2026: The Year of Student Engagement!

Happy new year!  To get in the mindset for a great 2026, here's a motivating episode about one of last year's hottest topics in math ed: student engagement. 

Why is it so hard to get students to really engage in the classroom?  What does engagement even mean?  What can we try differently this year?

In this episode, Vanessa explores four reasons students might not engage in class (and offers tips for each):

1. They don't feel heard (democratize engagement)
2. They don't know how to engage (explain what it is)
3. They think there's no point (create more entry points)
4. Their needs aren't met (don't take it personally)

Let us know if these resonate with you or if there are any that we missed, and most importantly have a great start to the school year!

Contact us:

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

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:03 Why don't students engage in class?
• 8:45 1) they don't feel heard
• 12:59 2) they don't know how
• 20:52 3) they think there's no point
• 31:01 4) their needs aren't met
• 35:06 Summary

Transcript

Vanessa Vakharia: 0:02

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Do the ball drop sound. Happy New Year, right? Like confetti, confetti, woo woo. Right? Do something like that to start the episode. Okay guys. Hi. Happy New Year. It is January 1st. It is an auspicious day. I just wanna say I actually am not like a New Year's girly. Like I'm not the person that makes resolutions on New Year's, I don't know, we just like made up the calendar year system and then wherever we're always like, oh my God, January 1st, big deal. And people are always like, Ugh, I'm so glad, like 2025 is over, like I'm so excited for the new year. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't like looking at our lives in these like chunks of time we've just invented. Like any day is a good day to like let go of the past and move forward. That being said, I do love a reason to start fresh and let go of things that no longer serve us. So we are doing a New Year's episode. Because like January 1st, it feels monumentous, like the world thinks it's a big deal. So I think it's a big deal. Okay. I was thinking, let's look at 2025. It's nice to look at a nice 12 month chunk of time. What are the things I've been talking about on the podcast? I've been on so many trips. I've spoken to so many teachers, I've talked at so many conferences. I've been to so many sessions, I've learned so much. What are the things that keep coming up? I was thinking about it and the thing that has come up time and time again is the idea of student engagement. I have heard so many teachers say. We're having a problem with engagement. My students are not engaged. I'm trying all these amazing new things and there's no engagement. And I started also realizing even when we're not using the word engagement, that's actually what we're talking about, right? Like I'll hear students aren't motivated. Okay, what that actually means is they're not engaged. I'll hear things like they're not showing their thinking. They're not showing their work. Again, I'm like, Ooh, you're talking about engaging with mathematics. I'll hear things like, even though I am using this new instructional method, or I'm teaching content in this new cool way, or I'm like giving them manipulatives, like they're not using them. Again, we're talking about engagement. My students freeze when they can't just mimic when I ask them to like think. When I ask them to use a whiteboard, when I ask them to collaborate, they're not doing it. Again, we're talking about engagement. What is engagement? When it comes down to it, we're all talking about the same thing, which is students like participating. Showing up. Doing something, trying, right? We're not talking about, oh my God, our students aren't getting the right answer, they're not getting the results we want. What we're all wanting is students to just like do some stuff. Try, right. Now, I feel like this is such an important theme for me because my goal with Math Therapy is to help students build a better relationship with math, right? That is like my only goal. I want everybody, whether you're a student, whether you're an adult, I want you to build a better relationship with math and through doing that with yourself because you see yourself as more capable, then you once thought you were, right. You're learning stuff about yourself that you didn't know before. And the truth is, you guys, if you know me, you know that my mantra for growth mindset and for growth in general is believe, behave, become. You know, it's important to have the belief that we can do something new, like engage in math. It's important to then engage in a new behavior, try something new. And then the becoming piece only happens when those two things happen, when we believe it's possible, and then we engage in a new behavior that will get us new results than we have previously gotten. It's that engagement, AKA behavior,'cause engagement is a behavior, it's that behaving that actually shows us something about ourselves. We can believe all we want that like, I guess it's possible to do math, but until we engage in a behavior and have a different mathematical experience, we never truly internalize that as a part of our core being. You can't kind of believe your way into building a better relationship with math. You can't believe your way into being better at math, right? It's like, believing that you can ride a bike and never ever getting on a bicycle. You can't go from