Math in the Past

As I look back on the fourteen years I have spent in math classes, all of my experiences have really only had one major factor that determined whether I had a positive year or a negative year. The factor: Teachers. Math, in general, has never been one of my favorite subjects, but I have always worked hard to receive exemplary grades. However, whether or not I enjoyed attending math classes depended heavily upon the teacher. Looking back, the earliest memory I can recall relating to math, takes me back to the fourth grade.

Fortunately, I had an all around wonderful teacher in the fourth grade. Specifically in math, though, Mrs. Lesar had the ability to make me forget that I disliked it. I remember how we used to play around-the-world with multiplication and division math flash cards.  If you won, the very next day there would be a small, yet shiny trophy with your named engraved on the front sitting upon your desk. I will never forget the day I won that trophy. Math was exciting that year.

Seventh grade is a blur, but then I had to enter the eighth grade. All of my classes were terrific that year, except math. I had a teacher whose philosophy of teaching literally could have been, “make all of my students feel like failures while publicly humiliating them in front of their peers.” No one could ever please her and she hardly ever explained things clearly. A typical day in class was to show up, turn in the homework, listen to about 10 minutes of notes executed so fast that you could not keep up, and then sit quietly working on the next homework assignment. What a year!

Luckily, by the time I entered the eleventh grade math was sort of fun again like it was in fourth grade. My eleventh grade Algebra II teacher taught to all of the different types of learners, taught us the content, while constantly encouraging and motivating us to do our ultimate best. She used manipulatives, and, all of the story problems pertained to real-life situations.  Also to my advantage, I was able to end high school with another positive experience. Even though my Trigonometry teacher was young, she knew how to teach. We participated in group projects and she allowed us to try problems on the board before attempting our homework so that she, along with our peers, could help us if mistakes were noticed.