[00:00:00] Vanessa Vakharia: I think something for us to realize is when people say they’re bad at math, what they’re actually saying is, I’m bad at school math. We don’t value in our school system the math that is used to play music or to cook or to spot patterns or to solve problems. We have defined math so narrowly in schools, and that’s the only thing that gets valued. Someone can be doing the most incredible mathematical thinking, but then they’ll say something like, yes, but I can’t do calculus.

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[00:00:34] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and I am so, so, so excited to invite Vanessa Vakharia to join me for this conversation. I’ve been waiting for this conversation for six months, and she’ll tell you I stalked her. That’s not exactly true, but it’s close to the truth because she says so much of what I want families who have math anxiety to hear. It’s a contrived thing. We need to figure out how to get rid of it, and Vanessa is going to talk a whole lot about that. Vanessa, welcome all the way from sunny Canada, and tell us a little bit about you.

[00:01:12] Vanessa: First of all, thank you so much for having me. I feel honored, and I appreciate all the stalking. It was consensual, all good. What can I tell you? Ask me a question, and I’ll answer it.

[00:01:24] Gretchen: Okay, so when I first read your book, your book said that you had failed a high school math class on more than one occasion, and that got the right person in the right seat at the right time to help you learn that it wasn’t you. Tell us a little bit about that because I know that there are hundreds of people who are going to ultimately watch this video who will be able to relate to that story.

[00:01:51] Vanessa: I grew up in Toronto. That’s where I am right now, and I went to a very academic school for high school. The entire time I was failing grade 11 math, I was just very preoccupied with wanting to be a rock star and marry Keanu Reeves. Those are still my goals to this day. I am in a rock–

[00:02:08] Gretchen: Good choices. Good choices.

[00:02:10] Vanessa: Yes. We can all see Keanu is an angel among us, so I had it right. I was always told that it made sense I was failing math because I wasn’t a math person. Teachers would say to me, well, don’t worry about it. Not everyone needs to be good at math. You’re more of a left-brain person. You’re more of the creative type, and I internalized that, and I was like, yes, 100%. I’m meant to live in Hollywood and be on the red carpet. Math is not for me.

I finally took grade 11 math the third time in summer school, and I passed with a 57, and my parents sent me to what was called an alternative school, and it was so cool. It was in this office building, and we took elevators to get to class, and we called teachers by their first name, and there were only 100 of us in the school. There wasn’t this divide of you’re a math person or a jock or a this or that because we didn’t have any extracurriculars, and we all only had one thing in common, and that thing was we were all called misfits.

We couldn’t succeed, weren’t smart. The cool thing is that every adult in that building believed in us. I walked into my grade 12 math class, and I said to my teacher, Eva, who I’m still best friends with to this day, I said, “You’re going to have a lot of trouble with me. I’m not a math person.” She looked at me, and she said, “I’m sorry, you’re not a what?” I said, “Oh, I’m not a math person.” She looked at me and said the words that would forever change my life, and she just said, “That’s not a thing,” and it really changed everything for me.

It’s not like I suddenly became a math genius, and yes, she was an amazing teacher, but the transformation was that if there was no such thing as a math person, when I was faced with an obstacle or didn’t understand a concept, which happened all the time, I would seek help. I knew there was a way to do it. I no longer believed that I was simply born at a deficit when it came to math, and so I left that classroom. I ended up with a 98% in that classroom. I got 100% in first-year calculus. It’s not about the mark. We don’t care about grades, but the point is that I suddenly became a person who, instead of asking, what else can I not do, started asking, what else can I do? That’s why I’m here doing the work I’m doing today.

[00:04:22] Gretchen: Tell us how you got started, how you became the Lady Gaga of math because I love that title. I think it’s hilarious, but I think it’s also having listened to your podcast and watched some of your YouTube channel might be the truth. Tell us a little bit more.

[00:04:39] Vanessa: Everyone’s always like, why the Lady Gaga of math? I’m like, I always think of her song, Born This Way. I think the whole thing with Lady Gaga is that she’s unapologetically herself and has never felt like in order to follow her dreams, she has to fit a mold. I think one of the most restrictive things in math is we feel that in order to be good at math, and I’m using air quotes for those of you listening to this on a podcast, we have to act a certain way, look a certain way, follow specific rules, do math a particular way. That’s what makes so many people feel like they’re not good at math, even though they’re doing math every single day.

