How to find the "why" in math class w/ Mike Flynn

When Mike Flynn started teaching, math was just one of many subjects he had to guide his students through.  The problem was, the way he was taught math made him hate it!  

But when a new career opportunity gave him the chance at a much deeper understanding of the concepts and a reason "why" they mattered in the real world, Mike realized that he wasn't confined to just teaching the way he was taught - he could give students and teachers the chance to value math right from the jump.

On today's episode he joins Vanessa to discuss:

• Why making mistakes is essential to deep mathematical understanding
• How shifting from “right answer” thinking to a focus on reasoning and flexible thinking can transform the way we approach math problems
• Strategies for helping students (and adults!) overcome math anxiety and see themselves as capable, creative problem solvers

Links discussed:

• Open Middle - for encouraging flexible thinking
  • Vanessa's interview with co-founder Robert Kaplinsky
• Books mentioned:
  • Beyond Answers: Exploring Mathematical Practices with Young Children by Mike Flynn
  • 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions by Peg Smith and Mary Kay Stein
  • Nix the Tricks: A guide to avoiding shortcuts that cut out math concept development by Tina Cardone

About Mike Flynn: (Website, Twitter, Instagram)

Mike Flynn is an internationally recognized math educator, Director of Math Programs at Mount Holyoke College, and founder of Flynn Education. He has led professional development for teachers around the world, authored Beyond Answers: Exploring Mathematical Practices with Young Children, and served on the NCTM Board. His work focuses on helping teachers move beyond rigid instruction to curiosity-driven, identity-building math learning.

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

Transcript

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Intro

Mike Flynn 0:02

if you're a thinker, you can do math. That's all it is. You were given experiences where you weren't allowed to think, we're gonna give you experiences where you can think Every lesson I teach, I'm learning alongside the kids because I know enough of the math that I'm teaching that I can back up and listen and be present. I'm not trying to hold onto what's the thing I'm supposed to say? What's the thing I'm supposed to show? What's the slide telling me to do here? I can just be in the moment.

Vanessa Vakharia 0:26

Hey guys. It's me, Vanessa, AKA The Math Guru, and we are here for another week of Math Therapy. Okay. Have you ever been in a situation where someone asks you a question and you freeze because you don't know the answer, and then suddenly your brain is screaming, I should know this, and if I don't, does that mean I'm stupid? Maybe you felt that yourself, or maybe you have a friend or colleague who struggles with that exact fear, the kind of fear that keeps them from going after the promotion or speaking up in meetings or trying something new because they're scared they won't have all the answers. And if that sounds familiar, you're gonna love this episode. Honestly, I've been there. I used to think that if I didn't know the answer to something, I had to fake it or scramble to make something up, or I'd get really flustered trying to cover my tracks. I thought that not knowing meant I wasn't qualified or that I'd lose credibility. But here's the truth. Not knowing doesn't make us weak. It makes us all learners, and it also can make us the best teachers. And that's exactly what today's guest, Mike Flynn, is going to help us with. Mike is a math educator who works with teachers. All over the world, and he's here to show us how a deeper understanding of math can heal our own math trauma, and prevent us from passing it onto the next generation. He'll help you reframe those "I don't know" moments into opportunities for growth, for us, but also for our students. So if you've ever felt uncomfortable not knowing the answer, or you know someone who holds themselves back because of that exact fear, this episode is going to give you exactly what you need. So let's get into it.

The value of deep understanding

Vanessa Vakharia 2:04

Mike, welcome to the podcast. It has been a long time coming. I'm so excited. I'm really just having you here so I can hang out with you for an hour.

Mike Flynn 2:13

Eh, good excuse. I like it.

Vanessa Vakharia 2:15

You are the first guest, I have to say, whose birth chart I have. Normally I'm just willy-nilly guessing people's astrological signs. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm not. I'm usually not, but sometimes I am. But I actually have your birth chart in my hot little hands because you let me read it for you one time. Thank you for that. How was the experience?

Mike Flynn 2:36

That was great. Yeah, I, it's not something I normally followed or anything, so I didn't even know what any of that meant. So I, I learned quite a bit with you and it's interesting, what things are coincidental, what things are, uh, you know what, what was really neat is that you didn't know a lot of things about my profession or the things I do, and you were naming things that were like, Ooh, that's kind of aligned to what, where we're going or what we're hoping will happen. So

Vanessa Vakharia 2:58

my god. Thank you, and now it's it sounds like I've brought you on the pod to validate my skills an astrologer, which I, I have not, but thank you for saying all that. Let's actually talk about what you do in that realm. Like how did you start, you know, because there are so many instructional coaches and like admin that listen to the podcast, so many people who help other teachers help their students and help other teachers build their own relationships with math. How did you get into this, and maybe just tell us like specifically what it is you do.

Mike Flynn 3:26

Well, what I do is I help and my, team at our company, we help build teachers content and pedagogical knowledge and as well as. help them develop effective teaching practices and then we build lots of great resources that they can then use to support this work to really better math education for all students. Um, it's not really the path I originally chose for myself, even when I became a teacher, because I never liked math. I didn't like math as a student, I hated it as a teacher. And the thing that kind of brought me where I am now is I actually had a really good professional learning experience for myself where it wasn't just someone showing me how to use a curriculum or someone saying, here's how you teach. Instead, it actually was all focused on just relearning math, like learning math deeply. And it wasn't a, a course for someone who doesn't know the math or like needs a boost up. It was just that, the basic sense was that all of us have students only got a fraction of the depth of math that we're supposed to really understand. We, like the way I look at, it's like if you imagine there's a book of math that has all the math knowledge that ever was and will ever be is in this book, and when we were kids growing up, our teachers skimmed the chapters. Like they skimmed fractions, they skimm multiplication. So we got just the gist of it. And then when we became teachers, what we were expected to teach was a lot more of those chapters, but we didn't learn it ourselves. And so a lot of us, I, me in particular is I would just force all my lessons to be the little bit that I remembered. Like, oh, just line the numbers up and just do this. So as much as I hated math when I became a teacher, I taught math the same way that I was taught. 'cause I didn't know any better. And when I took that course, it was like getting a chance to read the chapter deeper, like to actually go through the whole thing. And I was like, I had no idea. I remember turning to someone while I was learning this saying, if I had learned math this way, it would've made it the biggest difference in my life. And so from that, I started to change my teaching practices to basically make those kinds of experiences for my students, which then transformed the way my kids learn math, the way I taught, and then I became addicted to it. So I kept going back and getting more and more of this kind of professional learning, that made me a confident teacher, made me love math. And then as I developed my skills and my comfort, I started to share what I knew with other people. And that started around 2003 and I've been doing it ever since, is is just helping teachers and leaders basically create these kinds of experiences for their staff or for their students.

