Math Tutor to Math Teacher by Emma

Math Tutor to Math Teacher by Emma - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

When school began last year, I had to make new friends in my math class. I didn’t know anybody very well in my class, so I sat with some seniors that I had never met before. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Almost each year I get a class that I barely know anyone in, and each year I end up making great friends. As we progressed in the math class, my teacher would give us work time every day. We would work together on the homework and help each other out when we needed it. Again, it was nothing that I wasn’t used to.
Then, we got to a section on triangles. Triangles have never been my forté in math, but I can generally understand them. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one that was not the best at the trigonometry of triangles. The girl who sat across from me, Sarah, also needed help. For the next week, I helped her learn triangular equations. That one week turned into another week, and soon, I was helping her understand almost every concept we were covering in the math class. I tried to explain it in ways that were relevant to Sarah’s life when I could, and other times, I just tried to explain it more in depth.
During the time when I tutored Sarah, I realized that I enjoyed showing other people how math equations were worked out. I liked seeing the moment when the lightbulb went off in their head and they understood the concept. I started a Math Club at my school and we worked out problems together before and after we went to competitions. My fellow club members and I were able to stand in front of the classroom and write out problems on a board, just like the math teachers do. It was an interesting feeling, because I felt like a teacher up there in front of the Math Club.
Therefore, I would teach math if the roles were reversed. It might be the natural leader in me, or my mathematical ability, I may never know. I do know, however, that the odds of me becoming a math teacher are better than me becoming any other type of teacher.