Your institution invests in professional development for your teachers and faculty, tutoring programs, advising, and curriculum reform. And still, students are avoiding math (and spaces that require math), switching majors in college, and dropping out of school.
The problem isn’t the interventions. It’s that none of them address what’s actually in the way.
Dr. Geillan Aly is a mathematics education researcher, PhD, and former university professor who has spent her career at the intersection of math education, trauma recovery, and systemic equity.
Drawing on her Compassionate Math Framework and the literature on collective trauma healing, Dr. Aly challenges audiences to rethink foundational assumptions: that math ability is innate, that anxiety is the whole story, that tutoring is enough. She makes the case — backed by research — that math trauma is a collective experience rooted in systemic inequity, and that healing it requires meeting students where they actually are.
Audiences leave with a clearer understanding of the seven factors behind math trauma, why they compound intersectionally, and what meaningful intervention looks like in practice.
Born in Giza Egypt, and raised in Queens, NY, Dr. Geillan Aly, the Founder of Compassionate Math, is a math educator who centers the socioemotional factors that contribute to success in mathematics. She holds the fundamental assumption that learning math is both an emotional and cognitive endeavor.
A former award-winning Assistant Professor who has taught for almost fifteen years, Dr. Aly transforms math classrooms through engaging professional development and student-focused workshops that center emotions while establishing a culture of engaging with rigorous mathematics. She has spoken across the United States and internationally and has worked with several school districts to support math teachers.
Geillan received her PhD in Teaching and Teacher Education and 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. Underlying Dr. Aly’s work is a dedication to equity and social justice.
Her dedication to math education stems from the belief that mathematics is one of the closest ways that we humans can talk to God because it helps us understand the world and the universe around us. She enjoys traveling and seeing live music and is an avid chef, wife, and mother to a beautiful boy. They live near Hartford, CT.
Bring socio-emotional learning (SEL) to your math class and transform your teaching and your students’ outcomes.
Relevant and provocative ideas for improving classroom practice!
It was great! Exactly what I needed at this point in the semester.
She showed compassion, empathy and understanding for the profession and truly understands us teachers.
Geillan was very friendly and approachable. It was easy to open up about math struggles. Thank you!!
It was so informative session and i was surprised how Geillan kept my attention for whole 2 hrs!! And i’m so happy that someone pronounced my name correctly 😁✨
She helps you a lot by understanding that you are not alone and struggling in math is completely normal
Finally something that’s attainable!
Very insightful workshop to help us think about how (in)equity can be present in the classroom
The session was insightful and affirming. It gave both motivation for practices, and big and small practices to create equity in the classroom.
A mathematical explanation to solving life problems
A must attend for anyone committed to teaching and learning at any level.
Great speaker! Very knowledgeable and passionate about her work.
I feel 10x better about math walking out of this room than when I first walked in!
Interactive, easy talk listen to, talk to, express, real life Classroom Interactions
Loved the cycle of benign neglect it's information that needs to be shine more light on that issue. i really left more inspired and will certainly share this with my mom, who struggles with anxiety in other areas and it's amazing how unstoppable someone can be by motivated intrinsically.
