Associate Professor
Learning Disabilities Specialist
My Story
If anyone would have told me when I was in high school that I would become a math instructor, I would have laughed and called him crazy. You see, in high school, I struggled with math. I would start panicking the night before a math test, convinced that I would mess up the whole problem with just one tiny mistake. After all, math is precise, and when you don’t have the tools to find that one and only, black and white answer, it can be quite overwhelming. It wasn’t until college, when I took a math methodology class, that all of a sudden it made sense. It turned out that my problem with math wasn’t within me, but the way it was being taught to me.
Throughout the years, I kept waiting for someone to come up with the “right” math book and the “right” math curriculum to teach students that math doesn’t have to be an intimidating subject. In fact, once you learn the tools to make sense of math, you will find out that it’s quite fascinating. I finally realized that I wasn’t going to find my idea of the “perfect” math textbook or curriculum unless I took the time to create one based on my own experience.
All of this time, I was expected to learn math in the way that the “majority” of students learned. All it took was to identify my learning style and then adapt the subject matter in a way that my brain would best understand. It turned out that I was an auditory learner, and as such, I was supposed to listen to what the instructor would say instead of focusing on taking notes at the time, and that when I had to study, I had to read things out loud in order for my brain to “hear” it. Instead, I had been told to take notes during class and to study quietly because you were not allowed to speak up in a library.
That is the idea behind this site. I figured I needed to put together all of the right resources before I could create my ideal math textbook. That’s the motivation with this site. Until then, I want to be able to share the strategies and resources that have worked for me in teaching math. It is my hope that you will find something that will make you think about math in a different way.
I have been an instructor for over 34 years and part of the Disabled Students Program and Services at Rio Hondo College for over 7 years, where I’m also a Learning Disabilities Specialist.
~José Arroyo
What is Math Anxiety?
A famous stage actress was once asked if she had ever suffered from stage fright, and if so how she had gotten over it. She laughed at the interviewer’s naive assumption that, since she was an accomplished actress now, she must not feel that kind of anxiety. She assured him that she had always had stage fright and that she had never gotten over it. Instead, she had learned to walk on stage and perform – in spite of it.
Like stage fright, math anxiety can be a disabling condition, causing humiliation, resentment, and even panic. Consider these comments I’ve gotten from students I have tutored in math:
What all of these students are expressing is math anxiety, a feeling of intense frustration or helplessness about one’s ability to do math. What they did not realize is that their feelings about math are common to all of us to some degree. Even the best mathematicians, like the actress mentioned above, are prone to anxiety – even about the very thing they do best and love most.
Articles & Musings
Math Anxiety in college-age students and older returning students.
In a study that consisted of 600 interviews with college-age and older returning students, S.Tobias found three significant variables in her subjects' inability to do college-level mathematics: Fear of mathematics
Where Does Math Anxiety Come From?
Anyone suffering from math anxiety, can all remember the moment when they began to doubt that they had what it takes to learn math. In some cases, it was because