After that experience in that classroom, I was like, “Oh my God, I need to break this myth. I know so many people who believe they’re not math people. I need to do this work.” I ended up doing my master’s in math education at the University of British Columbia and my thesis was called Imagining a World Where Paris Hilton Loves Math. I studied all of these stereotypes and media representations that keep so many of us, at the time it was specifically focused on women, what keep us feeling like we don’t belong to the world of math. For example, the fact that it’s 2025 and we still haven’t seen a single movie where the cheerleader character is good at math.

Things that tell us in order to be a mathematician, you have to be antisocial, you can’t have a relationship, you can’t be into sports, you can’t be into fashion. It basically asks so much of– It leads to a widespread math trauma of unless we fit this mold, we never feel like we’re good enough. We never feel like we belong. One thing led to another, I started tutoring. I got my teaching degree, and my path just led me down meeting so many, literally thousands of students and adults who all identify as not being math people and wanting to heal that collective trauma because, for me, it’s not about the math, it’s about a gateway.

Math is the thing that we associate with intelligence. It’s not true, but we don’t call Mozart smart. We don’t call Picasso smart. We call them talented or creative. We call mathematicians smart. When people feel like they’re not math people, they feel they’re at a deficit when it comes to intelligence and that’s false, but it sets up a really big limiting belief that carries into adulthood. I want to change that.

[00:06:54] Gretchen: I read that in your book, and boy, your book is amazing. It’s almost here behind me and I might get up and turn my back to the camera and pull it up in a second, but I love that because we all have self-limiting beliefs. If I had a quarter for every time a parent has come up to me and said, “Well, this is my daughter, Vanessa, and she’s wonderful, but she’s not a math person.” It’s hard not to say, “What does a math person look like?” We have this misapprehension right out of the gate, and that’s not really true either. How are you changing these conversations? Tell us a little bit about some of the conversations that you’re having, particularly with kids to change their mindset.

[00:07:44] Vanessa: I do a lot of work with teachers now. I do a lot of professional development with them, but my favorite work is with kids. I have a tutoring center in Toronto, I have for 13 years, and so I get to work with kids one-on-one. I get to have amazing tutors that all represent math differently, work with kids one-on-one. My best moments are in exactly that, is when a kid says something like, well, I’m not good at math or I’m not a math person, simply asking why they think that and listening to the incredible range of myths that pour forth from them.

I’m not fast. I have to work really hard at it. I’m only getting a 70%. All of these things that school has taught us to associate with mathematical ability, which are simply false. The coolest thing about my work is actually just the asking of the question why, and then using evidence to break myths that kids hold. Obviously, I know we’ll talk about many more strategies, but one of the easiest things we can do as adults is just interrogate someone’s perspective by asking why, and then finding factual information. Really like, every mathematician is fast, let’s look that up.

You’ll find that two of the Nobel Prize winners in mathematics claim that their biggest strength was that they took longer than everyone else to get to the answer. You can always find this counter-evidence. Asking kids where these beliefs even come from, like why do you think being good at math means you don’t work hard at it? Where did you get that belief? Often you’ll find underlying trauma, something they’ve been told, a way they’ve been chastised, and the healing really starts there. I really believe that emotional component of a relationship with math is foundational to the cognitive.

[00:09:29] Gretchen: One of the things I learned in watching some of your YouTubes is that you are adept at asking who told you that without saying that sentence. That to me is fascinating because what you do is you give them entrance to thinking about where did that misbelief come from. Unfortunately, in a lot of situations, we have a generational problem because particularly with homeschool families, I’ll be honest, that was the last thing I wanted to do in a day was math, but I became a homeschool mom because my kids weren’t being well served in the public school in mathematics.

I wanted my kids to have more opportunities, so that meant I had to do something different. Percentage-wise, do you see this more often from boys or from girls?

[00:10:34] Vanessa: I think that’s a hard question to answer just because it depends who I’m around, but I would honestly say that I think it applies to everyone. I think you definitely see it from different populations who have been traditionally marginalized in math. Yes, you’ll see it in more girls, in more kids of color, in kids from different socioeconomic groups because it is generational. These stereotypes and these tropes around what it means to be good at math are rooted historically in masculinity. There was a time when women weren’t even allowed to do math because their brains were too fragile.

You have to think this all does stem from somewhere. If you look at the statistics, if you look at, for example, let’s take a random statistic that could be applied to this. Let’s look at post-secondary enrollment in math-related fields. Just simply if you just want to look at gender, it’s abysmal. You’ll still hear girls now who will say, I’m the only girl in my mechanical engineering class at university. I think it really doesn’t serve us to deny that there is a historical problem there. It’s actually really important for us, especially us teachers, homeschoolers, I always say we’re not all teachers of math, but we’re all teachers of math attitudes to just pay attention to it, attention to what the people around us are saying.