believing, oh, I, I, I believe that I'm a person who could ride a bike to then getting on a bike and then riding it. You have to get on that bike. You have to engage in behavior. Maybe you start with training wheels. Maybe you go around the block, like maybe this and that, and eventually that behavior takes that belief into an actual becoming a person who can ride a bike. I also wanna say, I think one of the reasons we're having such a big problem with it now, think about it, engagement is like doing the thing. It's trying, it's participating. I bet you students did use to engage more before. I think that's actually true. But the way we got students to engage was through compliance. It was this idea of you have to do it. Like if you think of like back in the day when like you would, I don't know, get like a dunks cap on or like you literally back back in the day where like you might actually get hit with a ruler or something. It was like if you didn't engage and participate and do what your teacher was telling you, you'd be in trouble. We don't have that anymore and that's good. Like it's good, but what it means is if we want students to engage, we now have to engage them through something that is not consequence or punishment driven. We have to engage them in a way that is meaningful to them. We have to give them a reason to want to engage. And there's another piece here that's really, really important. We have to realize that engagement is a risk. It's a risk to show up and participate in something that you might have anxiety around, think you're bad at, an actual risk. It's not just a risk to yourself because you might prove to, like you, you're scared that if I do this thing that I already think I'm bad at, I'm just gonna prove that I'm right and I'm gonna feel these shitty, uncomfortable feelings. Who wants that? It's also a social risk, right? To engage and participate in a classroom setting in front of people. Like traditionally and historically, many of our students have, their math trauma comes from being embarrassed in math class, of getting the wrong answer of saying the quote unquote wrong thing, of getting laughed at, of a teacher actually scolding them for not knowing something. So it's a risk. And when we look at engagement through that lens, through the lens of meaning and risk, something really opens up and we're able to tap into how to truly meaningfully engage our students. Now remember, we don't wanna engage our students through compliance. Because if we think of back in the day, historically, many of us engaged in math class, we did the thing, but what that resulted in was us handing in a piece of paper, possibly forgetting every single thing that we wrote down on that piece of paper, or we just like copied shit down and mimicked and handed something in but we didn't really understand it. And also it resulted in most of us hating math. So that is not the kind of engagement we want. We don't just want students to do the thing and participate. We want'em to do the thing and participate meaningfully in a way that feels safe and good to them. So today we are gonna be talking about four ways to meaningfully engage students this year, 2026, the year of engagement. I also wanna say you are probably already doing incredible things to engage your students, so keep doing those things. I want you to feel, feel like affirmed for doing those things. Now I know we're all trying to engage our students and you guys are probably doing an amazing job, but I want you to hang onto those things you're already doing and I actually can't wait to hear about them. So feel free to text the podcast at any time. You can find a link to that in the show notes of the app that you're using right now. I wanna hear what you're doing to engage students that's really working for you, because I can share those with teachers on another episode. But one thing I hear a lot is we are trying to engage students. We tell them that mistakes are great. We, we always tell them that participation is incredible. That we're not looking for perfection, we're just looking for them to like try, like we say those things, but the thing is what students hear is be perfect, don't embarrass yourself, everyone else gets it except for you. Even if you're not saying those things, previously, when they have been told, just try, just show your work, just raise your hand, what actually was coded to them was kind of a false narrative. They were told it was okay to make mistakes, but then it didn't really land well when they did. The truth is that engagement isn't really about what we say, it's about the conditions we create. Remember, if we go back to believe, behave, become, we can't just say something without creating the conditions for that thing to be true. We need the behavior in our classrooms to be true. We need to encourage kids to take behavior that will bring their belief to reality, and we can only do that when we create those conditions in our classroom. So let's do it. We're gonna talk about four ways that you can do that right now.​Okay. First reason students don't engage in math class and what we can do about it. Students don't engage in math class because they feel like they don't have a say. They feel like math class isn't really for them. It doesn't mean anything to them. They're not a part of the discussion, so they're just kind of showing up and being asked to do some shit that doesn't really matter. You can turn this around with this engagement move. That move is make engagement democratic. This year, start off by walking into your classroom and having a conversation with your students and just point blank, ask them. Hey, what's up? What would make this math class meaningful to you? We have a lot of ideas about this. I've been to so many amazing sessions and had so many conversations about how to make math relevant to students, how to make it culturally relevant, how to bring their interests into the classroom, and those things are all amazing. But I do feel like when we assume what our students want, we're already starting on our back foot. Is that how the saying goes? I think it's something about your back foot. Like we're already starting at a disadvantage, I would say. Right? If we're assuming, okay, you know what, my students aren't interested. They just need me to like bring like Pokemon or like K-Pop demon hunters into the mix and like all of a sudden they'll get it. Or they just need me to say like six seven a couple of times and like, that does work for some students, but we're kind of assuming what it is that they really want. So start by asking them what would make math class meaningful to them. And I have done this so many times with students, and I've heard teachers doing the same thing and they've shared with me, sometimes the most surprising things will come up. Students will say things like, well, this is pointless. Like when am I gonna use this in real life? We've all heard that before, right? And my, my tip to you is if they say that. Ask them more. Be like, what do you mean? Because they might mean, how do I use this in real life? As in how am I gonna apply this, like, I don't know, trigonometry to real life? Or they might be like, I don't know, like what's the point of sitting down and just like doing worksheets? How am I using that in real life? Right? Or like, in real life, I'm never gonna have to take a test. Or in real life I'm now I could just use a calculator. Like, so maybe that's what they mean. Maybe they're not engaging because math class isn't meaningful to them because they're like, I don't know, when I come here, I just feel really, really dumb. It feels like there's nothing I can do to really excel in this classroom. Or when I come here I just don't really feel supported, or when I come here, it really throws me off because like I feel like I've gotta sit still for so long and that's just not the type of person I am. You might hear all sorts of like things about why math class doesn't feel like it's for them, and that's a really, really great opening to be like, Ooh, like that's what you mean by what's the point of doing this? Or Why am I even here? Some questions you might ask, could be what would make math class worth showing up for, for you? What would make it worth showing up for? You might ask what shuts you down in this class? Like when I asked you guys to do something and you're not doing it, what's actually going on in your minds? Like, why aren't you doing the thing? And again, you might hear things like, I'm just really tired, or I just don't know what to do and I feel stuck. You could also ask, how do you guys want math class to feel this year? Like it's 2026. How do you wanna feel in my classroom this year? These are just some questions to like start letting them, first of all, it's giving you information, right? Like you're gonna get some answers to your question. Maybe it will come up that like, they just want you to talk about Pokemon, I don't know why I'm talking about Pokemon, I don't know anything about Pokemon. Actually, even saying, saying that word is like tripping me out, but like, you know what I mean? Like they might say that, but they might say something else and that might give you really great insight. But the other reason this is so important to democratize engagement is by having these conversations, you're showing them, hey, I want you to feel good in this classroom. It's actually important for me. I don't want you to just come here and do what I tell you to do because I told you to. I actually wanna know how I can like, help you feel good and enjoy math class this year. And you're not saying the word engagement, but that's like the code here, right? Like you're kind of like, I'm having a conversation with you because I, I want you to want to do the stuff I want you to do. When students feel like they are valued in helping shape the space and the experience, they take ownership over it. And when they feel like, Hey, my voice was really actually included in that, they're more likely to be like, I wanna be an active participant in this. I helped create this. Okay, so the second reason students don't engage is they don't know how to engage. Like, I'm actually thinking about how I introduced this episode and I kept saying engagement and I was like, I'm not even defining engagement. And I actually think this is another thing, you know, this is a common thread in my episodes, is I'm like, we're throwing these words around and I'm not sure that we all know what it means. Like, you know that line in The Princess Bride when he is like, I don't think that means what you think it means. I don't know what word he's referring to. What word is he referring to? Remember there's that line. It's like, I don't think that means what you think it means. Hold on. I need to look it up. Princess Bride. It's a famous line. Oh, here we go. This is good. This is a famous quote from the Princess Bride spoken by Inigo Montoya. After Vizzini, is that his name, keeps saying inconceivable when things don't go his way, he keeps going,"that's inconceivable", and then inconceivable, inconceivable, and then Inigo Montoya