You have likely heard of a growth mindset in the math classroom, and maybe you even follow the work of Carol Dweck and Jo Boaler. The concept of a growth mindset has helped many of us rethink how students approach challenges, maintain effort, and learn in mathematics. But I ask you to consider something slightly different: What does it look like to foster students’ mathematical hearts, not just their mathematical minds?

The idea of mathematical hearts is more than “attitudes” and “mindsets”. It is not just whether students are open to math or have a willingness to try or the persistence to keep going with challenging work. It is about how they feel about mathematics, how they connect with mathematics, how they see themselves as mathematicians, and whether they experience curiosity, connection, and joy with mathematics. Zavala and Aguirre (2024), help name this shift by emphasizing the rehumanization of mathematics and centering of students’ identities and lived experiences in the learning process.  Their work helped me recognize something many educators already notice: students’ relationship with mathematics matters just as much as their skills.

Rehumanizing Mathematics Through Culture and Experience

This idea of fostering mathematical hearts really resonated with me when I read Zavala and Aguirre’s (2024) Cultivating Mathematical Hearts. Their framework highlights students’ cultural and community knowledge and honors student thinking as central to mathematics teaching and learning. This book is for those who are new to the idea of a growth mindset and a growth heartset and those wanting to take action in their classrooms.

Chapter 3, Knowledges and Identities, introduces three dimensions of the Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching Tool. First, centering cultural and community funds of knowledge emphasizes understanding the lived experiences of families, allowing educators to adapt curriculum that reflects the realities of children in our classrooms. Second, rehumanizing mathematics involves critically reflecting on instructional practices to restore the human-centered nature of mathematics, countering the typical abstract or decontextualized ways. Third, honoring student thinking and ideas requires actively eliciting students’ perspectives and honoring their ways of making sense of mathematical tasks, even (and maybe especially) when those approaches differ from formal procedures.

Together, these dimensions position mathematics not as something separate from students’ lives, but as something embedded within them. This perspective challenges us to consider how mathematics is experienced in our classrooms and whose knowledge and thinking are recognized as mathematical. These ideas align closely with what it means to foster mathematical hearts.

I keep coming back to this idea because of what we hear all the time from students, and even from adults: “I am not a math person.” What is interesting is that the same people who say that use math every single day. As Alan Bishop (1988) described in Mathematics Education in Its Cultural Context, all humans engage in mathematical activity through counting, measuring, locating, designing, playing, and explaining. These are universal human practices that show up across cultures and communities.

This raises an important question about what we often call “real-world math.” Why do we separate “school math” and “real-world math” as if they are different categories? Students frequently experience them as disconnected, yet mathematical thinking is already integral to everyday life. A student deciding how to share materials with a group, how to divide up snacks, or how to make sure everyone gets a turn is engaging in mathematical reasoning through comparison, adjustment, and decision-making. These are not artificial extensions of mathematics; they are mathematics in action.

We would likely never formalize these experiences as step-by-step word problems, yet they are deeply mathematical, collaborative, intuitive, and grounded in lived experience. In contrast, classroom mathematics is often presented in more procedural and isolated ways that can hide these connections. This disconnect matters because students may not recognize their own mathematical thinking when it does not resemble school-based formats.

When we help students see what they are already doing is mathematics, we begin to bridge this gap. They are estimating, organizing, comparing, adjusting, and making decisions in meaningful contexts. People who believe they are “not good at math”  are already engaging in mathematical activity; they simply may not yet recognize it as such, nor see themselves as mathematicians.

Changing the Narrative

Fostering students’ mathematical hearts is about changing the narrative in two distinct and closely related ways:

1. Help students see that mathematics is not separate from who they are or how they live. This connects closely to culturally responsive and culturally sustaining teaching; when we help students visualize and make connections between mathematics and their lived experiences, we can begin to shift how they experience math in school.
2. Move students (really, all people) away from the idea that math is something you are either good at or not, and toward the idea that math is something all humans do. Teachers can disrupt the long-standing reputation that math is rigid and only for some learners. It also helps address the negative associations many students have with math based on past experiences.

We can change the kinds of experiences students have in our classrooms by sparking their interest, helping them recognize that math is already part of their lives, and supporting them in finding joy in doing mathematics.

A Living Breathing Classroom Community

This is where our jobs as teachers become really important. I think about this as a choice between two approaches: listen and accept, or dismiss and insist. When we listen to students and accept their thinking, we are telling them that their ideas matter. We are building relationships and creating a space where they can expand their understanding from where they are starting. When we do this consistently, authority in mathematics begins to shift. It moves away from the teacher, the textbook, or the answer key, and toward the collective thinking of the classroom. When we dismiss student thinking or insist on one way of doing something, we risk shutting that down. Even small responses like “that is not correct” or “that is not how you do it” can reinforce the idea that mathematics is about ‘getting the right answer in the right way’ rather than making sense of ideas.