Do you notice those statements coming more from certain people? Why? Why is that? I think why is the really important question.

[00:12:13] Gretchen: Right. I love that you said that why is the important question. I think we have to break the generational curse with our own self before we can break it with our children. I know when I came to work for Demme Learning, I had been a homeschool mom 21 years at that point in time. I can say I was math successful, but I would still turn myself as math hesitant. It wasn’t until I started using new materials eight years into my homeschool experience that I realized that my math phobias stemmed from fourth grade when I missed the teaching about fractions because I was in the hospital having an appendicitis.

It’s amazing where those root beliefs come from. I think you are single-handedly changing women’s attitudes about mathematics, and I’m really excited about that.

[00:13:10] Vanessa: Thank you. It’s definitely not single-handed and there are so many people out there doing the work, but I appreciate being a part of that community.

[00:13:16] Gretchen: Yes. You know what you’re doing? You’re doing it with a sense of humor and you’re doing it with the ability to get people to confront their own misbeliefs. Sometimes that’s really hard to do, but you do it in a wonderfully wild, gentle way that is compelling. I’ll put it that way.

[00:13:34] Vanessa: That means a lot.

[00:13:35] Gretchen: Tell me what you’re seeing with the adults that you’re working with, the instructors. How are you seeing attitudes change or how can you help us see that attitudes need to change to be able to help kids be successful?

[00:13:54] Vanessa: There’s so much incredible stuff that’s happening. Even with a one hour conversation with teachers who might have their own math trauma, simply being validated for being like, “You know what? Yes, actually, I believe this because like in grade four, I have this crazy timed test and my teacher put the mark up in front of the whole class and I was so embarrassed. That stuck with me. Even being able to remember that moment, feel validated because of it and realize it’s not a personal failure. You weren’t born hating math. Something usually happened in order to trigger that shutdown. That can be so, so, so powerful because then it becomes less of like a nature thing and it’s a very clear nurture.

If it’s nurture, it can be changed. I think that’s the first thing. My latest thing that’s bringing me so much joy and I’m noticing such a difference is, with anxiety around math, there’s a lot of emotional work that needs to be done. Just like every single other thing, I always think of exposure therapy. There’s no way you’re going to feel better about math unless you do math. The hardest thing is to be like, you need to do some math. For most adults, it’s really hard to be like, well, what? They’re thinking about fractions or they’re like, “Am I supposed to just go learn a lesson?” My favorite thing, and this is a plug that I should be sponsored for, Duolingo has added math as a language to their app.

You can download Duolingo for free and get math. There’s an intermediate and a basic, and it’s literally like adding or whatever. I now have a group of 10 people that have joined, 10 math-anxious teachers, and they all have been doing it for two weeks. What’s coming out of them is so fascinating to be like, “Oh my God, I’m realizing that I’m better at this thing than I thought. Or, I actually noticed my self-talk as soon as the fraction unit came on the screen. It had nothing to do with my content knowledge, but my self-talk started becoming really negative.” It’s really cool to be like, yes, it actually works. As you’re doing, this is simple math. You might struggle with some of it. It’s Duolingo, so it’s three minutes a day.

Even if just exposing yourself to this thing that’s so scary for three minutes a day, whether or not you get anything right or not, you’re starting to see that doing math is not this catastrophic thing. It’s happening between you and your phone. I think that in conjunction with the emotional piece and the validation has been really, really powerful to be like, here’s a really low-stakes way for you to be doing school math, the thing you’re scared of. Noticing that nothing catastrophic is happening. Now as an adult, you’re even going to surprise yourself with what and what you don’t know.

[00:16:42] Gretchen: That is so cool. I did not know that. It’s been worth the conversation just for you to tell me that.

[00:16:47] Vanessa: They added music too.

[00:16:49] Gretchen: Wow.

[00:16:49] Vanessa: I think it’s cool. I think it’s like them being like math and music are languages.

[00:16:54] Gretchen: I often have this conversation particularly with girls when they tell me, “Well, I’m not a mathematician. I’m not very good at math.” I’ll say, “Well, what do you like to do?” “Well, I play the piano. I like to cook.” I’m sorry. I can do either of those things without having a mathematical proclivity. I think that is huge.

