Learning to Teach by Alyssa

Learning to Teach by Alyssa - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

Class to class, day to day, assignment after assignment, students find themselves bogged down with responsibilities and stress. We complain, we rant, we procrastinate. Instead of appreciating the benefits of education, we look at learning with dread and disgust. At the receiving end of all our grumbling, of course, are our teachers: "I don't get it!", "This is pointless!", "Are you kidding me? You're expecting us to have this done in two days?" The list goes on and on. Caught up in our own selfishness, we not only forget about the importance of investing in our education, but we also forget that teaching can be very stressful as well. Contrary to the popular belief of many, teachers do not enjoy giving their students bad grades and they do not take delight in the fact that students are seriously struggling. While certain classes prove more challenging than others, one of the most vital subjects is one that many students struggle with the most: mathematics. As a result of this present problem, I believe that math would be the most challenging, and the most rewarding, to teach.

Ever since I was a child, I always loved learning about math. It challenged my analytical thinking skills and allowed me to expand my knowledge. Unlike English, math was something that I could count on. It was solid. It was concrete. It was something that could be proven. You were either right or wrong, and there was no in between. Since I was so intrigued by how systematic math was, it came as a shock to me that individuals actually struggled to understand it. During elementary and middle school, I associated this struggling with laziness. Attending a very small school, I was surrounded by many individuals who neither cared about their grades nor tried to understand material and concepts. However, when I reached high school, I came into contact with numerous individuals who genuinely tried to understand math and still had difficulties comprehending it. Feeling compassionate towards these students, I attempted to assist them through the learning process. At first, this was not very productive. It did not occur to me that others saw the world in a different manner than I did. Consequently, I did not take into consideration that I would need to explain matters in multiple ways so that my peers would be able to understand. From my freshman year to my junior year of high school, my teaching skills gradually improved and I slowly learned how the minds of others operate.

However, at the beginning of my senior year, I was faced with yet another challenge. Recommended by my calculus teacher, I found myself peer tutoring for Algebra Beginning Support. The class was designed to accommodate freshmen struggling in Beginning Algebra. Since having a peer teach other students is one of the best ways to help individuals, the teachers in the math department decided it was a fantastic idea to have a senior work with struggling freshmen.

Soon after I started, I gained a deep sense of appreciation for math teachers; I realized teaching math to people who did not understand it was not, by any means, a simple task. The first few weeks of school, I tried to explain concepts to the students in the easiest way possible...I was met with blank faces and stares. Realizing that tutoring was going to take some more work and effort, I tried to describe concepts in a manner that would allow these freshmen to comprehend the material, yet some still stumbled through concepts. It was difficult for me to see students struggle at such a simplistic level of math. The concepts that they were learning were applicable in everyday life and would be invaluable to them in their future occupations. Since it was crucial that these students understood the material they were exposed to in class, I dug even deeper and thought back to when I was first learning these concepts. I looked at what had stuck out in my mind, what had helped me remember how to carry out certain operations, and what others in my class had commented on. Picking and choosing, I began to formulate a way to work through the material as if I were doing it for the first time. Eventually, I began to discover what methods of teaching would and would not work for certain students, and I developed an understanding of where each student was in relation to the material.

Even though tutoring other students can be extremely difficult, I am very glad that I was given the opportunity to work with freshmen in Beginning Algebra Support. Knowing that you are helping others develop skills that they will use throughout their lives is unbelievably rewarding. It is an amazing feeling to get to know the students and to create strong relationships with them. The best part, though, is that you get to watch them grow step by step.