The past couple of months have been a whirlwind. It all started when Allison Dillard reached out to me to be a guest on her podcast, “Allison Loves Math”. She wanted to talk about teacher well-being among all of her math talks.
I recognized that my gratitude angle could definitely assist with math class as the benefits of having a gratitude practice directly align with what our math students need - better problem solving and decision making skills, improved communication and teamwork skills, and lower anxiety and stress levels.
I also threw together a few gratitude prompts that were directly related to math class. At the end of our interview, when recording was complete, Allison suggested that we try to write some more prompts down in the form of a journal. And that was the beginning of the Love Math Journal.
It quickly escalated from a few prompts to an entire journal with more than 250 motivational quotes, affirmations and writing prompts; ideas just kept flowing out of us! We worked diligently together and despite a 3-hour time difference would meet regularly to go over our publishing and launch plan.
This book is pure proof that when you discover a project that you’re passionate about and take massive action, amazing things can happen. On our pre launch weekend (before the book was even publicly for sale) we hit #1 Amazon Bestseller for Children’s Math Books and as well as the Teen Health category. We also hit the #1 Hot New Release. Those colleagues and friends that we reached out to for reviews saw the “wild potential” (to quote one of our teachers) of our journal and wholeheartedly supported it. And I am so grateful to all of them.
Today is our official launch date, and even though we’ve hit some hiccups, I am thrilled that this journal is getting into the hands of our teachers, parents, and most importantly, students. It’s my genuine hope that we can instill a love of math and cultivate a growth mindset and sense of gratitude in our kids - even in math class.
You can purchase the eBook or paperback here on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. And remember, if you purchase, please leave an honest review on Amazon; reviews help immensely to get our journal out to the world, and into the hands of our students.
You can catch our new podcast interview here where we talk about the making of the journal as well as the first interview we did together that inspired the book.
