March 2026
In my last two years of teaching, I found myself starting the school year more excited and hopeful than ever. I believed that my professional growth, change in teaching setting, and new research-based resources would lead to the most impactful teaching years of my career. Instead, I was met with shockingly wide levels of student disengagement, resistance, and apathy that I had never seen before.
One student in my last year, let’s call her Evi, consumed my thoughts each night. I could see that she had tons of potential; I could see that there was spark and life in her despite the resistance and apathy to math. Although I had built a positive and inclusive class culture, and although all of this student’s peer group were huge supporters of our class culture and growth mindset, Evi seemed uninterested in any attempts I made at fostering a relationship with her or motivating her to take part in our community. I was disheartened, concerned, and stressed.
Teachers I know across the country are exhausted. Many are working harder than ever to spark student engagement and motivation in mathematics, only to feel like the effort isn’t always paying off. It’s no surprise teachers feel this way. Student apathy feels more prevalent than ever. Studies have shown that since the pandemic, teachers are noticing a rise in apathy among students. So what are our options, as educators?
- How can we help students find purpose?
- How can we empower them to take ownership of their learning?
- How can we build mathematics into the storyline of their present day and their future?
As I reflect on my relationship with this student, I understand now that student empowerment can challenge apathy by helping students imagine themselves as legitimate members of a math community. When students are given opportunities to show up and make choices for themselves, they may begin to imagine themselves as active contributors to mathematical thinking. The distance created by apathy can soften when they start to recognize that they belong in the math classroom.
This article is not a step-by-step guide. Instead, it is a menu of ideas and practices that are working in classrooms across the country to empower our students to take charge of their learning to combat their own apathy. Choose an idea that resonates. Try one. Try several. Adapt them to fit your students and your setting.
Listen.
Cornelius Minor, in We Got This, asks, “Where is the poetry in this young person?” That question invites us to look beyond labels and surface behaviors.
Looking back now, I realize a critical mistake I had made with Evi: I made assumptions about her capability and identity without actually providing spaces for her to speak, and then making opportunities for myself to listen. Mathematics is deeply connected to lived experience. The challenge is that students often do not see this connection, especially if the problems they encounter feel disconnected from their own developing identities. This is where providing opportunities for students to take conversations in the direction of their choice, and then listening intentionally, matters.
Listening shifts the work from simply covering content to helping students recognize mathematics as part of their own storyline. And once we begin listening, an equally important question follows: how are we communicating that we heard them? Belonging grows when students see that their experiences matter and that mathematics is not separate from their future, but woven into it.
Belonging.
One of the pieces that hindered my progress with Evi was her late entry into my class. I had spent the beginning of the year fostering ideas of growth mindset, productive struggle, and a culture of “consensus as confirmation.” When she entered the class after those early activities, I saw her as having missed her chance to fully integrate, revealing my belief that culture must be front-loaded instead of sustained over time.
Since then, I have come to recognize specific structures such as collaborative routines, student reflections, and shared decision-making as tools for cultivating belonging beyond the first weeks of school. Below are some strategies for fostering students’ sense of belonging at any point in the school year.
Team Roles/Responsibilities: Team roles allow students to find an identity within a group that is based on an opportunity to demonstrate strengths not always highlighted in a math class. It is equally valuable because, if team roles are well defined and used on a daily basis, they translate to real-world skills and are very transferable in any career.
Door Questions: A quick, non-content-specific question to get to know students. There is little risk in a student sharing a response to one of these questions, and therefore, they should be encouraged not to opt out.
The First Five Minutes is about connection: Consider protecting the first five minutes of class for connection: A quick relational prompt. A fun puzzle. A shared moment of curiosity. A thinking question. Many educational leaders encourage us to think about ways to connect and get students thinking in the first 3 to 5 minutes of class.
If you would like to know more about how belonging can empower students, Shane Safir and Sawson Jabir, in The Pedagogy of Voice, remind us: student voice changes everything. When students feel seen and heard, engagement grows from within. If you would like to know more about how to get students thinking in the first 5 minutes of class, consider “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics” by Peter Liljedahl.