Vanessa Vakharia 6:00

Okay. I have about 10 questions, so let's just, first of all, this is sounds really cool and I'm obviously wanting an example Let me, let me say why, because you're saying this idea of saying, you know, imagine there's this book of math and it's, I mean, it'd probably be infinite. I mean, I can't even imagine all the math knowledge in the world, but when you're learning math at school, your teachers were skimming those chapters, right? So they were just giving you like the kind of like icing layer of fractions, the icing layer of multiplication. Then you said that when you became a teacher, you know, let's say all of us, the collective we, when we become teachers, we're expected to do more than that. Is that correct, we're expected? My first question is, why are we expected to do more than that, but those teachers who taught us we're not?

Mike Flynn 6:44

I think because for a long time that, that there wasn't this need for deeper thinking in math. I mean, if you go back to like very early education, the beginnings of education, math was, it's just arithmetic. You're basically, you, learning to do computation, 'cause all computation had to be done by hand, with a quill and a ledger or whatever it is. Right. Like parchment and stuff, you know what I mean?

Vanessa Vakharia 7:06

so cool.

Mike Flynn 7:07

It's like Hogwarts time. Right. You know, but that's, by the way, that's just such a weird thing to me that you have all that magic and you still have to write with a quill, like I I, that, you know what I mean? There's like a, just things that I just wonder, like there's, it doesn't make.

Vanessa Vakharia 7:20

of the magic though, is like there are certain experiences that are like tangible. Like it's almost like the magic is in these little things.

Mike Flynn 7:28

Yeah, yeah,

Vanessa Vakharia 7:29

it's like, it's like writing with a quill, doesn't that make you feel so powerful, as opposed to like snapping your fingers and the writing appears you're not getting the, I don't know. I also have never watched Harry Potter. Is that where Hogwarts is from?

Mike Flynn 7:41

Yeah. That's it. I'm just making random references for you. So,

Vanessa Vakharia 7:45

That's fine. Go ahead. Back to what you

Mike Flynn 7:48

but, but here's the idea is like, that's like for a long time, just being able to do fast rote.

Vanessa Vakharia 7:54

Yeah.

Mike Flynn 7:54

Calculations by hand. That was, that was all you needed. And what, what we're seeing today is like people need to know how to think, how to reason, how to problem solve, how to be creative. There aren't companies that are hiring people that are like, how good are you at long division? I've never had that interview question. I've never seen that interview question. Right? It's they, but they wanna know, how do you solve? how do you creatively solve these problems? I mean, I remember Google used to have, sometimes they would put out these really interesting problems, like really complex problems. And the answer to the problem was like the phone number that you would call to get a job interview. Like that's the kind of thing that where these companies are looking for people that are thoughtful, creative problem solvers. And because of that, the needs shift. And so there's a recognition that. Just skimming the surface of math and just having math just beyond getting quick answers accurately is it's not enough, and that we wanna have that deeper understanding because we also saw that at least at the elementary level, that you can teach all these rope procedures and kids can perform well on tests and things for a little while. But as soon as you get into algebra, as soon as you get into any of this higher math, well, you have to actually understand like what it means to multiply and, and you have to understand, the properties of operations, how they work. If all you have is memorized facts and procedures, that all that starts to fall apart. And so a lot of us kind of went through life with this like vague understanding of math, like just enough to like get by. But. If you talk to any, I mean, you're, this is all your work. How many adults do you talk to that talk about math, trauma, that talk about, just the, the icky feelings they have when they think about math? There are so many people that we hear that from, that are older than us, that are our age, that are younger than us, that we see that this is actually a problem. If you just are taught the way we were taught, that doesn't work. We have way too many people who are underserved with that kind of teaching. And there's a reason why math has such a bad reputation is because, you know, imagine if we taught reading the same way we teach math, where it's just, just focus on saying these words really fast and don't worry about what it means. Right? If that's how we taught reading, people would say, I hate reading. I, I, I can read, but I don't get it. I don't, I never liked reading. But with reading, we also embrace the comprehension. In fact, the comprehension's the most important thing, and the speed and accuracy help us to get to that meaning faster. But in math, we just disregarded the meaning. It's like, oh, don't worry about it, just. Just do this thing I show you and do it fast. And if you do it right, you're gonna get all the right answers. But don't worry about what it means like I was taught. Yours is not to reason why, just invert and multiply like the teacher was actually saying, don't even worry about why. Yeah. that's,

Vanessa Vakharia 10:37

Yours is not to reason why? That's actually fucked.

Mike Flynn 10:41

It is. But I remembered it.

Vanessa Vakharia 10:42

What an insane thing to say! Oh, yeah, say, oh Yeah, you know how to, you know, how to divide fractions,

Mike Flynn 10:47

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 10:47

Like, you're literally told like, your job is not to think. Like, do not.

Helping students find the "why" of math

Vanessa Vakharia 10:51

Okay this is so interesting because I'm of two minds here. I'm like, Absolutely, like we want to have deep knowledge. We wanna understand the why. So your job here is to help teachers understand the why behind what they're teaching. Is that like a, a simple way to, am I correct?

Mike Flynn 11:10

Yeah. And some of the what too, yeah. But understand why it all works, it's the one of the best things we can do for teachers.

