Dear Colleague,
You may have stumbled across this site due to an email you received from me, or maybe from a Google search on “math help” or “algebra answers”. Maybe you have seen some videos of me talking about math anxiety on YouTube. The good news is that you are here.
This site is built around the idea that we all suffer from a deep cultural bias against both the study and the achievement of ability in mathematics. This attitude prevails today not just in the United States, but in most of the western world. It has come about for many reasons, that you can find scattered throughout posts and videos and articles here.
The aim of the site is to help students become aware that learning math is unlike learning anything else. It actually is a deep skill to learn how to think mathematically, how to question one’s own understanding with the idea of improving that understanding. Learning how to learn math is not taught in any regular curriculum that I am aware of.
There are several levels and types of resources either existing or on the way on this site, both free and premium:
- online survey and grade predictor to help a student discover where they might be able to improve their study habits or attitudes to get better at doing math with less effort
- links to tools to improve short term memory – in particular the amazing n-back exercise
- trackers to help students manage their study time better, working for both short term goals like getting this week’s homework done, as well as longer term goals, like starting early for the final exam
- specific tutorial content in the form of ‘pencasts’, created with the amazing LiveScribe pen
- videos of interactive sessions in which advanced math and engineering students talk about their own experiences with math anxiety
- ‘cheat sheets’ and memory devices to help students avoid the most common mistakes that divide A’s from B’s, and C’s from D’s. (If your experience is like mine, most F’s are more a function of motivation than ability.)
The style of this site is intended to be provocative. Too many students have had too many experiences with boring classes and teachers. If there is anything I can do to breathe life into a topic that so many kids find so deadly, I do it here. It may sometimes be in poor taste, and maybe even offensive, but it is my site, so there!
Please plagiarize anything you find useful here. Use it in your own classroom. As a colleague, I invite you to explore and comment on all areas of the site, both free and premium. I am really grateful for comments and suggestions and insights. Just email me and I will get you hooked up for the premium areas, as well as the backstage discussion area for teachers only.
Revenue Model / Affiliate Program
iSukAtMath.com is intended to be useful and new and valuable based on the free content alone. The premium content is targeted to helping students do better specifically in College Algebra, Pre-calculus and Calculus. After the free trial period expires, the cost for access to the premium content is about the cost of 1/2 hour of private tutoring per month. As a thank you for directing your students to the site, I will happily pay back to you (or to any organization you specify…) 100% of the first month’s revenue from all subscriptions made through your affiliate link.
