I first did this writing assignment after reading an article called Social-Psychological Interventions in Education: They are Not Magic. The article is essentially a literature review, describing brief activities that target students’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in and about school. The activities do not teach students academic content but instead target students’ psychology, such as their beliefs that they have the potential to improve their intelligence or that they belong and are valued in school.

I’ve attached a handout that I use with students. The basic process is to have students choose three values that are important to them from a list (and they can add their own if they want). They then focus on one of those values and write about why it is important to them. Then they write about how the value they choose can help them in math class.

It is telling that there is usually at least one student who responds to the writing prompt by saying, “Isn’t this math class?” The implication being that values are not important in learning math.

I disagree.

Values are something that we can lean on when we struggle. They can give us strength. They are important to bring with us into the classroom and keep in mind when we challenge ourselves.

I have used students writing in different ways. Sometimes students read them out, sometimes they share with a partner. Sometimes I collect them and write each student a letter in response. Sometimes I collect them and put each of them in an envelope with the student’s name on it – then I hold it until the end of the semester, or the halfway point and have them write a response. Sometimes I hold them and give them back  a few times over the course of a semester and ask students to keep writing about how that value is impacting their learning in math, using specific examples from class.

The activity’s ability to positively impact students sense of self in class feels intuitively correct to me, but I used it because the article cites two-studies, one with low- and middle- income black and white 7th grade students and the other with men and women in a college physics class. The results in both were the same – one or several 15-20 minute writing sessions in the beginning of the year led to reductions in the grade gap between the black and white 7th grade students and between the men and women in the physics class.