Vanessa Vakharia 11:16

And also you can imagine just talking about magic and Hogwarts and the quill and everything, unlocking knowledge and meaning is magic, right? Like when someone can see why we're actually flipping and multiplying, like actually the why behind it. All of a sudden, as we know, many teachers and students remember that aha moment where you're like, holy shit, it's all coming together. You know? Like now I completely get it. I mean, I remember seriously when Deborah Peart like two years ago, I'm a high school math teacher, right? I understand fractions. But when she showed me why we flip and multiply, like she showed me visually, it did feel like magic. It really felt like magic. So I get that feeling. Now, you're saying, you know, we're now in this time where we, kids need to know how to think, they don't just need to know arithmetic. So here you are teaching these teachers or showing them that magic, the thinking, the curiosity, them getting to the deeper knowledge of why we're doing certain things. Now they're in the classroom to teach the kids, right? They're gonna pass this on. Do you think that the content that's in the curriculum hinders that do you think it's like, yes, cool, we wanna teach thinking everyone can agree, but then we get to certain content in the curriculum where it's like, but this isn't teaching thinking.

Mike Flynn 12:29

Here's a way we can kind of look at it, all curricular resources are tools, and the tools are designed by people to achieve certain means, right? Part of it is like, I think of, uh, Tina Cardone who wrote the book Nix the Tricks. Like one of the things that, if people aren't familiar with Nix the Tricks, it was, I loved it because it was a, it was created, uh, she curated it with the collaborate of the, the greater math ed community that was at the time, blogging and on Twitter, when that was like a big thing. And what the book did is gave teachers ways to take all these things that were like magic, right? These like the tricks, and, and like foil and the butterfly method and all this and it, and it was basically, uh, instead of doing this, do this instead to build meaning. So it's like getting that, what's the underlying math that this trick is trying to get kids to do? Because the trick goes right over the thinking because it's like, how can I get a kid to remember, memorize this and do it really quickly without thinking? And, and so she and the other people who contributed to that basically found a way to help people bring in the meaning to it.

Vanessa Vakharia 13:36

Well, and I now I am saying this and I'm like, I think what's happened is I've been very affected by an interview I had yesterday with two moms who I interviewed for the podcast. And they were very much like, and so rightfully so, they were like, we don't understand what the point is of half this shit our kids are learning. Like, what is the point of this? Why do they need this? Our kids are frustrated, we're frustrated. And I was like, you know what, like, you're right. Like I don't even know what to tell you. Like I, I don't, I don't know, like a lot of it is like, I don't know why they're learning it. But you're kind of like, yeah, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I hear you being like that aside, since I don't have, I don't have control over that, that aside, there is an opportunity in everything they're learning to teach a thinking skill.

Mike Flynn 14:17

Yeah, that, that, that comes right down to it. And I think part of it is like, if you as an educator, like once you start to go down that path for yourself to understand the math better, it's, like, I'm gonna use another metaphor. 'cause I just constantly think in analogies and metaphors, but like, when I wrote my book Beyond Answers, the very first chapter is called Lost in Boston because, um, I live in Western Mass, but it's, uh, Boston, if anyone's familiar with it. Like cities are hard to drive in anyway, but many cities are a grid. Boston is the most, it's just, I, I, one time I got lost, I went to a gas station, showed them the directions I had, and the guy laughed. He's like, you're never gonna find it. 'cause those two roads don't even exist anymore. Like, that's like the level of craziness that.

Vanessa Vakharia 14:57

hands, like a physical map?

Mike Flynn 14:59

It was a MapQuest, like I'm dating myself too. It's like, like this is like pre GPS, like this. Is that? Yeah. All you young folks, this is before we actually had to print out directions.

Vanessa Vakharia 15:08

They had maps on paper, guys. Okay.

Mike Flynn 15:10

Yeah. Charts and stuff. Yeah. It's uh. I was, I was like, Magellan, basically. Yeah. But here's the thing is I had to go to Boston quite a bit for meetings and I would leave an hour earlier than I should to give myself getting lost time. It was really frustrating because when you would get these printed out directions, you also can't read while you're driving, right. You, technically, and so I would try to memorize these directions, right? So I knew like everywhere to, Boston, I kind of had, but once I got got into Boston, I would just memorized, okay, take it right on here, get off at this exit, dah, dah, dah, whatever. Then I, the whole time, even though I had those directions memorized, I was panicking because if the way Boston worked, there was too much traffic. There was a detour. Anything that got me off of what the predictable path that I memorized was, I had no idea where I was. Even when I was following the directions, I didn't know where in Boston I was. I just knew, like I knew the, yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 16:04

Right! This is me every day in my life. Oh my God, dude, wow. I could not relate more to this.

Mike Flynn 16:10

And this is what math feels like for most people when they're just taught these memorized procedures. 'cause there's no thinking reason, including when we become teachers. So I taught math like the MapQuest way. I just would show and explain and tell and stuff. But when you have a chance, and this is what happened to me in Boston, 'cause my brother, he used to have a, his own limo company and stuff is a whole other story. But, uh, he would want me to drive for him sometimes. And as a teacher, I need to get any money I could, so all, all these side hustles. But I would always say I'm never taking anyone to Logan Airport, the Boston Airport. And that's like one of his best, like all these people wanted trips to Boston. And I refused to do it 'cause I didn't know how to navigate it. And he actually took me, he said, we'll figure it out together. So he knew Boston, like the back of his hand. So he would have me drive, we would look at a map first just to kinda get the layout, know all the main arteries and landmarks and stuff. And then he said, so we wanna get to the science museum, how are you gonna do it? So I would sort of chart it out and then we just put that away and then I'd have to like navigate looking at the lay of the land and stuff. And then he would never help me. So even when he knew I was about to make a wrong turn, he'd let me make the wrong turn and then he would say, so now whatcha gonna do? And I, as frustrating as that was,

Vanessa Vakharia 17:20

it's like Thinking Classrooms in a car.

