For Universities
Professional development for university faculty and math instructors. Specialized student workshops designed to alleviate developmental math anxiety, increase STEM engagement, and decrease course attrition.
Give your students the foundational healing they need to pass their classes,
finish their degrees, and succeed in life.
Professional development your teachers will enjoy. Powerful workshops, speaking engagements, and personalized one-on-one consulting.
Helping students overcome math trauma and work through emotional blocks, while supporting teachers to create a positive environment for learning math.
Incorporating socio-emotional learning into math class (without sacrificing rigor!) because learning math is cognitive AND emotional.
Compassionate Math takes an intersectional approach to tackle math trauma.
Hover each component of the geometric figure to know more about how different things can affect math trauma.
Math requirements are among the biggest barriers to student retention and success, Compassionate Math focuses on transforming the mathematics classroom from both the instructor’s and the student’s perspectives so that students can reach their full potential in a rigorous yet welcoming mathematical space.
Human beings are mathematical beings. As we are human, understanding and using math to better are lives is a part of our natural selves. Just as humans have a driving need to create, we also want to understand and control our world. Mathematics helps us do this.
is a mathematics educator and former award winning Assistant Professor who received her PhD in Teaching and Teacher Education and a Master’s in Mathematics from the University of Arizona.
Her research focuses on the emotional side of learning mathematics and includes how computer-centered learning has affected students’ abilities to control their learning environment and how meditation may reduce mathematics anxiety.
Dr. Aly has been teaching at the university level for over ten years and, without sacrificing rigor, brings a personalized math learning experience to the classroom through active learning methods and by centering students’ emotional well-being. She is very familiar with the Common Core Standards and has experience teaching mathematics to Middle and High School students.
Underlying all of Dr. Aly’s teaching and research is a dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice in mathematics education. She enjoys traveling, seeing live music, and is an avid chef. Geillan is also a wife and mother of a beautiful boy. They live near Hartford, CT.
“When students avoid math, they’re not just avoiding a subject — they’re being locked out of social mobility.”
Your audience has heard that math is important. They haven’t heard why their students are failing to engage with it — and what to actually do about it.
Dr. Geillan Aly brings the research on math trauma to conferences, institutions, and professional development events. She delivers engaging talks that shift how educators understand the problems we have in math class and leaves them with frameworks to foster real change.
Compassionate Math addresses math trauma from every angle. Led by Dr. Geillan Aly (who holds a Ph.D. in Teaching and Teacher Education, a Master’s in Mathematics, and has over a decade of classroom experience), programs combine deep mathematical content knowledge with proven pedagogical strategies to transform how math is taught and learned.
Professional development for university faculty and math instructors. Specialized student workshops designed to alleviate developmental math anxiety, increase STEM engagement, and decrease course attrition.
Job-embedded professional development, instructional coaching, and SEL-integrated math pedagogy for district administrators, teachers, and school communities. Designed to overcome math trauma and raise student achievement without sacrificing rigor in Title I and standards-based environments .
Targeted 1-on-1 coaching to heal personal math trauma, rebuild mathematical confidence, and equip parents to support their children's math learning journey at home.
Was very insightful in math education history in the past 100 years and was helpful in providing strategies to help ground yourself when struggling with math and other subjects.
Actually learned about the disconnect in math. If you want to learn about motivation and how to move forward in math. If you want to actually enjoy doing math and be motivated to do it get this speaker in! So so so impressed and feel more prepared as a teacher to go forward. Have a growth mindset and make mistakes.
Refreshing and attainable! Practical
Great speaker! Very knowledgeable and passionate about her work.
The session was insightful and affirming. It gave both motivation for practices, and big and small practices to create equity in the classroom.
Thank you for this gift.
It was challenging and empowering. A timely reminder to retain and prioritize our compassion in the work of math education.
It is an amazing support for working with students to move with confidence and engagement on their individual paths.
AMAZING, very insightful on power struggles, values of intellectual contributions, norms, strengthening student contributions
I thought it was going to be another thing where we were told to be vulnerable but actually doing so would be a terrible mistake; however, instead everyone was completely supportive! I couldn’t believe it.
reinforced the need to reach students where they are at and empower them to be self-motivated.
Great insights to help students feel more comfortable in the classroom; gave some good ways to think about teaching, assignments, etc to improve equity and inclusiveness in the course
Beautifully paced, kind, supportive and connected to truths
If I had to [describe] this session to a friend or colleague I would tell them that we are all capable of do good in math and even with all the barriers that we might encounter, we can always become successful.
A great workshop to help you dive deeper into the introspection of your teaching.
A funny thing happened on the way to infinity…
I was with my kiddo who was bingeing “ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks” on Netflix when my ears perked up. Not because I was excited about another reboot created by AI (as a Gen-Xer I was completely rolling my eyes), but because the episode provides insight into math trauma and a journey to healing. Here I […]
Compassionate Math bloomed out of Dr. Geillan Aly’s own math trauma and her experiences helping students find their inner math person.
Students can tell immediately whether or not your math class is compassionate. Here’s what to say, what to skip, and why the opening words matter most.
Compassionate Math: Book One of the Compassionate Math Series, is half compassion (work through math trauma), and half math (conceptually understand arithmetic).
Written for the adult reader in a friendly, yet rigorous tone.
Compassionate Math is proud to have partnered with the following institutions:
