School has always been a place where I excelled; I have a passion to keep learning. Every student has strengths and weaknesses, but there is always a way to reach a student. It is up to the teacher to put in a sufficient amount of effort to make each child succeed. Throughout all of my fieldwork experiences and tutoring, I have utilized individualized instruction in order to teach each student in a way that works best for them. The feeling that comes from seeing anyone succeed due to something that I taught them is indescribable. My favorite part about teaching is that moment where the student finally understands a concept that they have been struggling with and you can actually see everything click inside of their mind.
I have always loved math and found it to be one of the more interesting subjects, so becoming a math major was an easy choice for me. Math challenges your brain and it involves a lot of puzzle like patterns, which requires us to think critically. Being a math major has given me the opportunity to utilize my problem solving skills and interpret any information that I was given, which is an amazing ability to have. We are trained to analyze information and be able to communicate our findings, which is what I want to encourage students to do. My goal as a teacher is to make every student look forward to doing math. If you are positive and enthusiastic about a topic, then students will be too, so I think my love for math will rub off on my students. I have actually had students tell me that I made them love math and understand it more than they ever have. I am determined to continue spreading that mindset to my future students.
It is crucial to keep lessons interesting; nobody enjoys doing worksheets all day long. Using manipulatives and making connections to students’ personal lives are the two best ways to get any topic across, especially mathematics. Students need to have hands-on experiences and real-life scenarios as often as possible. Math is such a relatable topic that can be connected to the students’ lives outside of the classroom, particularly in the elementary grades because they learn basic skills that they will have to use throughout their entire lives. Personally, I have a hard time understanding a concept unless I have an example to refer to, so I will always provide my students with ample examples and modeling. It is imperative to incorporate differentiated instruction in classrooms because students learn in various ways. For example, many kids love participating in inquiry-based lessons, which ties into the whole idea of math being like a puzzle. You can give the students a problem and have them do a whole project on it relating the topic to a real world situation. Students should feel like mathematicians and be able to collaborate with one another in order to reach conclusions.