Mike Flynn 17:22

That's what it was. And he, Scott's not he's, he's a EMT and all that, he is not a teacher, but he was the best teacher, because he let me struggle productively, right? I, it wasn't where I just gave up and stuff when I was getting frustrated, he would come in, but he made me own most of the stuff. I had to constantly think. I couldn't just ask, I couldn't just follow the directions. And in just a few hours, Boston made sense to me. And, I can navigate the city really easily. I'll still like, I'll put in the GPS directions and things now, but there are times where I'm looking at where GPS wants me to go. I'm like, I'm not doing that, like it's so much faster to go around this way. So that's what we're trying to do with in math is, when we as teachers engage in professional learning, it's the equivalent of driving around, just kind of mucking around Boston and getting the lay of that land. And once you have that understanding, then you could look at the curriculum or curricular resource or anything and you can decide how important is this thing? Or if you look at how it's written, if it says, oh, teach this, like teach the butterfly method or something, you could say, Hmm, I, I see what they want me to do here, I'm gonna actually teach it this other way because my kids are gonna understand it better and they're gonna remember it better

Vanessa Vakharia 18:33

Or like that's gonna connect to this thing I'm gonna teach in two weeks, 'cause I know where I'm going.

Mike Flynn 18:37

Exactly.

Vanessa Vakharia 18:38

This is a wild metaphor. First of all, you could not have picked a metaphor that relates more to me because I always say I have horrible spatial awareness, and now I say this with growth mindset as in like, I've not ever tried to get better. I've not done what your brother did, for example. Like I'm just like fuck it, you know what, I don't need to work on this skill right now, like I just put on my GPS. Like where I'm sitting right now, I have driven to this place, it's two hours away from my home. I have driven here maybe a hundred times. I could not get here without my GPS. I turn on my GPS and I blindly follow it. I have no clue how to get here.

Mike Flynn 19:07

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 19:07

No clue where it is in relation. Like, you know, we're in a band here and every time we're planning a tour, David's like, what the fuck are you talking? I'm like, could we get from dah, dah, dah to blah, blah, blah? And he's like, have you looked at the map? Like, no. Like, what? Why would you think? And I'm like, I don't know. It just like, and it's really making me think of like, my poor attitude of being like, well, I can just use the GPS, so

Mike Flynn 19:30

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 19:30

I can just use the GPS, just like teachers

Mike Flynn 19:33

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 19:33

can theoretically just, follow the book like you could. But what I'm missing out on here is, first of all, if the GPS ever broke down, I'd actually be fucked. Like I would have no clue what to do.

Mike Flynn 19:46

Would you though? Would you? Let me, so you would feel fucked, right? But you would not be fucked. And there, let me clarify. let's say it did break down. Let's say the, all the satellites went down. There is no more GPS right now and you have to go home from this place. What are you gonna do?

Vanessa Vakharia 20:01

Okay Well, so actually this did happen to me, and so I did, you're right, I, this happened to me. A few months ago where my phone died on halfway on my way here. And I was like, shit. So the first thing I did is I went to a gas station, so I asked for help. So I went to the gas station and I was like, I need to go, you know, this way. So I did that and then I was kind of like, okay, hold on a a second. Some things are looking familiar. Do you know what I mean? Like, some, I was looking for like, but that was a bit tricky because it was like, I'm in farm country and all the farms looked familiar because they all, you know, like I hadn't been paying attention to the signposts I could have been paying attention to The other thing is too, 'cause I mean the gas station guy gave me a plan, went towards it, but it was a different one than I was used to with my GPS. So I was still going in the right direction, but I wasn't going in the direction I was used to. So the usual signs weren't there. Anyways, then I charged my phone at the next gas stations, but okay.

Mike Flynn 20:56

But imagine this though. What if, what if this, you are in that scenario again, but you, you, you just get on a computer or something, right? Or you could basically look up the direction. Let's say you were planning ahead, right? Or that you found a way where you could actually. get a map. I mean, you can go to a gas station. I'm sure they still have maps or something, right? That like, I don't know when's the last time. Right. But let's say you do that, right? You could go through and like look at the map, kind of map out the path, look at where the roads are. Now we could say like, if you have the choice of GPS or navigating planning out your route with a map, which one takes more work?

Vanessa Vakharia 21:34

Planning out the route.

Mike Flynn 21:35

Right. Which one results in more learning?

Vanessa Vakharia 21:38

Planning out the route. Yeah. I've learned

Mike Flynn 21:40

That's the crux. That's the crux, yep.

Vanessa Vakharia 21:42

Like, and that's I guess why I'm like, this is such a good analogy. 'Cause it's like A, you'd be okay, I guess you wouldn't be fucked if the whole thing broke down, but I have to, basically, I've not learned a single thing in years. Right.

Mike Flynn 21:53

yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 21:54

I could plan out the route and then maybe also if I planned out the route, I'd be like, oh my God, there's all these cute places to stop along the way. And oh, if there's traffic, or if I wanted to visit this person or if I wanted to get a coffee or groceries, I could take this other thing. And, oh, like there's so much more. I, I get it. I don't know. Like, I'm like, I wanna be like Mike, that's it. The way home next week I'm gonna, maybe I'll, maybe I'll plan out my route home.

Mike Flynn 22:17

Here's, here's the way you kind of think about it. So when I talk like I love Building Thinking Classrooms, I know you, you do as well. And one of the things that when we, we talk, when Peter talks about like kids not thinking, like sometimes people like hear that and think that he's thinking like down on kids, that kids can't think of stuff. And that's not actually at all what he's saying. But it's almost like what's happening here is like, you can navigate with a map. You could plan out routes and things. You could take the time to get to know all the different areas so that you could really, like, understand where you are at any given point in time and know all the different detours, but you choose not to because you have other things that can get you where you need to go that doesn't require you to think as much, and right now you don't have that need. Which is fine. Right? We as humans have to choose how much mental energy we wanna put in anything. Now, when we as teachers or when students are given procedures and formulas and all these things to memorize and stuff, it's basically teachers giving kids GPS directions for all the math that they're learning. And it's really easy, they become dependent on it. And the difference between you and students here is that you don't have a, a great need for you to really understand an area. Like you're not an Uber driver, you're not working, you're not an EMT or something that you need to know how to get around things. So it's not essential, but it is essential for our students to learn the math deeply and to think for it. And so what we're having to do is, is basically get students to, almost get detoxed from the reliance on the GPS and to see the value in it. But I'll tell you right now, as someone who also didn't really like mucking around in Boston, once I started to do it, I realized how empowering it was where I could see those connections. So it can help you also as you start to, break free from things that reduce the amount of thinking you had to do. You'll find that it can be really powerful, whether it's directions or it's math, being able to think and reason and make sense, and you realize, I own this idea now, like it can't be taken from me. It's powerful.