[00:17:19] Vanessa: I think something for us to realize is when people say they’re bad at math or what they’re actually saying is I’m bad at school math. We don’t value in our school system the math that is used to play music or to cook or to spot patterns or to solve problems. We have defined math so narrowly in schools, and that’s the only thing that gets valued. Someone can be doing the most incredible mathematical thinking, but then they’ll say something like, yes, but I can’t do calculus. It’s, again, the hierarchy we’ve created of what math is valuable and what isn’t.

We could do some real digging into why that math has historically been valued, what it’s actually used for. We have valued rule following and copying the teacher, not critical thinking. There’s a lot to dig into there of, again, when homeschooling or if I’m the one teaching something, I’ve got to put an extra effort into saying, hold on a second. Not only is baking math, I’m not going to just say to you, you’re doing math. I’m going to show you exactly how you’re doing math and how it ties into that unit that we did two weeks ago.

If you’re having doubts around that because you’re like, I don’t know how it ties into, go into ChatGPT and type in, how does my daughter making friendship bracelets tie into math in the grade one curriculum or whatever it is, and it will spit out for you exactly what the connections are so you can reinforce to your child, you’re not just doing like blah, blah math. You’re actually doing school math in a creative and innovative way. Here is how.

[00:18:51] Gretchen: That is really terrific. I think everything you have said thus far has been worth the price of chasing you down just to get you to do that. My 30-year-old daughter was in a pretty traumatic car accident three years ago and she realized that she lost the ability to do math. She has taken herself back through elementary school math to learn how to do it again. I asked her this morning, I said, tell me about that experience because she’s going back through one of our levels of mathematics that’s called Epsilon. It’s where Matthew C. teaches fractions and she’s got one lesson left and she said, “You know what? It was really an interesting experience to go through it having listened to you and learned how not to diss myself while I was doing it.” I think that is pretty interesting. To say to parents, I hold myself up as this because my kids would say, “Hey, mom, I have a word problem. Can you help me with a word problem?” The first thing that would come out of my mouth was, “Ah, I hate word problems.”

[00:20:06] Vanessa: 100%, yes.

[00:20:08] Gretchen: Anything we do as adults is a word problem.

[00:20:11] Vanessa: My friend Deborah Peart says instead of calling them word problems, we can just start calling them stories because that’s exactly what we’re doing. In our lives, there are stories that involve math. We’re like, “Oh my God, I got to pick my kid up at this time, but I have to leave by this and do this.” It is a word problem, but it’s actually the story of your life. If we can just change that framing a bit, it’s like it becomes something we’re already doing.

[00:20:39] Gretchen: Tell us a little bit, I want to step away strictly from the math conversation. You’re also a musician. Tell me about your musician’s journey and how that has tied in so beautifully with your math experiences.

[00:20:57] Vanessa: I think probably the biggest tie-in is just the story around failure. I’m in a rock band. I’ve been in a band for 13 years, and mostly, it’s creation and rejection. I took piano lessons when I was younger, but that was it. It’s all just been learning through. I didn’t know how to write a song or play with other people or perform or any of this stuff. I think music is one of those things, especially singing that gets a reputation as you’re either born with it or not. You’re born with this musical talent or you’re not. I’ve had a really, really interesting journey with even my vocal coach who, I would say to her, “Well, yes, but certain people can only sing in certain ways. I’m never going to hit certain notes.”

She has since day one been like, “That’s not true.” I think it’s very much like math ability where you think, yes, but you have a limit. She has taught me how to extend my vocal range an entire octave. I thought there was a physical limitation to it again, just like people think with math. It’s been really interesting to be the person to be like, I’m basically saying I’m not a math person, but for singing, and to have this coach like tap into techniques and explain the science and teach me in ways that I didn’t know how to sing to really change my voice. I always think about that.

We all have our thing in the world where we think, but I’m not a blank person. For a lot of us, it’s math. For a lot of us is I’m not a public speaking person. I’m not a musical person. I’m not an athletic person. I think that’s been really interesting to tap into where our limiting beliefs lie and how breaking through them can really open up so much for us.

[00:22:41] Gretchen: What was it like? See, now I want to go back to the high school Vanessa who for the first time started to begin to experience math success with that teacher that was so life-changing for you. Can you talk a little bit about how that changed your headspace? Because I would imagine that was not isolated to math.

[00:23:04] Vanessa: I think it really just made me wonder, for myself, what else is possible? Even the idea of music, I’ve always wanted to be in a band, but I tried out for Canadian Idol, waited in line eight hours saying three words of I’ll Never Break Your Heart by the Backstreet Boys, got told to go home. I think it really like interrogated that sense of what is failure? Is failure the end of the road or is it when you realize that not getting what you want isn’t so bad so you can go after what you really want finally?

