A pet peeve of mine is that in the best of circumstances - i.e., America in 1950 - people do not select themselves to be grade-school teachers because they love mathematics. They select themselves to be grade school teachers because they like to deal with kids. The result is that grade school teachers tend very strongly to think of mathematics in terms of Arithmetic - specifically, number crunching.Word problems were the bane of the typical student; they were candy to me. An interesting challenge. But I did not on that account become convinced that I was good at math. I got no particular encouragement, and I disliked the number crunching exercises so I was not in love with grade-school math. That came later, in Plane Geometry class.
My kids’ teachers basically direct them to websites that show them how to do math; the teachers themselves don’t know how to do it.