goes,"you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means" because what he is actually meaning is impossible instead of inconceivable, which, kind of the same thing, but like not the same thing. Okay. Point is we keep using the word engagement and actually, so students don't know how to engage. But my first thing is, I'm actually wondering if you, the listener who is listening right now, when you say students aren't engaging, what do you mean? What does engagement mean to you? I do this when I talk to teachers and I do a talk with teachers often about student motivation.'cause teachers will say all the time, students are not motivated, and I'll say, what does motivation mean to you? And we'll go around the room and every teacher has a different definition of motivation. Now, sometimes those definitions overlap and actually most of the time what they're actually talking about is engagement, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're completely different definitions. So what does engagement mean to you? That's the first thing is for you to define that, because once that's clear in your head, you can figure out. Maybe you're gonna use the tips I share today, but maybe the tips I share today have nothing to do with what you are considering engagement. One of the key things we talk about with engagement we covered in a previous episode about student thinking. So one of the things I'll hear a lot are, well, I tell students that all I want'em to do is think it doesn't matter if they get the right answer or not. You know, like just the thinking is what I wanna see. But then when I ask them to show their thinking, they don't do it, they'll say, I don't know. Or they'll just shut down. And what's really happening is so interesting. Show your thinking is a skill. It's not a switch we can just turn on. It's not like just because, oh my God, guess what guys? We no longer are pressuring you to get the answer. We just want you to show your thinking that students can now automatically show their thinking. It just doesn't work that way. And in that previous episode, I talked about five things we can do to actually help students get into the vibe of showing their thinking, because again, it's not just a switch we can turn on. They, they haven't necessarily been taught what show your thinking means. So I'm not gonna get like super into the nitty gritty of that because we already covered it, but some of the things I talked about was actually breaking down for them what thinking looks like. Modeling, what thinking looks like. Like when you are thinking out loud to your students, be like, hold on, I'm thinking right now. Model that it's messy model that thinking can be a partial answer, it doesn't even have to be an answer. Thinking can be an incomplete thought thinking can be talking out loud to someone and just bouncing ideas back and forward. But like we actually have to just like we have to define engagement. We have to define what thinking is and then teach kids how to do it. Which is why tip number two is to teach engagement the same way we teach content. Think about it, when you are teaching content, you're teaching, I don't know, like how to add fractions. What do you do? You're scaffolding, you're breaking things down. You're, you're maybe not even teaching at all by direct instruction. So you're allowing kids to discover for themselves what fractions even are. You're using visual representations. You're using models, like you're using, I don't know what you're doing over there, but you are teaching it, right? You're not just showing up to class and being like, all right guys, today it's time to, I'm gonna give you a bunch of cookies and I want you to make fractions and add them up together. The end. We don't do that. We care take and we teach, we assume, we go in, assuming students do not know this concept. They might have prior information that will help them learn this concept, but they don't know it. It's a new concept and I wonder what would happen if we actually taught engagement the same way. How would the same skills you're using to teach content apply? Some things you can do are to break down what engagement looks like. So this, this could be like a direct instruction model. I guess if, if we're looking at the, now I'm into this analogy. You could be like, okay guys, so engagement looks like this, here are some options of what you can do to participate, to engage. You can give me a partial answer. You can ask me a question, you can chat with a friend about the topic we're working on. You can take a guess without being scared. You can make a mistake. You can guess a wrong answer. You can just draw a picture like. So you could give them a menu of like ways to do something, you know, ways to do something in the classroom, ways to engage. But another thing you can do is you can model what engagement looks like by doing those things yourself and pointing them out. Right. Labeling them. So you can say, all right guys, we're gonna work on a question, I actually don't know the answer to this. I don't even know what first step to take. Let's do it together. Right? And you might say, okay, what's a first thing we can do? And maybe get students to participate, and you know, maybe someone could say, I don't know, you could ask a question about the question. So you could do that and be like, all right, what I'm wondering is why are there so number many numbers in this word problem? What, which ones matter? And then you can be like, all right guys, that is me. I'm already in it. I'm now in it because I just asked that