Praxis Reflection-Math

I believe that helping students to find a love for math is important to what I believe about teaching.  Growing up in school, I often heard my friends say “math is hard.”  This statement is engraved into the minds of many at such a young age.  I have always thought the opposite.  It wasn’t always easy for me either, but hard work and determination has helped me to find a love for math.  Teaching math to my students is my favorite part of the day.  At the beginning of the every year, many of my students dislike math.  I tell my students at the beginning of the year that I am going to help them to love math.  My students are able to see my own love for it and it soon becomes an enjoyable time of the day for them too.  I believe that math allows students to become problem solvers not just in math, but in everyday situations.  Helping my students to find a love for math is important to me because it helps students to see that any difficult problem or situation whether it is math or a real life situation can be solved with hard work and determination.

Making connections from what I am teaching to my students’ lives is very important to me.  I believe this motivates students to develop a love for learning.  In math, I strive to show students how math relates to their lives.  I incorporate story situations to their personal lives by including their names and what they like to do such as Joe has 16 video games and he gives 7 to his friend, how many does he have left.  I try to incorporate their interests to what we are learning about, whether it is money, addition, subtraction, time, graphing, etc.  By helping students to make connections from math to their lives, I am helping to create lifelong math learners.