The Harder the Material, the Better I Do?

Hey all,

Image result for 1=2

I wanted to tell you about my experience with senior math courses throughout high school. 

I remember before I would change schools (elementary to middle, middle to high, high to university), teachers would make a point to try and get you line by saying that "oh the teacher won't chase after you for marks and they will just fail you."  To me that worried me but I soon found out that teachers definitely do chase you for marks (whether elementary, middle or high school) (though not as much).  This sort of gave me a relaxed outlook on really trying in school.

In grade 11 I heard this speech again but for some reason, I really believed it this time.  I believe this was due to my parent and family telling me the same sort of thing.  When this happened, I started really focusing and trying in school.  At the same time, I entered into "Advanced Functions" which was notorious in the school for being hard.  For whatever reason the mix of effects from these two things made me really try especially hard in math class.  I think that the complicated looking symbols and equations helped this aswell.

I begun really paying attention and doing my homework everyday.  This brought my typical 70-75% average every year in math to the highest in the class at 96%.  This showed me how powerful homework and paying attention was and I learned through this that math was fun and was just basically puzzles.

This then lead me to enjoy the math and made me want to teach others how fun it could be.  This then lead me to here, aiming to become a high school math teacher.

I hope I am able to instill this outlook for my future students.

Thanks for reading, does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?

Maksym Cord

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I Want to Teach Math

Image
Hi there, Growing up, I didn't love math and I didn't dislike it.  It was just "meh".  I did decently well, probably averaging a B-.  Going through school, when you graduate and moved from elementary to middle and middle to high, the teachers always said "oh teachers won't care if you don't understand, you'll just fail" or something of the sort.  This motivated me to start putting work into my school. In grade 9 and 10 I did around a 75% and then at the end of grade 10 I got the "scare you" tactic again about the senior level math courses.  Now I was worried, so I decided the next year to take math seriously which, meant doing my homework. At the same time, I got a new teacher named Mr. H, he was a funny, nice and relaxed teacher and made the idea of math much less serious in my mind.  He always gave us homework and time to do it at the end of the class.  It was this homework time and my time doing homework after school that bumpe...
Read more

My Thoughts on Khan Academy

Image
So if you know math these days, you almost certainly know Khan Academy ( https://www.khanacademy.org/ ). I am sure the usual reason people end up there is because you are a student and you have a math test tomorrow. "How do you know!?" you may ask, "Your not a scientist!" you say. "You're right." I say while crossing my arms, a smile growing on my face. Well that situation was me in high school/university though I was more of an early bird when it came to studying for my test.  So although my test was not "tomorrow", I still needed a new way of learning a math concept that my teacher was not providing me.  His was of explaining it while showing it through the video and my option to replay it many times was a life saver.  It helped me do well on many tests. More recently, for my intermediate math ABQ I was tasked with doing a bunch of practice sessions for 15 different lessons where I had to solve 5 questions in a row with no mis...
Read more

The Amazingness of Calculus

Image
This is a PSA, I think that calculus should get much more credit on being a really cool course.  Maybe my teachers did try to tell us this, maybe not but I think something more should be done to show this. When learning about calculus through a book, it blew my mind.  This was especially so because I was adept at advanced functions and learned to work with linear equations and figuring them out and how to use them in real life applications.  So I was reviewing the book and it soon told me that linear functions used methods to find out information on straight lines.  That's awesome you say but wait theres more!  Then it went on to say that straight line relationships are quite unrealistic in life and that in real life, the lines are more curved (like the one below). So what?  Well what blew my mind is that somehow, people figured out how to solve for information on curved graphs to then solve for real life situations.  Further, the creativity...
Read more