A Broadened Perspective of Mathematics

As my primary/elementary mathematics course comes to an end, and I am only months away from my internship, I am left to think about what I have learned about teaching math. One thing is for certain- when I started this course, I was pretty nervous. If you've read my first blog post, that was probably pretty obvious! It wasn't long into the course though, that my anxiety started to melt away. The kind of experience and learning environment that we were give was a very relaxed, pressure-free, and co-operative one. I quickly realized the benefit in providing this kind of environment for students. Without the pressure of time constraints, being called upon in front of everyone, or being singled out, I started to gain the confidence that I needed to really engage with the mathematics problems placed in front of me. If I, as an adult, was able to benefit from such an environment, than I am sure that children would also benefit from it.

 I also began to see that it is not always about getting the "right" answer. Often times in math, I spend so much time worrying about whether or not I am getting the right answer, that I won't let myself try new strategies, and my anxiety over getting the right answer kills the confidence that I need to give it my best shot. I have to admit, that when I first heard of the idea of not telling children whether they are wrong or right, I was a little confused. I mean it's math after all, isn't there always one right answer?? This course quickly allowed me to see that in fact, this kind of thinking can destroy a child's chances at succeeding in math. Even within our classroom of adults, it was amazing to see how when the first volunteered answer was not acknowledged as being right or wrong, how many more people went on to volunteer their responses and ways of thinking. I began to think of all the children whose ways of thinking and personal strategies will never be attended to, because when one "quicker-thinking" child volunteers the correct answer, the search for answers ends.

Above all else, this course has taught me something that is extremely profound to me. I do not need to be an expert in math in order to effectively teach math. Coming into this course, I thought that I had to have all the answers, all the time, in order to teach my students math. In fact, this way of thinking was completely wrong. First of all, even if I did know the answers to everything myself, my way of arriving at those answers is likely going to be vastly different from that of my students. It is more important for me as a teacher to familiarize myself with the various strategies, ways of representing, and ways of engaging with math problems, than it is to consume all of my time with "arriving at correct answers." In my classroom, I want to reach as many students as possible, and to open the avenues to success for as many as I can. The key to doing this lies not in my ability to give students the right answer, but in the diverse ways in which I can guide my students to come to their own conclusions.