question. I've already, I'm already engaging. I'm already doing something. Then you might say something like, you know what I'm gonna do guys? I'm gonna actually draw a little diagram because I'm a bit confused right now. You could start drawing your diagram and be like, guys, I just wanna pause right now and point out that like I'm now in the question. I have no idea how to do it. I don't know what the answer is. I don't even know how to get there. But already I feel really good about myself because I'm just trying something. So modeling that and showing students that's what engagement looks like, and showing how you're celebrating and rewarding yourself along the way so that they can do the same thing, is really, really helpful. Another thing you can do is actually walk around the room and point out like, you know how we point out thinking like, we like to be like, Ooh, great thinking, I like the way you're thinking. Point out anything that's engagement related. Remember, this is very like Pavlovian in a way, right? Like in a reward system. Like when you're rewarding students and complimenting them for things that matter to you, they start to matter to the student. Because students are kind of trained to be evaluated. We hate that, but they, they kind of have been trained by the school system to be like, when I get a reward or a compliment, I'm doing something right. And historically, we've only given them a reward or compliment when they've gotten the right answer. So walk around and anything that to you is engagement point out and reward. So you might say something like, I love the discussion you guys are having right now. That's awesome. I love that you just, I know that's just a scribble on your page, but I love that you're kind of like working through what this thing might look like. I love that you guys are arguing right now about what this question even means. That's actually awesome. Like this is you're doing math. So those are some ways to show your students what engagement looks like. Remember the second reason your students aren't engaging is because they just might not know how to. So when we teach engagement the same way we teach content, when we approach those two the same way, you are using all the amazing teacher skills you already have to teach the content you're teaching and you're teaching them how to engage in this behavior, which is the behavior of engagement. This has gone a bit too crazy, but you know what I'm saying. The point is engagement is a muscle, it's not a personality trait. It has to be taught.​The third reason your students aren't engaging is because they think this whole progress over perfection thing is bullshit. I'm just gonna say it as it is. That's what they think. Why do they think that? It's not your fault, okay, so number one. But literally it's because they don't believe you, because that has never been true. And because they exist in a system where grades exist. Like the elephant in the room, like let's just throw it out there. Grades exist, so we can tell them progress over perfection all we want, but they know that they're getting graded and their grades matter at some point. So what do we do? There's two things here. The first is we do eventually want them to like get an answer. We know that grades, as flawed as they are, are some representation of what a student knows. It is not the only representation, it can be a flawed representation, but they exist. So we know if a student is gonna get an F on something, they are not going to feel good. And all of our progress over perfection, like stuff is not gonna land well with them. So in a way, I'm almost like, I want my students to get a good grade just so they don't feel like I've been gaslighting them. We're not gonna talk about grading and the whole system of grading and how it's flawed. Like that's not the point of this. The point is you, you co-exist in this system. So we kind of have to live within it and figure out how to show them that progress is more important than perfection, while honoring the fact that they're going to be graded and they're gonna have to deal with those feelings. So the first thing is, I think the general public has gotten it all wrong when they're like, math doesn't even have answers anymore. Like, we don't even care, we just wanna see their thinking, but they can get everything wrong and then get an A. No. We would like them to get the answer to a math question eventually. That is our goal. We want them to know that two plus two equals four, like we do want that. We just don't want them to have a complete meltdown and shut down before they get there. Again, we want them to engage with the math regardless of the fact that they might not get two plus two equals four the first 10 times. We want them to still be able to engage with the math so that they can have a chance at getting to the point where they know that two plus two equals four. The other thing we have to remember is they're unlearning years and years of teaching, and that teaching has been that perfection and the right answer is the goal of math class. They have been taught that. Now we are saying to them, that's really not the goal. Honestly, you don't need to get a hundred percent. You don't need to get everything right. We just want you to like, we want you to think, we want you to participate, we want you to feel good, we want you to give it a chance, we want you to try. We're saying that, yes, because we want'em to feel good, but also we know that if they give themselves as a chance and aren't so stressed out about the fact that they