Choice = Agency
Agency is a powerful counter to apathy.
We may not always have the flexibility to offer choice in content in our math classrooms. But we often have more flexibility over process and product than we think. Building opportunities for students to make decisions about their learning will create agency and commitment to the task in a way that nothing else can.
Process Choices teachers can leverage:
- Work individually, in partners, or small groups (CPM modalities)
- Digital or hands-on exploration
- Study Team and Teaching Strategies (STTS) to shape collaboration (let students choose!)
- How will this be recorded? Poster, paper, Google Doc, VNPS
- Reflective writing or solution planning
- Short group presentation or class share-out
When students have even small choices, the message shifts from “Do this,” to “You are responsible for how you engage with this.” John Spencer, in Empower, reminds us that empowerment is not about control; it’s about capacity. Students grow when they experience ownership.
Understanding Begets Understanding
We all know this feeling: when you finally understand something in math, your interest rises. Where is that happening in your classroom? If students experience confusion and go too long without success, apathy can become a form of self-protection.
Questions we can ask:
- Where can we design quick wins in math understanding or perseverance?
- Which students need quick wins the most?
- How can we scaffold complexity so success is visible and frequent?
Small moments of understanding will create a spark in students. Momentum builds confidence. Confidence fuels engagement.
Empower Students Through Formative Assessment
If we want to reduce teacher burnout while increasing student ownership, we need to recruit students into the work of learning. This work is not easy; in many instances, students have experienced judgment in math ability and success or unsuccess through grades or their teacher’s feedback. Some of this feedback may have been given in big ways, such as praise or chastising in a group discussion, or in small ways, such as being chosen to share an idea or being allowed to stay perpetually silent.
Michigan’s formative assessment framework offers three guiding questions:
- Where are we going?
- Where are we now?
- How do we close the gap?
In response to these questions, here are some recommendations:
- Clear learning targets. Student goal setting.
- Evidence of understanding; not just teacher judgment, but student self- and peer-reflection. Visual and clearly stated progressions that students can use to guide their learning. (Tip: Don’t skip those Learning Logs or Reflection Journals!)
- Responsive teaching. Strategic practice. Peer feedback. Revision.
When students can answer these questions for themselves, apathy decreases because clarity increases. They know the goal, their current position, and the next step. Ownership replaces passivity.
Apathy can be squashed with student empowerment.
Consider that apathy can be a signal/feedback that students are giving you:
- I’m not a math person.
- I don’t understand.
- I don’t feel capable.
- I don’t feel known.
- I don’t feel seen.
When I think back to my student, Evi, I remember a poignant turning point in my view of her. I was in charge of a short, grade-level advisory class each day. While I felt resentful over the extra prep, I had colleagues who encouraged me to use the time creatively and constructively to build student identities for themselves and relationships that ran deeper. During one particular reflection activity, I received a paper from Evi that brought me to tears and dropped me in my seat. She shared a vulnerable and personal experience that explained why she joined the classroom mid-year. I had no idea that she had such a challenging reality outside of the classroom before reading this journal.
That experience, of learning more about Evi’s life, forced me to confront a hard truth: students disengage when they feel invisible. Before we can increase rigor or raise expectations, we must raise belonging. Engagement in mathematics grows from classrooms where students’ voices matter and their identities are welcomed into the learning.
This article is a toolbox that I wish I had when Evi was my student. Since then, I’ve been collecting strategies that I hope can help other teachers reframe their approach to the Evis who might be sitting in their classrooms.
Belonging and agency are the foundation for strong math instruction. Combating apathy with more intensity, drilling, or testing will not spark motivation in our young learners to find ways to use and apply mathematics in their current worlds or their futures. We can combat apathy in our students with listening, inclusion, choice, quick wins, and shared ownership of learning.
Try one strategy from this menu; see what shifts. Then build from there. The storyline of your classroom is still being written, and your students deserve to see themselves in it.
