It isn't as scary as it seems by Benjamin

It isn't as scary as it seems by Benjamin - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

One of the most feared words in a high school is the word Calculus. Most people do anything they can to avoid taking Calc. The really smart math students usually take AP Calculus, or even move on to college math or advanced calculus classes. AP Calc is focused on making sure you are really good at calculus, but the focus on a regular calculus class is different. It’s more of a blue collar calculus. It’s filled with students who want to learn the art of calculus. They aren’t super smart math geniuses, they are hardworking students that avoided taking an easier math class to challenge themselves with calculus. How do I know this? I am in one of those classes right now.
I would love to teach Calculus. Even though I haven’t completed my first year of Calculus, I am confident that I could teach it well because I want to learn how to do it myself. I want to learn more about Calculus and I want to be able to teach it.
Calculus is an amazing subject. In recent years, my love for math has professed itself. Once I really started to embrace math, I started to love it. Then Precalculus came along. I was introduced to something called a derivative, one of the most important topics covered in Precalc. Teaching the first day lesson with derivatives is enough of a reason to want to teach Calculus. The way I was taught was so life-changing. Very rarely is something so complex explained so simply, and my teacher did it perfectly. The pure amazement of seeing the slope formula turn into the derivative formula gives me chills. It’s an amazing way of explaining math, and I could incorporate that method of teaching into everything else in the first year of Calculus. I have never felt so much excitement and energy to do my math homework, but Calculus has given me that excitement.
I would love to teach the first year of Calculus. The students who take Calc are dedicated, but not so much gifted students. They are the blue collar students of the math world, and it would be a lot of fun to teach that kind of group. Calculus is also my favorite subject in school, and teaching it would be enjoyable because I love Calculus.