don't know the answer, chances are they will then engage with the math. And when they engage with the math, they're going to get better at the math. And if they get better at the math, they will eventually get the answer. So your engagement move here. Your third engagement is to give them more entry points and to give them more chances to win. They need to feel good. If there are no entry, if the only entry point is what is the answer to this question, solve it. You are gonna get shut down. You are gonna get a lack of engagement. Because any student who a, kind of knows how to solve it, but is so scared they're gonna get the wrong answer, they're not gonna engage. And then the other students who actually don't know how to solve it aren't gonna engage either. You're kind of screwed either way. We really have to make it so clear that the answer is not what we're looking for at first. And now, here's the other thing I wanna say. We have done such incredible work on, um, multiple, like, ways to solve a problem, right? Like right now we're very, I think we're doing a really good job at being like, Hey, you can solve this problem any way you want. Like, do you know what I mean? I don't care how you get the answer, like use a visual representation, like use manipulatives, like do it this way, that way the other way, like whatever. Those two are not the same thing. Giving a student the opportunity to use any method they want to solve a problem is not the same as giving students, the opportunity to engage with the problem without the answer being the goal. Do you see what I mean here? The first one being like, you can solve this problem anyway. The requisite is still that you should get the answer at the end. You should know that the important thing that I value is, yeah, I love your thinking, but I want you to solve the problem. The second thing that I'm saying, the idea of being like, Hey, you know what? I'm gonna give you a problem and I actually don't care about the answer for a while. I just want you to engage with this problem. Now, the right answer, the perfection piece is off the table and that unlocks a big thing for a lot of students who don't know how to get the answer, who have been trained to be like, if you got the answer wrong, you're gonna be punished. Now remember, we are doing the second piece. We are gonna give them the opportunity to engage with a problem without getting the answer, at first. The reason I say this is okay, and I always use the example when I do talks, of cold plunging. Okay, lemme just, just work with me here. I cold plunge, which means I like to get into a frozen lake and freeze my body for like three minutes. I really like it. I personally like to get right into a cold plunge tank or a lake, I wanna jump right in. I have a friend I cold plunge with, and he literally needs to dip his toes in, then walk a little further and dip his knees in, then walk a little further and dip his waist in. Like he wants to make sure he's safe every single step of the way. When he finally gets to the point where like, I'm already sitting in the lake plunged, he's like, all right, I'm gonna get in. He'll never walk in toe by toe and then knee by knee, whatever, and then decide to turn around at the end. But, he needs to feel like there's no, the risk needs to be smaller for him to get in the water. Does that make sense? Like, I don't mind dunking my whole body in, he needs the risk to be really, really minimized. He needs to feel safe every single step of the way. Now, this is why one of my favorite things to do is task scaling. Remember, the goal is for me and my friend, our goal is to take the cold plunge. Just like our goal for students is we want them to get the answer, but we have to remember that sometimes the answer being on the table and being the goal is going to lead to lack of engagement because students will shut down. It's a lot of pressure to be like, you need to find the answer. It's not a lot of pressure to be like, I don't know, just like, try something. Can you like dip your toe in? Right. That's a bit less. So task scaling is one of my favorite things. And that is when we literally scale a task. So it could be multiple entry points, scaffolding. My favorite way to do this is Chris Luzniak, actually, Debate math podcast. He has this strategy called"ask for opinions instead of answers". When you ask for an answer, only some people know the answer, it's very high stakes. When you ask for an opinion, every single person has an opinion. So for example, let's say I had a word problem and I was like, someone's going to a Taylor Swift concert. They're making 80 friendship bracelets. They end up coming home with a hundred friendship bracelets. How many more friendship bracelets do they come home with than they started with? There is an answer to that question. A hundred minus 80. You went to the concert with 80, you came home with a hundred, you have 20 more. That might be too risky for a student to just start with, so chris Luzniak says, ask an opinion question instead. That means you can put anything in front of this question or ask a question about this question. I've done this with students and it's incredible, so I might put this question on, I actually wouldn't put this question on the board to be honest. I would start this lesson by being like, guys, has anyone, did anyone go to the Eras tour? Does anyone like Taylor Swift? Okay. Then I might say something like, once everyone's arguing about that, I might be like, what's with the whole friendship bracelet thing? Why do people make friendship