thank you for being on the podcast. And I can't wait to gossip later.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. And you have definitely been one of my mentors this you know entire time as I've evolved. You've helped me foster my love of math and foster my love of being an educator. And you, you know, I have every calculator you've ever got me, and I'm gonna keep them all on my calculator wall with pride one day when I have a calculator wall where I live.
SPEAKER_00My god, guys, we started off this podcast talking about me, and we are ending it talking about me. So As it should be.
SPEAKER_01As it should be.
SPEAKER_00Okay, bye. Okay, were you taking notes? Because Sophie dropped the mic approximately like two bajillion times. And yes, I'm aware that's not an actual number, but come on. I'm now obsessed with the idea of getting kids ready for learning. I mean, how is that not the first thing we teach in teachers' college? It just makes so much sense. It's like stretching before you work out. If you don't, which I'll be honest, I usually don't, you just can't get into your workout. And quite frankly, you're likely to injure yourself, which I'll be honest, I have multiple times. Sophie's family, if you're listening, hi! And also, you raise the coolest daughter ever. The world thinks you don't ever change. If something in this episode inspired you, please tweet us at Math Therapy. And you can also follow me personally at the Math Guru on Instagram or Twitter. Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vicaria, produced by Sabina Wex, and edited by David Koachberg. Our theme song is Waves by my band Goodnight Sunrise. And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please share this podcast and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use. Those things actually make such a difference. I am determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help. So please spread the word. That's all for this week. Stay tuned for our next episode out next Thursday.