This doesn’t mean that precision is not important; it is important to be precise, it is important to understand mathematical errors, and it may even be important to make an accurate mathematical calculation, but it’s more important that students feel heard and valued in the process of learning mathematics. When we start with their thinking, we can guide them forward. When we start correcting them, we often lose them. This connects directly to the kind of classroom community we are building. What does your classroom community look like? What does your math community look like? Are they the same, or do they feel like separate environments? Think of these spaces as the heart of a city: not just physical places like homes, schools, churches, or neighborhoods, and not just groups of people such as students, teachers, parents, or professionals, but as an interconnected learning environment. A city is more than its buildings or its residents; it is a living system where people, place, and purpose interact. In the same way, a mathematical community should be more than a set of criteria. It should function as a dynamic milieu of learning, curiosity, excitement, and mathematics, all deeply intertwined.

I think about community as something that is living and evolving. It is not just the physical space of a classroom. It is made up of relationships, shared experiences, and a sense of belonging. In mathematics, that means creating a space where students’ ideas are part of the learning, not just responses to it. Students remember how they felt in our classrooms. They remember if they were asked to share their thinking. They remember if they felt successful or if they felt like they were always behind. They remember experiences, not just content. If we are intentional about fostering mathematical hearts, students might not remember a specific idea or concept, but they will remember that they can make sense of mathematics. They will remember they can persist. They will remember that their ideas have value. Let’s explore how honoring student ideas transforms math learning into an experience that values curiosity, identity, and voice.

Part of this work is making space for productive struggle. I always think about how those two words feel like they do not quite go together. Productive sounds positive, like moving forward. Struggle can feel heavy, frustrating, or uncertain. But that is exactly the space we want students in. We want them thinking, questioning, and working through ideas, even when they are not sure. Productive struggle is about being just beyond where you are, not stuck, but not finished either. In that space, students grow. They build understanding, but they also build confidence. Our role is to support that process by asking advancing questions that move their thinking forward, not just assessing questions that check for right or wrong answers. Strategies like error analysis or “which one does not belong” help create these opportunities, but more importantly, they signal that thinking matters. When students experience this kind of learning, they are not just doing mathematics. They are beginning to see themselves as capable of doing it. That is part of fostering their mathematical hearts.

Making Mathematical Hearts Visible in Practice

In my work as a facilitator of the Math for All program in Northwest Montana, I see this come to life through the idea of a focal student. Teachers select one student for the year and plan a series of adapted lessons with that student in mind. By focusing on one student, teachers start to notice and wonder more. They think about what engages the student, what challenges them, and what supports their understanding. This model supports fostering students’ mathematical hearts without specifically naming it. I encourage you to consider the heart of your focal student as well as their strengths and challenges. Ask, what would make this math experience meaningful for this student? What would help them see themselves as a mathematician? What would make this more joyful? When we take the time to learn about our students and connect mathematics to their lives, we are reshaping the way mathematics is experienced in the classroom. We are creating learning environments where students’ identities, ideas, and experiences become part of the mathematics itself.

We are asked to do so much as educators. It can feel like we need to make big changes to make a difference. But fostering mathematical hearts can start small. It can start with one question, one conversation, or one moment where we choose to listen a little more closely. For your own reflection or if reading this post with colleagues, you may consider questions such as:

• What does it mean to honor students’ mathematical thinking?
• How does listening to student thinking make math more inclusive?
• How might we transform math learning into practice that values student thinking and ideas?
• What classroom routines or instructional strategies can support you in noticing and celebrating student ideas?
• How do we shift mathematical authority from the teacher, textbook, and curriculum toward the collective thinking of the classroom community?
• In what ways does my honoring students’ thinking help address inequities and who gets recognized as “good at math”?
• What is one move you want to try in your next math activity to listen more deeply?

We may have been trained to focus on what students do wrong as a way to help them do better. But when we focus only on what is missing, we overlook what is already there (Zavala & Aguirre, 2024, p.53). When we listen closely to what students understand, we have something to build on.

This is the work we can do as teachers. We can remove barriers to mathematics, reduce anxiety, and support students who may carry frustration or past experiences into the classroom. In doing so, we help them move beyond mindset into a growth heartset, where they believe they can do mathematics, want to engage with it, and see a reason to do so. Instead of hearing “I was never good at math,” we begin to hear, “I use math every day,” and ultimately, “I am a mathematician.”

This work begins with listening, noticing, and wondering. It involves valuing what students bring into the classroom and recognizing that we do not have to have everything figured out. We can learn alongside students, using our own experiences and curiosity as a guide.

It may look like creating space for conversation before moving into structured routines, asking questions, and allowing students time to think deeply, or rethink how we respond when students share ideas or ask questions. These are small instructional moves, but they shape how students see themselves in mathematics and what they believe is possible.

That is the work of fostering mathematical hearts.

The contents of this blog post were developed under a grant from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0