Math Therapy

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Season 6 drops March 28th - here’s a sample of who and what you’ll hear! 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

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) It's March 14th, aka 3.14 ... so Happy Pi Day!  To help you get in the zone, we're re-airing an episode from last year recounting the Math Therapy team's Pi Day 2023 trip to Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Michigan.  This stemmed from Vanessa's Season 3, Episode 10 interview with Christopher Havens, an inmate serving a 25-year s...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) The rumours are true!  (The rumours that Vanessa has been spreading herself.)  Season 6 of Math Therapy launches March 28th! To get you hyped while we get this batch of episodes ready for you, here are some brief thoughts she recorded immediately after we finished a marathon 10 interviews over 4 days.  What themes did she cover? Will she or her guests get...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Don't worry, Math Therapy isn't going anywhere ... but here's a fun bonus episode as we look back on an incredible 5th season!  It was a total success in every possible way, except one: for whatever reason, Vanessa lost the ability to simply say "goodbye" at the end of the interviews. This hadn't been an issue in previous sea...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) In Vanessa's masters thesis titled "Imagining a World Where Paris Hilton Loves Math", there was nobody quoted more frequently than today's guest, Stanford professor Dr. Jo Boaler.  On the season 5 finale of Math Therapy, Vanessa sits down with her math ed hero to discuss how limiting beliefs vs a growth mindset impact the brain, how st...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Peter Liljedahl is literally changing the math classroom.  His book " Building Thinking Classrooms " has taken the educational world by storm with a simple message: instead of teaching students to memorize, we have to teach them to think.  Sounds trite, but if you ... think about it, traditional classrooms are not designed that way! Today, Peter...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Should mistake-making be encouraged in math class? Or should mistakes be shamed because “in the real world” you can get fired from your job from making a mistake? You can probably guess how Vanessa feels, but a fellow educator recently disagreed … so of course she took to Twitter and a spirited convo ensued! On today’s episode she further outer-processes...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Today's guest literally entered the chat wearing a t-shirt that read "TRUTH MATTERS”, and that sure set the tone for this wide-ranging episode!  Crystal M. Watson is an educator who firmly believes in centering student voices in the classroom, and she also advocates for empowering students by making math practical and meaningful to their life ex...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) In today's episode, Vanessa explores the dangers of narrowly defining success and argues that contrary to popular belief, failure and success are actually BFF, not opposites (looking at you, Merriam-Webster!).  She also shares a practical classroom tool for teachers and students to collaborate on shared definitions of success to support everyone&apos...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) In honour of Pride Month, we're taking a mid-season 5 break to re-air one of our all-time fave episodes featuring mathematician / drag queen Kyne Santos.  Drag has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, so we wanted to share Kyne's inspiring story of breaking stereotypes and defying the haters. If you're new to the podcast we al...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Think of this week's episode as a kind of reverse palate cleanser ... Vanessa and today's guest Robert Kaplinsky more than make up for the lack of swearing last week!  What got them fired up?  Oh, just the systemic barriers to educational reform and the lack of support for both teachers and students when it comes to working through math anxiety...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Last week's episode featured a deep dive with Vanessa into math trauma: what it is and how to avoid it. Today, brain expert Liesl McConchie joins her to explain the neurological science of trauma, debunk the myth of the "math gene", and discuss the hopeful promise of neuroplasticity.  And not to be all clickbaity, but Vanessa ends up sharin...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Each episode, Vanessa discusses the impacts that math trauma can have on our collective relationship with math.  But she realized she's never explained what it is!  In this episode she defines what math trauma actually is, unpacks why traumatic educational experiences happen more often in math than in other subjects, and lists 8 common causes of math...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) You know how readers read and writers write?  Well one day Deborah Peart decided that math should also be a verb, so she created the Mather movement.  She and Vanessa discuss the difference between a "mather" and a "mathematician", how numeracy and literacy are basically the same thing, and how bringing a mindfulness approach to her cl...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) When Vanessa crossed paths with Dan Meyer at a math conference, she sensed some pushback on her concept of math therapy. So naturally, she invited him on the podcast to get into it!   The ensuing rollercoaster interview blurred lines between clearing the air and settling the score, as they hilariously debated hot topics ranging from the need for student-c...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) We have some serious A-list math celebs coming at your podcast feeds over the next 10 weeks - here's a little sample until season 5 launches this Thursday! 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

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Longtime listeners will remember Season 2's Jill Waddell who shared her inspiring decision to switch careers at age 40 and go back to school for power engineering - facing down her lifelong math anxiety along the way!  Vanessa caught up with her after graduation to find out how things turned out (spoiler alert - she was class valedictorian!) and hear...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) There's no other way to say this: we went to prison for Pi Day this year.  Longtime listeners will remembers Vanessa's fascinating and inspiring interview with Christopher Havens, an inmate serving a 25-year sentence for murder who has rehabilitated himself with math and founded the Prison Mathematics Project ( Season 3, Episode 10 ).  Vanessa h...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Math Therapy is (briefly) back!  We've been hard at work on a new season which I can't wait for you to hear soon, but I had to share an excerpt of one of the interviews I just did - you'll see why.  Stanford professor Jo Boaler is one of my math heroes, I referenced her all through my master's thesis, and her work in trying to make mat...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) In our final episode of the season, Vanessa chats with math professor Dr. Anthony Bonato about what it means to be queer in - let’s face it - the historically snobby and closed-minded field that is math. But as soon as you hear Anthony in today’s episode, you’ll understand there will be no silencing his advocacy for diversity & inclusion in math … or...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Did you know that the infamous math movie Mean Girls was actually inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s non-fiction book called Queen Bees and Wannabes ? Today Vanessa talks to Rosalind about why we need to change the media and messaging that girls get about how it’s not “cool” to be good at math. How can we teach students that they can be good at more than one...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) You may be thinking “what the F*CK is a dude wall?!”, and today Vanessa talks to the incredible Katie Hafner to find out.  Katie is an author, journalist, and host of the podcast “Lost Women of Science,” whose mission is to tell the stories of female scientists who history has inconveniently forgotten. But how do we prevent this from happening in the futu...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) One of the missions of this podcast is challenging stereotypes, and on today’s episode we tackle a big one: Asians and math. Steven Tran grew up with Asian parents, and the pressures and expectations from his family, community, and society as a whole affected his perception of his own math ability. Getting caught cheating in high school could have led him...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) This one’s for all the adults out there who are like “hmmm maybe it’s not too late to learn a little math…”! On today’s episode Vanessa talks to journalist A.K. Whitney, who went back to school at 38 to learn math and chronicled it in Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, and her own podcast/website delightfully titled “The Mathochism Project”. She is basica...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Nothing shows how important teacher-student relationships can be than actually being friends with some of your students over a DECADE later, as is the case with Vanessa and Sophie Soberano. Sophie was one of Vanessa’s first tutoring students, long before The Math Guru even existed! Sophie went from daily math meltdowns in high school to becoming a math te...