For me, it’s just a sense of wonder and possibility which actually is what math is all about. It’s that idea of approaching life with curiosity instead of a specific outcome in mind. That is why I’m so passionate about this. Math is a very important skill obviously, but for me, it’s about so much more than math because I think when we bust through that limiting belief of I can’t do math, we start to wonder what else is possible for us.

[00:24:02] Gretchen: It amazes me in the conversations that I have seen you have, how you so gently create the opportunity for people to start thinking in positives instead of negatives.

[00:24:15] Vanessa: Math, there you go. What are you talking integers to me? Okay.

[00:24:19] Gretchen: [laughs] Give us a few directions now for the adults in the room. Tell us about your YouTube channel. Tell us about the title of your book.

[00:24:33] Vanessa: Okay, so it’s called Math Therapy. It came out on Keanu Reeves’s birthday, September 2nd. He’s a Virgo. You can get that on Amazon or directly from Corwin. If you order it from Corwin, you can use the code RAVEN25 to get 25% off. For sure, it’s for anyone who has their own math trauma or wants to help their kid heal theirs. It’s like a five-step process, chill vibes. It’s written the way I speak, so it’s not boring and academic. I have a podcast called Math Therapy. You can find that, any podcast player, Math Therapy. It’s interviews with educators, really interesting people who have stories around math trauma or who are teaching kids, helping them heal.

My website is maththerapy.com. Most importantly, you can find me on Instagram at TheMathGuru and all social media. I always am posting helpful videos up there, interviews, tips, just thoughts about math, anxiety. You can follow me there.

[00:25:30] Gretchen: What would be the most important takeaway you would have for parents who have listened to our conversation and said, “Oh, okay, I think I need to reframe this for my children and maybe for myself.”? What’s step one? What do we need to do now?

[00:25:46] Vanessa: Yes, I think the very first step I would say is like as the Instagram saying goes, you can’t, whatever it is, fill someone else’s cup from an empty cup or whatever it is I think it starts with you and interrogating your own beliefs around not only your math ability, but what it means to be good at math. I would start by just doing a little journal sesh or deep dive or have a tea with your friend and really talk about what your beliefs are and start there. Because I think interrogating how we feel about our own math ability or what we think it means for our kids to be good at math is a really good starting point to start breaking apart those myths that lead to those limiting beliefs in the first place.

[00:26:28] Gretchen: It’s funny, in reading this book, one of the things that I remembered was being in third grade and being called up to work a problem on the board. I had been ill, so I hadn’t been in class. I remember standing up in front of the class trying to think through in a panic, how on earth am I going to do this? I remember the kids laughing.

[00:26:52] Vanessa: Oh God, ugh.

[00:26:54] Gretchen: We sat in desks of three, and I had a little girl who sat on the left side of me who was always the first kid to raise her hand. She knew every answer. After a while, I just wanted to elbow her in the nose. Then the kids sitting on the other side of me would lean over and look at my paper as I was struggling to figure it out and go, “h, you don’t know the answer to that? It’s easy.”

[00:27:23] Vanessa: Hold on, there’s 30 levels of math trauma happening right now.

[00:27:26] Gretchen: Yes, I internalized all of that. The only reason I say that in these closing minutes is because everyone who says they’re not good at math has a story like that.

[00:27:38] Vanessa: 100%.

[00:27:39] Gretchen: You need to find it and if nothing else, kill that beast so that it doesn’t continue to affect you.

[00:27:49] Vanessa: 100%. Name it, draw it, there’s your math monster. It’s the full moon in a few days. Go burn it into the sky, do whatever.

[00:27:55] Gretchen: I think that’s awesome. Vanessa, I want to thank you so much for spending this hour with us. It’s gone way too fast. I just really have enjoyed it absolutely thoroughly. It has been an amazing experience and I might drag you back on here someday to have a conversation, particularly about high school mathematics and the potentials you see for girls for mathematics in the future. That would be a really interesting conversation.

[00:28:23] Vanessa: Thank you for having me and thank you for all the incredible work you do. Your audience is so lucky to have you and thank you for making me a part of the community.

[00:28:32] Gretchen: Oh, I am delighted to have you. In our show notes, everybody, while you were scrambling to write down all those things and places to find Vanessa and her wisdom and her content, everything will be included in the show notes. I want to thank all of you for allowing us to step into your living rooms yet again this week. I know you found this conversation valuable as did I. Vanessa, thank you for your time and we’ll look forward to joining you all again soon. Take care, everybody. Have a wonderful afternoon.

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[00:29:01] Narrator: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.