In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond states a toxic, hostile, or unwelcoming environment prevents learners from producing enough oxytocin, resulting in anxiety and triggering the nervous system because “the brain doesn’t experience a sense of community” (2015, 45). Without this sense of a safe environment, learning is not possible; the need to build positive social relationships within a diverse classroom culture is related to the learning that takes place. 

How can you as an educator establish a safe environment so learning can take place? How can you ensure students feel heard and valued?

This is a question that seems simple to answer, but it comes with so many layers. Because this blog is about word problems, I will focus on micromessages. Micromessages are subtle messages with large impacts. Word problems often use names, items, foods, and activities that belong to the mainstream culture. Why not change it up a little? By making a word problem more relatable to your students, you are also building a connection. What foods do your students talk about eating? What activities do they do? What items do they collect or value? How can you bring in other cultures? Here are some examples:
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My eight-year-old son performed a quantitative analysis based on a word problem. (The green is my handwriting.) Can you create a word problem based on the quantities and values?

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If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that word problems don't happen in real life...wait, isn't this a word problem?

Word problems happen several times a day; we just don't pay attention. Here are two that happened to me just this morning:

For Valentine's Day, my husband bought me a UNT College tee, license plate cover, and key chain. I had mentioned that I needed to take a trip to my alma mater to buy a new shirt and think it is very romantic that he paid attention and bought one for me. However, I know how expensive the shirts are and in my head I was calculating the total cost plus tax and shipping and handling.

I am slow cooking a roast and want it done by late lunch-- 2:00pm. What time do I need to start prepping the meal?

Our students often think of operations, expressions, and equations as a separate concept that only happens in the mathematics classroom. If we don't address this perspective and teach reasoning, they become adults who "don't need math in the real world." As educators, we need to start making connections outside of math time so our students do not have this misconception.

Being able to visualize a word problem is an important connection for some students to explain what they are thinking. Here is an example:

I made 24 steamed buns and gave half of them to my aunt. I ate one-third of the remaining buns. How many steamed buns did I eat?

There are several ways to solve this problem, but students may not always know how to express their answer. Sometimes they will be able to picture it before they can verbalize it. Here are a few ways it can be pictured:

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From their visualization, you can provide the language link they need to connect ideas and concepts and apply them to the correct operations.

Diagram 1: I divided the steam buns in half. I got two halves with 12 buns each. I took one-half and divided it into thirds. The answer is 4.

Diagram 2: The total is 24. Half of the buns are given to the aunt which is 12 buns. This means 12 buns remain. I ate one-third of the remaining 12. One-third of 12 is the same as 12 divided into 3 equal parts. 12 ÷ 3 = 4.

Diagram 3: Half of 24 is 12. I ate one-third of 12. This is the same as dividing 12 into 3 equal parts. 12 ÷ 3 = 4.