Liesl McConchie is a math educator, speaker and author whose work brings brain science into the math classroom. She is the author of Building a Positive Math Identity: A Brain-Science Approach and co-author, with Eric Jensen, of Brain-Based Learning: Teaching the Way Students Really Learn. Liesl works with educators to help students build confidence, persistence and a positive sense of themselves as math learners. Her practical, research-informed approach gives teachers strategies they can bring straight into their classrooms.
Roundtable Recap:
Thank you to everyone who joined us for November’s roundtable with Liesl McConchie, co-author of Brain-Based Learning with Dr. Eric Jensen and author of Building a Positive Math Identity: A Brain-Science Approach. We opened by asking attendees to finish the sentence “When I was a student, math made me feel…” The answers ranged from confident and excited to anxious and afraid, which set up Liesl’s central message: a student’s emotional relationship with math is foundational to their cognitive relationship with math.
Liesl explained that how students feel about math is the biggest barrier to learning it, and also the biggest driver. The amygdala, the brain’s emotional control center, can shut down learning entirely. Curiosity, hope, confidence, and even short bursts of confusion put the brain in a state that’s ready to learn, while fear, anxiety, and frustration work against it. The hopeful news is neuroplasticity. With patience and consistency, every child can build a new relationship with math, especially when we recognize effort and progress, not just correct answers.
She also shared practical ways to put the brain science to work. Break practice into short chunks with check-ins in between, since attention span is roughly a student’s age in minutes. Offer two or three strategies instead of asking students to master every method. And make lessons like MTV: engage the Motor cortex with manipulatives, the Temporal lobes with math talk, and the Visual cortex with rich visuals.
The chat was buzzing all night. Liesl’s own answer to our opening question was “powerful,” since she reigned as queen of Around the World, and Sarah admitted she spent years chasing a classmate’s math facts crown. When Liesl asked why we teach multiple strategies, attendees pointed to flexibility, number sense, and our favorite answer: “It makes teachers better about their teaching.” And a shout-out to our trivia pros, who knew right away that MTV launched in 1981 with “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