bracelets? Now we're talking about friendship bracelets. Does anyone here make friendship bracelets? Maybe, maybe not. If you're trading friendship bracelets, do you always like. Come home with the same amount that you brought. Like if you bring five friendship bracelets to school and you trade them, are you gonna come home with five? Or is there ever a situation when you'd come home with more? Now we're all just talking about this stuff, and eventually my questions can get closer and closer to the final question I want to ask, right? I could be like, wait, so why would you come home with more though? Maybe you'll have students say, well, sometimes it depends on the quality of the bracelets, like this, that, the other thing. Then I might be like, but how would you know if you came home with more? Like, what would you do? And like someone might be like, I don't, you would just count them like you'll, you're gonna get all sorts of responses. You finally end up by putting the question on the board, right? So what about this situation where somebody goes to the concert with 80 bracelets and they come home with a, a hundred? By this point, this is like my friend in the cold plunge. He has waded in so deep, he's up to his chest. He is now not gonna shut down and decide he wants to walk back home. He's probably gonna just do the full plunge. Just like by now, all of your students are talking about it. There's been no risk, they're engaged, they, they're showing mathematical thinking. By the way, the whole time they're engaged, this is your opportunity to be pointing out, ooh, I love that point. Huh, that's so interesting, I never thought about it that way. Like you're, you're complimenting them, you're, giving them wins, you're validating them. By the time the actual question with the answer goes up on the board, not everyone may get the right answer, but everyone's probably going to try. They're going to engage, which is what you wanted. So remember, the third reason your students aren't engaging is they think the whole progress over perfection thing is bullshit. And by doing something like task scaling by, by even celebrating all the little wins they get when they're not getting the answer to a question, even if you're not task scaling, right, just in your regular practice, by celebrating those wins, by really evaluating and um, you know, like making a point to compliment and reward all those skills you want, perseverance, effort, thinking, by doing all of these things, you are showing them that your money is where your mouth is when you say progress is over perfection, it matters to you. And by doing things like tasks scaling, you're not taking the answer off the table, that is the end goal, but you are giving them more wins and more entry points to eventually get to that end goal. That's this tip, tip number three. Give them more wins and more entry points so they can eventually get to that end goal by engaging in a low stakes way.​All right. And the fourth reason students don't engage, well, I'm gonna actually frame this as a question I often hear, which is no matter what I do, my students still aren't engaged. And so the fourth reason students don't engage is because their needs are unmet. Now, here's what I've learned, through all of my work and research on polyvagal theory and trauma-informed education, that when students are off task, it is usually because they have an unmet need. And that's why my fourth tip is actually one of the four agreements, which is, don't take things personally, don't take things personally. When students are off task and not engaging, it is often because they have unmet needs. And when we look at lack of engagement through that lens, things really change. We soften and we react differently. And when we react differently, we create safer conditions for students to engage. So something you can ask yourself if your students are in, aren't engaging the way you envision, is ask yourself, what's going on right now? Is this student feeling anxious? Do they feel seen? Do they feel capable? Are they in regulated nervous systems right now? Are they feeling dysregulated? Are they in one of the four trauma responses? Like are they experiencing fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? Like do they have an unmet need? And now the truth is, the answer might be yes to a lot of those questions. And their unmet needs might be a need you can't meet. Maybe something's going on at home. Maybe they've got something on their mind. Maybe they're like hungry. You know what I mean? Like maybe their unmet need is they want attention or they feel stuck. There are certain needs you can meet and there are certain needs you can't meet, but you can recognize and have empathy for. And lack of engagement isn't always a reflection of you, and that's why I say don't take it personally. I think there are a lot of things you obviously can try. We're talking about tips, like we want to engage our students, but sometimes it's just not about you. When a student's needs aren't being met, engagement isn't possible. It's not defiance, it's protection. That's really honestly what's happening. And your job isn't to like fix students, but it's to create the conditions in which engagement can happen and you're doing that. So my fourth tip really is to not take it personally because I think when we take it personally, we become dysregulated, and when we become dysregulated and we're upset, and we're not assuming positive intent, like we're assuming our students are like being defiant or you know, that they're, they're being