Vanessa Vakharia 24:19

Well, and the other thing I'm thinking is, there is so many reasons why, think justifiably kids don't like math or math class. Like it's boring, some of the content seems irrelevant, like, you know what I mean? Like, we're literally just taught to copy things down. Like, so I think if anything too, it at least alleviates a lot of that, is to be like, okay, we get it. Like some of this content might seem irrelevant and you know, you don't wanna just sit there and be like, uh, you know, doing data entry, basically like copying things into formulas and spitting them out. At least this I think adds to like the, a bit of the motivation or inspiration of what, like what you can get out of math class, even if content itself seems irrelevant and boring, you can, exactly, feel empowered. You can a moment of feeling like basically like a detective or you're solving like a, who

Teaching the way we were taught

Vanessa Vakharia 25:08

done it. But the other thing is like, we're talking about kids, but really like, I wanna dial it back for a second. We're talking about teaching teachers how to think this way, right? So I kind of wanna peel back and ask you, or you mentioned earlier on in the interview that a lot of teachers have carry their own math trauma. And you kind of alluded to the fact that it was because potentially they were taught in this way that was very rote. Can you expand on, on that? Because I argue this all the time, right? I say, you know, the way we teach math in this way of like mimicking can lead to math trauma. I'm curious why you think so and what you've seen.

Mike Flynn 25:40

Part of it is, it just is that vague understanding, kind of like with directions, right? If I, can follow directions, I can get to where I'm supposed to go, but it doesn't mean that I know anything about that area. And so, anytime I've memorized directions, I never had confidence in my ability to get where I'm going, 'cause any little thing could throw me off. And that's what it feels like in math when, when everything is mimicking and memorization, is that I have enough to get answers, but I don't have enough to feel confident in my math ability, and if we don't use things enough, we eventually lose it. So I may memorize something for a while and I'm okay in that class. I might pass that test or something, but a couple years after, I'm not gonna remember these things. And so there's a lot in math that I have a vague notion of, oh, I remember doing that, or I remember going there, but I don't actually, I can't call that up. And so, so much of our math learning when we're taught that way is fragile. It's like a very fragile foundation. And because of that, it can be unsettling because we just don't have that level of confidence. So I think that unsettled feeling is what a lot of people carry with them. Now, if you take on top of that, you have any intense teachers, that are hammering things down, or you're like the grades or there's that high pressure, you gotta get up on the board and you gotta perform this computation in front of the whole class and you're gonna be publicly wrong. You add all of that other stuff on top of it, and that's where the anxiety comes in. That's where the shame comes in, those things. And I experienced all of that. Because one thing about me is that, I've learned later as a, as I got older that I have, A-D-H-D. I, you look at any of my report cards, so you could see writing was all over it, there, like clearly, like talks too much, too active, out of his seat, in the principle all the time, office all the time, all of that. But, one, for those that aren't familiar with ADHD, it's not that I can't pay attention, like I can't shut my brain off. I pay attention to everything. And so what would happen in math situations, even like fact fluency tests, is that I would be look like everything on whatever was on the page, I'm taking all that in. I'm also taking the sound of the teacher walking up and down the rows with her high heels clicking, like that noise. And the pencil noises, I'm listening to the pencil noises. All of that's happening. Before I've even started the first problem. And I'm just trying to quiet all that down just to get that. So by the time I start to get into it, the time's up and I couldn't get my stuff finished. And then she, this, I'm thinking one particular teacher had the wall of fame where you had your names. It's a wall of shame, right? So everyone's like all at the sevens tables eights tables of stuff. I'm still back on threes because like, I'm just stuck there and for me it's like that shame the embarrassment of like everyone seeing how far behind I am, and it made me feel like inadequate. But the thing is, is one the timer and stuff, when, when, if I just had those, I could do them all fine. It wasn't that I didn't know it. But when you get that, all that information overload and then when you start to panic, your working memory gets blocked. You can't access facts that you know, and so I would freeze and, and then it just becomes this exacerbated thing. Now that's third grade. Then imagine fourth grade, fifth grade, and before you know it, I've accumulated enough embarrassment that I just, even being in a math classroom, you could just feel that like tension. And I, I hated it and I, a lot of people carry that with them.

From math trauma to math teacher

Vanessa Vakharia 29:05

How and why did you become a math teacher? How did you end up at this school? Like where was the, where's the

Mike Flynn 29:12

Oh, just a Oh, second grade teacher. So I, I was, um, I.

Vanessa Vakharia 29:15

so you weren't, you were like, I'm gonna become a teacher,

Mike Flynn 29:18

gonna become a teacher. And so, and I wasn't math, it was, well it was generalist, right? So I just became a teacher and math was one of the many subjects I had to teach. Yeah. So it was low priority for me. So, so anyway, I was more ELA and uh, science and stuff. And there was this position open at our school to be a coordinator for literacy. Like I got to, there's this huge grant and stuff, and I was all about it. Fairly young. I think I was like 24, 25, something like that at the time. And I wanted to be the literacy coordinator. I wanted to do this and I didn't get it. I was told that I was too young to be taken seriously, and it devastated me, right? And, and I was so bummed and my colleague Anne-Marie came by and she said, Hey, now that you're not doing that, there's this field test for the new version of the investigations curriculum and they need field test teachers and uh, you do some professional learning and stuff and all that. And I'm like, hard pass. Like, no, that's the last thing I want. Really, you're coming at me with math. Like, but she said there's like a $2,500 stipend to do it. And yeah, I'm a brand new teacher broke, and like, I'm like, yeah, I'm in, I'm in. I, say no more. And I agreed to it, not realizing that part of agreeing to be, field test teachers, you had to commit to, monthly or weekly professional learning with the authors of the program and stuff, which I, again, I was so far removed from this. I had no idea the big names that were involved in the creation of this. It's sort of all these influential people. So I ended up. saying yes, and I had to agree to use this curriculum and teach it the way it was intended, which meant I had to, I couldn't just fake it. I had to like read the materials and things. I had to have ongoing professional learning with people like Anne-Marie and her colleagues and things. And this is where I started to relearn math and to start seeing like, this is how I should have been taught. If I was taught math this way, it would've made the biggest difference in my life.

