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Drawing on classroom and afterschool support experience, the piece contrasts students’ emotional reactions—fear, frustration, and “math is boring/hard”—with evidence-based guidance on assessing mathematical dispositions and expanding access to success. It links anxiety to communication, language barriers, instruction and evaluation, material difficulty, and negative attitudes, then proposes student-centered, curiosity-driven learning connecting math ideas to engaging real-world problems.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":35,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/healthcare/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/math-is-like-a-scary-movie-helping-young-people-overcome-math-anxiety/590526/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/math-is-like-a-scary-movie-helping-young-people-overcome-math-anxiety/590526.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Stanley","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-04","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":34},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What triggers math anxiety in students, according to the text?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The text cites factors such as communication and language barriers, quality of instruction, evaluation methods, and difficulty of materials, along with negative attitudes that may be conveyed by teachers and parents.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How can afterschool teachers help students overcome social or emotional barriers?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The text states that afterschool tutors and homework-support providers have a unique opportunity to help learners break through social or emotional obstacles that block learning.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What approach does the author use to reconnect students with math?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The author emphasizes helping students recognize connections between math ideas and real problems they naturally want to solve, using an investigative and creative, student-centered curriculum.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},590526,1792968404,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":34,"category_name":35,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":34,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":24,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},2336477405376,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","Math Is Like a Scary Movie?   \n Helping Young People Overcome Math Anxiety   \nMargaret Kulkin  \nOne day, as I was working with a student after school on a problem involving division with decimals, I told him which number goes in the “division house.” Suddenly the student blurted out,“That is not what my teacher told me, and I hate  \nmath!” I knew I had not yet found the key to helping this student. Was I addressing how he felt about math? Should I put the problem away and start over with the beauty of decimals, those smaller-than-one numbers that enable us to measure the speed of an Olympic athlete, the diameter of a pinhead, or the exact length of a ladybug? Teaching afterschool allows for such inner dialogues. As a learning support specialist providing academic support services both during school time and after school, I had the opportunity to dig deep.  \nI decided to find out how my other students felt about math. The emotional worry in some of their statements surprised me. They voiced intense, passionate feelings: “Mathis boring … slow … hard for me.”“Fractions are hard. They burn like lava!”“Math is like a scary movie.”  \nMy background as a certified classroom teacher and my work with students after school inspired me to explore new ways to help students learn math. Despite my lack of background in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), I have always been fascinated by the myths that plague the teaching and learning of math.  \nI want my students to make the meaningful connection to math that I myself was able to make only as an adult. In school, I struggled to remember complex math procedures. As my attention slipped away, the teacher at the front of the classroom became a blur, like a prolonged fade in a movie. Math started to make sense to me only later, when I went back to school as an adult and drew on my experience as a dancer. I noted that balancing equations was similar to feeling balanced physically in the studio. Math and dance also share other common  \nMARGARET KULKIN is a Washington State certified teacher. After teaching fifth grade, she created Northwest K–8 Learning Support, which serves students in a variety of settings. Her practice focuses on work with students diagnosed with dyslexia and language learning differences. She participated in the Afterschool Matters Practitioner Research Fellowship through School’s Out Washington.  \ningredients, such as steps and patterns. Just as I would as a problem, the National Council of Teachers of Matheclose my eyes to visualize myself completing a particularly matics (NCTM, 1989) recommended that teachers assess hard set of dance steps, so I could visualize steps and their students’ mathematical dispositions.  \nrecognize patterns in math. I treasure these connections. The need is urgent, as Furner and Gonzalez-DeHass  \nWhen I sense student attention slipping away, I return to (2011) point out: “Clearly, mathematics anxiety is not the the recognition that math ideas are connected to prob- sole reason for low math achievement in this country; nevlems that students are naturally interested in solving. ertheless, it is a critical academic problem”(p. 227) . Fur  \nAfterschool teachers who tutor students or provide thermore, NCTM (2000) emphasizes as a “first principle”homework help have a unique opportunity to help stu- the importance of keeping opportunities to excel in math dents overcome the social or emotional barriers that so of- open to all students, including those who struggle with it. ten block learning. We can embrace a creative and inves- Much of the research on math anxiety focuses on  \ntigative approach to math learning. My interest in being a causes. Jackson and Leffingwell (1999) list causes includmath attitude “myth-buster” led me to apply to a STEM- ing “[c]ommunication and language barriers, quality of infocused National Afterschool Matters Practitioner Fellow- struction, evaluation methods, and difficulty of materials”ship, an 18-month professional","cbCaieUWAwLMgPGa","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieUWAwLMgPGa","pdf",132335,"English","# Math Is Like a Scary Movie?\n## Helping Young People Overcome Math Anxiety\n## Where Does Math Anxiety Come From?","[{\"question\":\"What triggers math anxiety in students, according to the text?\",\"answer\":\"The text cites factors such as communication and language barriers, quality of instruction, evaluation methods, and difficulty of materials, along with negative attitudes that may be conveyed by teachers and parents.\"},{\"question\":\"How can afterschool teachers help students overcome social or emotional barriers?\",\"answer\":\"The text states that afterschool tutors and homework-support providers have a unique opportunity to help learners break through social or emotional obstacles that block learning.\"},{\"question\":\"What approach does the author use to reconnect students with math?\",\"answer\":\"The author emphasizes helping students recognize connections between math ideas and real problems they naturally want to solve, using an investigative and creative, student-centered curriculum.\"}]","Math Is Like a Scary Movie - Helping Young People Overcome Math Anxiety | PDF",1792069830,13]