Thursday, September 12, 2019

About Me

I love math. Why? Well, because I am at good at it. You tend to like things you are good at. Math has always been easy for me and I almost never had to spend long hours studying. My friends always hated the fact that they would study double or triple the amount I did but I would get better grades. This "easiness" has been the drive for me to continue an education in Mathematics. The thing is, math in my fourth year became extremely hard for me which led me to stop there. Why? Well, it is simple really, I was no longer good at it. The crazy part is, that was the best thing that ever happened to me, not being able to understand math. This is because I started tutoring and teaching students the math I did know and that I was good at and realized I LOVE teaching math.

The discussions I had in class today really did not surprise me at all. I know that for students to understand concepts you must teach them in many, many, many different ways. What seems obvious to you really is not obvious to them. I know that you should be figuring out how a student got a solution wrong rather than just telling them they are wrong like Deborah Ball said so wonderfully. What did shock me though was the amount of DIFFERENT solutions there are to a problem. As a teacher you are bound to come across a correct solution from a student that will make absolute no sense to you but is completely and entirely correct. This is so surprising for me because we think we know everything and every way to get the solution to a problem but we do not. I am excited to see what more I learn from this course, it is by far my favourite class. Why? Well, because I am good at it. 

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1 comment:

  1. Thank you for the post Amna. It still shocks me how many different ways there are to think about some problems. Just when I think I've seen all the ways possible - a student will surprise me with a different perspective or approach. That is actually probably one of my favourite things about teaching mathematics.

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