Vanessa Vakharia 31:12

Can you remember like one thing you learned, like one moment, that one thing you learned that caused you to be like. Oh my god.

Mike Flynn 31:18

Yeah, I, so I had no idea what everyone, we were in this session and we had to do things with a arrays, and I, I thought it was a raise, like getting a raise. What's a raise? Like, I didn't even realize it was R-A-A-R-Y, like I had no idea what they're talking about.

Vanessa Vakharia 31:32

array, so this is probably gonna blow my mind, so intimidated by the word even. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what

Mike Flynn 31:36

Yeah. yeah, like rows and columns and things like, and so we were. So once I got some confidence to ask like, what are our, what are raises? Or something like that. Like, oh, you mean array? Right. And so my colleagues, we were working on this math problem and we started to sketch out and I could see basically the distributive property. like, how it made sense. Like none of it made sense to me, and then it all made sense to me. And it was like, and that was just one thing. And the more I uncovered, it was like I couldn't stop going down that rabbit hole because it's like, what else don't I know? What else don't I know? And that was it. Game over. It just blew my mind.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:14

So this is actually so cool because you are literally like the least likely candidate, right? So this is like, good evidence to be like you were the least likely candidate. You hated math. You had a horrible experience with math. You didn't want anything to do with math. You were literally just in it for the money. You were bribed and you came out a changed man.

Mike Flynn 32:33

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:33

And to show what a difference that meant and look at you now,

Mike Flynn 32:37

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:37

You, you were so taken by it that you were like, I must do this. I must show other teachers what's happening here. Because there, I mean, we know there are so many teachers that carry their own math trauma, and in fact, these wonderful teachers often become teachers because they have math trauma and they wanna, they wanna have a, they wanna give a more positive math experience to students. And there are so many ways to do that. And one of them is through us gaining deeper understanding of the math we're teaching,

Mike Flynn 33:02

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:02

Like that is just a way to do it. And you're here providing that, which is so incredible. And it's, I, you know, it's funny, like we were talking about the math trauma and you were kind of explaining why being taught in sort of a very procedural right way might lead to having math trauma. And I always, when I talk about math trauma, I'm always like, look, it's basically a negative experience with math that lasts with you long after the experience is gone. And a negative experience could be exactly what you described, that feeling that you're just slightly on edge all the time 'cause you don't quite have it. You know, you're like, I've got it in this scenario, in that scenario. But I mean, I don't know if I have it, if I'm timed, I don't know if I have it if they changed the words, like I don't know that I really understand it. Like, so that feeling of just being on edge for so long and feeling not confident, you know, like that lack of confidence carrying that with you throughout your math experience, that is just such an icky, heavy feeling. And I hear this from so many teachers, and I'm sure you do too, since you work with them of being like, probably a lot of the reason people want to take your professional development is that they're like, they don't wanna feel like that, right? They wanna feel like, like we want to encourage kids to ask any question they have and to think whatever way they want. But if we don't feel confident, that's actually really threatening to us because I'm like, well, if you ask any question you want and you do this math in a way that I don't understand, now I'm on the hook. Right? So like this is, I think, such a great way to be like, look we wanna encourage kids to make mistakes and teachers to make mistakes too. It's not about perfection, it's about progress, it's about process, this and that. But in order to, I think, really facilitate a student's learning process, like we have to not only be open-minded, but like have a level of openness to understanding that we don't fully understand.

Mike Flynn 34:40

That's so profound because it's, but it, right, it, it comes down to that understanding. It's that meaning piece, right? That when we understand it, it's much easier for us to back up a bit and allow the students to also come to their own understanding. Because if, if we don't, if we don't understand it and we're afraid to open up and get all their ideas and flexible strategies and these things that if we're, if we don't have that comfort, then we just force kids into the way we think about it. And so and, and then there's, we're not giving them a chance to understand because there's just, here's the way I'm gonna show you how to do it. I'm not getting a chance to expand my understanding because I'm not learning with the students. One of the things that often surprises people is that a lot of what I learned about early elementary math, I learned from my seven and eight year olds, my second graders, when I first started teaching, because once I listened to them and I could see how they were approaching it, I could understand the way kids' minds worked around these math ideas. And now, like the work I do now is I teach preschool through high school, so I get to see that all the time at every different grade level, everything we do is around building understanding. So I get to listen to students and hear how they build these strong connections. And when you just, when you're at a spot where you understand the math enough, where you can back up a bit, then everybody learns, you and the students at the same time. You create this mutual learning space. And I, it's, it's nonstop. I still, every lesson I teach, I'm learning alongside the kids because I, I know enough of the math that I'm teaching that I can back up and listen and be present. I'm not trying to hold onto what's the thing I'm supposed to say? What's the thing I'm supposed to show? What's the slide telling me to do here? I can just be in the moment.

Vanessa Vakharia 36:18

Well, and I think this is an important message, it's okay to be constantly learning. I always am like if I am done learning, like if I am ever in a position where I am teaching and I'm like, there's nothing left for me to learn, like I know every possible answer a student's gonna give. I know every scenario this question like, no thank you, like I'm done. It's time to move on to something else. You know what, what, what is it? There's some really profound quote, lifelong teachers are lifelong learners, or something? What is it? Something like that. Right?

