The Lie That Difficulty Means Incapability

I began reading at a very early age, and my mother will tell you it’s because she read to me every day while I was still in her stomach.

Learning always came easily to me. I was placed in advanced classes throughout elementary school, and by fifth grade, I had grown so tired of being in the “smart” classes that I purposely failed an exam because I wanted to be a normal kid.

That changed when I decided to attend DeBakey High School for Health Professions. Ninth grade went well, but then came Dr. Vasan’s tenth grade chemistry class.

For the first time in my life, learning was difficult. I had a tutor and stayed up until midnight or one in the morning studying, sometimes just to prepare for the next day’s lesson. A 75, which once would have felt like complete failure, suddenly became something worth celebrating. I had spent my entire life being told I was smart, and when learning became difficult, I began questioning whether I was capable.

Nobody had ever told me that difficulty didn’t mean incapability.

Now, at forty four years of age, approaching my eighteenth year in mathematics education, I’ve experienced some of the most challenging days of my career developing and influencing middle school mathematics curriculum. But I genuinely enjoy getting up every morning knowing the work will challenge me. I get to do mathematics every single day alongside an incredibly brilliant team of people who challenge my thinking and help me see things differently.

Some days, I still feel like that fifteen year old girl sitting in chemistry class, but I’ve learned that having my thinking challenged doesn’t mean I’m incapable. It means I’m still learning.

It makes me wonder how many students experience those same feelings in mathematics classrooms. How often do we make mathematics about right and wrong answers without considering what students begin believing about themselves when learning becomes difficult?

I’ve watched students successfully engage in mathematics above their grade level without even knowing it. They were given opportunities to think, reason, and learn without someone first telling them the mathematics was too difficult.

If I’m still reminding myself that difficulty doesn’t mean incapability after nearly eighteen years in mathematics education, I wonder how many students need to hear those same words from us.

And more importantly, are we telling them?