obstinate or they're not engaging because like they're being lazy, like any of those words that feel like ick, first of all, it's usually not true, right? It really is usually not true. Our students are complicated humans just like that, and there are a million reasons why they're not engaging. I want you to not take it personally, and just be reflective. You can think to yourself, what am I doing here? Am I doing what I think I need to be doing to engage students? And if the answer is yes, and remember, don't be so hard on yourselves, right? Like you, you are, you can't like change the entire system. You're just doing what you can in your classroom and what you're doing is enough. If you're thinking about this, if you're listening to this episode and you're interested in engaging students, I promise you, you are putting in the work. So sometimes students don't engage and sometimes it's not about you. And I just want you to ha give yourself the grace in those moments to be like, today it's really not about me. The student is going through something. Maybe I know what it is. Maybe I don't. I can just be empathetic. I can ask them what's up. And honestly, my new rule, is ask don't tell anytime you get a chance to, if a student isn't engaging, instead of being like, oh my God, do this thing I told you to do this thing, you know, crouch down next to them, pull up a chair and be like, Hey, what's up? Like, can I ask why you're not doing this right now? And this kind of goes to tip number one, which is de democratize engagement. Like asking them and allowing them to tell you is gonna give you more answers than assuming it's like some personal affront, like this personal thing to towards you. Okay. So we've got four solid reasons why students don't engage, and those aren't the only reasons in the world obviously, they're just four things that have really, really stood out to me, thematically through the students I've worked with, the teachers I've worked with, and the conversations I've had. And I feel like things that, there are things that we kind of like overlook sometimes, so I really wanted to point those ones out. And I'm just gonna recap them here for you before we close up today. But before I do that, I just wanna be like, take a minute to center ourselves of why do we want students to engage? You know, I gave you my reasons. It's because I want students to build a better relationship with math and with themselves. And, I know that when students engage in new behavior, they have the opportunity to have new mathematical experiences that help them rewrite the math story they are walking into our classrooms with. Because often that math story shuts them down. Often that math story they're walking into our classrooms with tells them math sucks. You're not a math person. You can't do it. And I want them to rebuild that. I want them to rewrite that. And for them to do that, they need to have new experiences. They need to engage in new behavior, right? Develop new beliefs to become this, this elevated version of themselves that they didn't know existed yet. And in order to have a new experience, to take on new behavior, all of that points back to engagement. We are trying to rewire the belief that many students have, which is when I do math, this horrible thing happens. When I do math, I reaffirm this horrible thing I believe about myself. When I do math, I'm embarrassed. When I do math, I get in trouble. Like we're trying to rewire that so we want students to engage. But I'm curious for you, why do you want your students to engage? Because I think that'll help inform a lot of the action you take this year in your classroom. Engagement is a risk. We have to also go into it with that lens. We have to remember that it is a risk to our students and if we want students to take that risk, we've gotta help create those conditions for where taking that risk feel safe. So four things you can try, I'm just gonna recap them'cause we went by them so quickly. Number one, make engagement democratic. Number two, teach engagement the way we teach content. Number three, give them more entry points and more chances to win. And number four, don't take it personally. So your Math Therapy homework, your first assignment for 2026 for the new year, is to pick one of these strategies and to try it out. I want you to try it out this week in your classroom. I want you to text the podcast, go to your app right now, wherever you're listening to this, hit that text button and send me a text. Tell me what you tried. Tell me how the energy in the room shifted. If you've got another strategy you love, text that to me too. This has been such an amazing way to start the year, I hope, for you. I hope you're feeling like renewed. Like I don't know what your resolutions are, if you're that type of person, but like I really hope that this just adds a little inspo of how we can make 2026 the year of engagement, and the year of the magician. Because you listener, you are a magician. You have all the tools you need to turn shit into gold, to turn lack of engagement into engagement. You're amazing. That's the end of this episode. See you next week. Uh, message me on Instagram@themathguru. Follow me. Review the podcast. Leave us five stars. Go to your favorite podcast app. Share this with a friend. Share this with that teacher or person or group chat that's like my students just won't engage. Let's make 2026, the year of magical engagement. The end.

David Kochberg: 38:39

Let's make 2026 the year of learning how to end an episode.

Vanessa Vakharia: 38:43

Goodbye.