Mike Flynn 36:48

Yeah. And that, something like that, so, sounds good. Sounds like a thing.

Vanessa Vakharia 36:52

Sounds like a thing. It's like the, the endless learning and you're modeling to your students what learning is, you're modelling what knowledge is. Knowledge isn't, I know everything.

Mike Flynn 37:02

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 37:02

Knowledge is being open to knowing more than you know right now. I just came up with that. I liked that. I thought that

Mike Flynn 37:09

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 37:09

David, shut up. Okay. Alright. He's really rolling his eyes. I thought that was good. Um,

How teachers can find the time

Vanessa Vakharia 37:15

What would you say to a teacher though that's like, yeah, it sounds fascinating, but like, there's no way I have time for that. You know, it's just gonna take so much more time. It's easier to just teach what I'm supposed to be teaching.

Mike Flynn 37:25

Two things. One is that, first of all, like when if we teach the way we, we were taught if in that we're just like, I don't have time to go and learn this and that I'm just gonna show them. I'm gonna ask that teacher, how often do you have to reteach content?

Vanessa Vakharia 37:41

Mm-hmm

Mike Flynn 37:42

Because it's like, that's one of the things, 'cause the time factor always comes up. It's a real thing. I don't want to invalidate that. Right. And I think about any time teachers are like, yeah, I, I constantly have to like reteach this thing. I have to keep going back and like they don't get it. And I'm doing afterschool tutoring, I'm doing all of these things because my kids aren't getting it long term, right? They, they learn it for the test, but then they forget it. And you realize like if you just take a little bit of time first for yourself and then to spend a little bit of time with your students to develop that understanding deeply, you're not going to have to reteach it. So it's a, you give a little bit to get a bigger return on that investment. And it's scary at first. So I just tell teachers, start small, pick one thing. Because that's the other thing, it could be overwhelming, is like when you have to make a big, like, I gotta change everything. No, you don't. It's like, how about you just change your warmup routine? Like instead of just doing a do now, maybe do something that's got students talking and reasoning for the first five minutes. Like, don't worry about your do now. Right now. Just try that. That's a nice light lift. And you can see over time how that changes students. Or maybe try it for a, an upcoming unit or for a three lessons. Three lessons. What if you were to, allow students to think about it flexibly versus this one way? What happens? Then as you try that, the thing that I found, 'cause I make it sound like, oh, I had this one professional learning experience and I was a changed teacher. I fell off the wagon a lot. So I would, like, it took me three to five years to fully be confident and like not ramming the algorithm down kids' throats. Because every, like the first time I started to make that shift, I would sneak it in just 'cause I'm like, I was doing the field test so I wasn't allowed to, but I would still sneak it in, hope they're not listening, just because it's like the third grade teachers would come at me aft, like the next year if the kids weren't ready. And so after a couple years I got confident enough. But what I'd like to let people know is that it's a, it's a journey, don't feel like you need perfection. Try things out. And the more I found when I would do that meaningful work, anytime I slid back and just try to show them something, I could just feel all the air come outta the room. Like it just felt different. And I could tell, I could just see mimicking. I didn't have a name for it at the time, but I could just tell that's what was happening. And by like the second or third year of doing that, I'm like, oh, this is such fake teaching that I was doing that I, I just abandoned it and realized like. Teaching for sensemaking is the only way that we can really do this if we want kids to understand what we're teaching.

Flexible thinking: a practical example

Vanessa Vakharia 40:15

Okay let's, let's give everyone a challenge right now though. 'cause I like this. I like this idea of what should we all try to do. I like what you almost said of like, try to teach a lesson while allowing kids to have flexible thinking. That's what you said,

Mike Flynn 40:26

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 40:27

What does that mean? Like, let's do a little, like, let's all try this this week.

Mike Flynn 40:30

Yeah. I'm gonna call out Robert Kaplinsky right now and Open Middle, you can go to open middle.com. Like Robert's got a whole like system there of, of challenging tasks that have these open middles. But you can also think of open middle, broadly, as defined as a problem or a task that has the same initial setup for everybody. And it has some kind of conclusion, either a single answer or a set of answers or something. The middle, how students approach it is wide open, they can approach it any way they want. So a challenge would be to look at one task that you could give to your students that doesn't require them, if the curricular resource or something says, give them this problem and have them use a table and graph to get the answer, cross that out. Don't have that. Give them the problem. Give them the problem without any specific rules for solving it. Say solve it in a way that makes sense to you, and solve it maybe two different ways. And then, give them time and space to work through it and look at all the different creative solutions that come up. Now, before you do that, uh, I'm gonna call out. One other thing is the five practices with Peg Smith and Mary Kay Stein. If you're not familiar with that, look up five practices. But one thing they tell you to do if you want to teach in this way is to do the math ahead of time yourself and anticipate what are the things that are likely to come up from your students if you were to do this. What kinds of strategies are most likely to come up and which of those do you really wanna highlight in the conversation when you pull all the ideas together? But if you do that, just give this open middle approach. And it could be just one problem and that you can go back to whatever your lesson is, but just see what happens with this shift when you flip it.

Vanessa Vakharia 42:07

Okay, I love this. We're all gonna do this this week. And then guess what? Because there's some weird shit, new feature on our podcast, you can text us and let us know what happens. Link to the text is in the description of this episode. You can also email me or just send me a DM on Instagram. Me and Mike wanna know what happens when you try this, this week, that's your challenge. I mean, I wanna take all of your courses. Where can people take these? Where do, where do I send everyone to when they're like I want to learn math in this way, I'm a teacher and I would like to get a deeper knowledge of what I'm teaching because you have this for K to 12, right?

Mike Flynn 42:41

We do. So we have courses for all strands of mathematics, K through eight. We're building the secondary ones now. The first one will be available in January of 26.

Vanessa Vakharia 42:50

Get in on the ground floor.

