But math is really about patterns and visual representations. Seeing the visual for a mathematical concept connects different parts of the brain and can create real understanding. I love Jon Orr and Kyle Pearce for the way they go about this visual interpretation of math. I refer to all of their websites a great deal. A great website created by Jon Orr is http://mathisvisual.com/ which shows the evolution of a concept visually. And there are concepts from all the strands available.
I, of course, like many in my age bracket did not learn math this way. I learned the rote, memorization and algorithm way. Mind you, I've got a very good memory so it worked for me. But until I read Jo Boaler's Mathematical Mindsets and started really exploring the concepts in a visual manner, I truly did not understand exactly why some of the concepts worked at a basic level in a way I could use to explain it to my students.
There is a ton of great resources available to use to bring the visual into your math class: OpenMiddle, YummyMath, Desmos, visualpatterns.org, fractiontalks.com, youcubed.org, Tap into Teen Minds - just to name a few.
Everyone is a math person. I truly believe it to be true. So if you think you aren't, well, you are wrong. Math is not about getting the right answer, it is not about speed, it is full of mistakes and is a journey towards understanding things in our world.
“But mathematics, real mathematics, is a subject full of uncertainty; it is about explorations, conjectures, and interpretations, not definitive answers.”
~Jo Boaler
