Math anxiety in new teacher
I’m a little nervous about even making this post. I’m going to be a new 4th grade teacher this year. I also have what I feel is pretty extreme math anxiety. I had a really terrible third grade teacher (she was downright abusive) who used to humiliate me for getting math problems wrong in class. It made me terrified of math and I think it made me miss out on a lot of the basics. I had a very shaky foundation in math for a long time. I’ve since caught up (for the most part), I’ve passed all my classes, all my Praxis, etc., but I still find myself occasionally panicking when I’m put on the spot being asked to solve even very basic math problems. The thing is, I’m not worried about teaching my students. I’m confident that I can know my curriculum and help my students learn (I did it in student teaching and some of my students even told me that I helped them understand concepts they couldn’t get before). However, I have had embarrassing moments where my mentor teacher asked me to write a simple multiplication problem on a poster board or something (just an example) and I froze and couldn’t come up with the answer because my brain just goes blank.
I’m not so much looking for a solution on how to stop this from happening because I know it probably will occasionally, but I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that maybe I’m not the only one or that I can still be a competent teacher despite this? I feel like it’s my deep, dark secret that I’m always trying to hide from everyone. Like “If I can just be a stellar teacher in every other way they’ll never notice I kinda suck at math” lol.
If there ARE any resources or suggestions for helping with this I would love to hear them!