Mike Flynn 42:52

Yeah, yeah, we're excited. We're building it for geometry, algebra, pre-calc, all these things. So keep an eye out for that. But you go to flynneducation.com and you'll see lots of free resources for teachers. You'll see our courses. We also have a membership where we have a it's, uh, the Friends of Flynn Education, and it's a, basically collaborative of educators, then we offer tons and tons of professional learning, every month. In fact, Vanessa, you're gonna be our featured guest for our voices from the field coming yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 43:21

It is, just so you guys know, Friends of Flynn is giving Sesame Street meets Cheers. Like if you understand that reference, you know, like, I get,

Mike Flynn 43:30

That's deep

Vanessa Vakharia 43:31

I know. I really get that vibe though. Like, it's like, it really, I think it's gonna become something.

Mike Flynn 43:36

Yeah, we're, we're pretty excited about it.

Vanessa Vakharia 43:38

Sick. Okay.

Q1

Vanessa Vakharia 43:39

Final two questions I ask everyone. Number one, if there's one thing you could change about way the way math is taught in schools, like you're allowed to change one thing, what would it be?

Mike Flynn 43:48

Uh, the time constraints. Time constraints, get rid of all time constraints so that teachers are not, uh, bound on this 42 minute block or 47 minute block, and that allowing people to really spend the time to teach it well.

Vanessa Vakharia 44:01

Well, how would you do that though? You just have math all day long, like as long as you want?

Mike Flynn 44:05

No, no, no. Just that you, we open up the, we get rid of this, the block scheduling kind of things. There's a lot of ways things are done. So the idea, so, 10 seconds, I didn't know you needed the how to actually achieve making this happen. I thought you just wave. I thought magic wand, it's Hogwarts, right?

Vanessa Vakharia 44:20

I didn't. I just got curious suddenly I was like, but how? But

Mike Flynn 44:23

I can say that. I will say this. So this is another thing people might not know about me. I did, I was an elected school board member for eight years, and so I have worked on that side of things. It's is possible. The thing with a lot of these, the structures, the schedules and all these things are, they become institutionalized and it feels impossible to change 'cause this is the way it's always been, and if we do this well, then this will happen. All you have to do is dedicate time and say, we are going to figure this out, and you can do that. So that's the, there's many school districts that have figured out ways to build in 70, 90 minute math blocks and things. And anytime, I work in schools all around the world, any places where I go, where math is taught for 60 to 90 minutes, I see a significant difference in those students than in places where math is taught for 40 to 45 minutes, et cetera. Um, you need more time on it, and,

Vanessa Vakharia 45:14

was way more than 10 seconds. That was my fault. Of course. Also, your response is very like giving Tim Ferris like it is possible. Like we can do these things. You gotta think outside of the schedule, outside of the box.

Mike Flynn 45:25

Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 45:25

Next

Q2

Vanessa Vakharia 45:26

question. If someone listened to this and they were like, that's so awesome. Yeah. Like I guess I could think about math more deeply, whatever the thing is though, like I just can't because I'm not a math person. What would you say?

Mike Flynn 45:37

I would say let's, dispel this idea of a math person and just that you're a thinker and that, you just were never given enough time to think about the math and you weren't given the right kinds of experiences to think about the math. And I can give you that to you and like, let's do some math together and give you a chance to think and realize that all you have to do is like, if you're a thinker, you can do math. That's all it is. You were given experiences where you weren't allowed to think, we're gonna give you experiences where you can think and that'll change everything for you.

Vanessa Vakharia 46:07

That is so nice. That was such a nice answer. Like I felt reassured.

Mike Flynn 46:12

I felt a little anxiety. I was like, oh, that pressure, I gotta perform.

Vanessa Vakharia 46:15

Well, I am being, I'm doing all doing all the wrong things. I'm like, time constraints, go. You're public, you're being recorded. Like, don't do any of this in a math classroom. Okay.

Outro

Vanessa Vakharia 46:24

It has been such a treat. you're so inspiring. You're so warm, you're so welcoming. What you're doing is so cool,

Mike Flynn 46:29

I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Vanessa. Thanks for having me on the show.

Vanessa Vakharia 46:34

Okay guys. Oh my God, how good was that? Mike just gave us the reminder that knowing isn't weakness, it's actually where the learning begins, and that is strength. And when we as teachers give ourselves permission to not have all the answers, we model curiosity instead of fear, and that can change everything. So here's your Math Therapy challenge for this week. The next time a student or anyone asks you a question you don't know the answer to, I want you to pause before you panic. Instead of faking it or shutting down, try saying "I don't know yet. Let's figure it out." Or the next time a student solves a problem in a way that you didn't think, to lean into that moment and say, wait, can you explain your thinking? Because when you do that, you turn kids from mimics who just copy your steps into empowered learners who own their knowledge. And the best part is they get to teach you something. And that one shift makes them feel confident, capable, and important, and you get to grow right alongside them. So it's a win-win. If you liked this episode, don't keep it to yourself, okay? Send it to a friend, a colleague, or that person in your life who holds themselves back because they're scared of not knowing enough. This conversation could change their life. It could be exactly what they need to hear. And remember, I want to hear from you, and now you can text the podcast. So if something in this episode inspired you, you can text us by going to the link that's right in your podcast app. You can also DM me on Instagram @themathguru. You can email me at vanessa@themathguru.ca. I wanna hear your feedback and your reactions. And remember, Math Therapy is now a weekly podcast, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a single episode. Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia. It's produced and edited by David Kochberg, and our theme music is by our band Goodnight Sunrise. And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy, please share this podcast and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use. Those things actually make such a difference because they help Math Therapy reach more people. I'm as determined to change the culture surrounding math as you are, and I need your help, so spread the word. Until next time, peace, love, and pi.

Outtake

Vanessa Vakharia 48:48

we have to not only be open-minded, but like have a level of openness to understanding that we don't under, you know what I mean? That we don't fully understand, I think.

Mike Flynn 48:58

a hundred percent.

Vanessa Vakharia 48:59

I

Mike Flynn 49:00

You're making noises. It's not, of course. No, that's so profound.