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This exercise is not just reflective — it’s revealing. Examining these experiences reveals unconscious biases, lurking math anxiety, and opens the door to teaching math with greater empathy and equity (Shabab 2023). Sharing our own math journey with students can also humanize us and foster trust. Engaging students in this activity throughout the year is powerful, especially when they see how their math identity has changed over time. They can begin to see that math identities are fluid, fostering introspection about how they see themselves as mathematicians (See samples of math identity graphs/visuals below). 

2. Positioning Students for Mathematical Success 

How do we define mathematical success? Is it centered on rote practice and memorization or problem-solving and connecting ideas? As educators, we should highlight all students’ contributions, connect ideas, and model how to ask probing questions.  We can also promote mathematical success by encouraging creative thinking, restating students’ ideas, and linking new concepts to prior knowledge (Boaler 2016). Learners demonstrate their mathematical capabilities in multiple ways: procedurally, conceptually, through productive disposition, strategic competence, and adaptive reasoning (Aguirre et al. 2024). Hill and Hunter’s (2023) findings extend this broader view of success by showing that students’ understandings of mathematics are shaped by culture, gender, family, and community values. For example, Pacific Island students in their study placed greater importance on accuracy, communication, family, and recall, while female students emphasized family, practice, respect, risk-taking, and utility. The authors argue that creating equitable mathematics classrooms requires supporting student well-being. It is important to recognize diverse student values and transform pedagogy to align with them. 

3. Make Math Culturally Relevant and Humanizing 

Oftentimes math problems found in textbooks are unfamiliar to students. Some may think - “When am I actually going to use this in real life?” It is important to connect math to students’ daily lives. Using multicultural texts during math lessons helps make math more culturally relevant and humanizing for students. These texts/stories can present math problems and situations that encourage and support students in making meaningful connections to lived experiences, helping to see themselves as mathematicians (Jiménez-Silva 2025). Multicultural texts/books also highlight contributions from different cultures, allowing students to see themselves represented in math stories (Cicres and Giménez 2025; Scorer and Vardy 2025). Using these approaches increases engagement and fosters a sense of belonging (Robinson 2023). Using multicultural texts to introduce and explore math concepts gives learners space to ask their own questions and make connections among stories, their lives, and the world around them (Iwai 2024). 

4.      Normalize Productive Struggle and Promote a Growth Mindset 

A growth mindset is the belief that individuals can develop their intelligence and abilities over time through effort, strategies, and support (Yeager and Dweck 2020). Students with growth mindsets tend to have better math grades and test scores than students with fixed mindsets. Mathematics lessons should include opportunities for students to productively struggle (Baker et al. 2020) as they explore, notice, question, solve, justify, explain, represent, and analyze in ways that strengthen their mathematical identities. Students continuously shape and negotiate their math identities over time. A variety of strategies can promote positive math identity and growth mindset, such as praising effort, providing open-ended tasks, valuing process over performance, and encouraging perseverance. 

5.      Prioritize Mathematical Discourse and Collaboration – Student Voice 
Learners deepen their mathematical understanding when they feel agency to volunteer their own representations, descriptions, or claims and are able to justify their reasoning for opposing conjectures (Restani 2021).  Math discourse gives students space to justify their approaches, listen to others’ perspectives, and refine their reasoning through peer feedback (Chapin et al., 2013; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 2014; Woods 2022).  Teachers play a critical role by modeling productive math talk and intentionally creating spaces for students to discuss mathematics and share their solutions (Michaels et al., 2008; Zwiers et al., 2014). Productive math talk involves asking open-ended questions, encouraging students to explain their reasoning, and prompting them to respond to each other’s ideas. For example, a teacher might pose a problem such as, “How could we solve this equation in more than one way?” and then invite several students to share their strategies. While students explain, the teacher can model language like, “Can you tell me why you chose that method?” or “Do you agree or disagree with this approach? Why?” This not only reinforces mathematical concepts but also helps students practice listening, articulating their thinking, and critically evaluating different methods. Over time, structured math talk fosters a classroom culture in which all students feel confident contributing, asking questions, and learning from each other. Centering student voice in mathematics classrooms promotes a positive math identity and fosters a sense of belonging, as students feel heard, valued, and confident in contributing to discussions (Boaler 2016; Gutiérrez 2018; Roos 2023; Russell and Schifter 2024).   

Conclusion 

As teachers, we can actively cultivate positive math identities by reflecting on our own experiences, setting intentional goals, and rethinking both how we teach mathematics and how we define success. By embracing struggle, amplifying student voices, and challenging our own assumptions, we create learning environments where every student feels capable, valued, and empowered. The result – we can say with confidence: “I am a math person.” 

For more information, visit the resources section at: Building Students’ Academic Language In Mathematics Through Integrated English Language Development 

Zwiers, Jeff, Susan O’Hara, and Robert Pritchard. Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms: Essential Practices for Developing Academic Language and Disciplinary Literacy. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2014.

	Dr. Abdelrahim is a consultant with the University of California, Davis, School of Education. She has developed and facilitated professional development and materials related to second language learning and has experience coaching teachers both nationally and internationally, focusing on teacher self-reflection and growth. More recently, she has been focusing on promoting culturally sustaining, rigorous, problem-based mathematics.
	Dr. Jiménez-Silva is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on supporting preservice and inservice teachers in serving multilingual students with an emphasis on STEM.
	Dr. Restani is a Research Fellow at the University of California, Davis. Her research promotes culturally sustaining, rigorous, problem-based mathematics instruction that leverage and elevate students’ strengths, especially those that have been historically marginalized from STEM fields. She has worked with teachers in K-12 classrooms both nationally and internationally.
	Dr. Tony Albano is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. His research is mainly in educational and psychological measurement, focusing on accessible and engaging test design and psychometric methods for evaluating scale equating and item bias.
	Robin Martin serves as Director of Educational Research and Evaluation at the University of California, Davis. She provides interdisciplinary support and expertise in research design and quantitative and qualitative methods and statistical techniques, with an interest in applied research that supports researchers and educators with examining problems of practice in context.