Math Through a Student's Eyes by Jessica

Math Through a Student's Eyes by Jessica - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

Math is one of the hardest subjects to most students today. It has been known as a very nerdy subject to excel in, however, nowadays you are very lucky if you understand or even pass the class. I feel very fortunate to have this understanding in most to all of my math classes so far as a student. I would most definitely choose a math class, but more specifically, algebra to teach if the roles were reversed.
Last year, in my algebra 3-4 class, I went through many lessons feeling stressed out and confused. I thought I was going to just give up and fail the class, but I have never gotten a grade lower than a "B" before. Little did I know, it was just my teacher that was the problem; not me. In math, it usually isn't the student's fault for not understanding. Math is a very tricky subject to just learn once and then understand. In any class, but mostly algebra, there are many different ways lessons can be taught. Correspondingly, there are ways that a student will understand and many that will confuse and then frustrate the student.
Practice makes perfect. In any math class, you will learn that by doing more and more problems, you will get the concept sooner or later. When I didn't understand a lesson, I would privately ask my teacher for more help, but if that didn't work, I was on my own. I used the internet as well as friends to see if it would explain any better. To my surprise, this really worked out! The different resources I turned to usually demonstrated various ways of doing the problem. Knowing there were ways to solve the problems I was struggling with other than the way I was taught by my teacher put me at ease and got me confident in myself to try more problems and practice the lesson.
As a math teacher, I would be sure to include many different ways to solve a problem, have everyone be on the same page with no confusion before moving on, and make my explanations as clear as possible. I believe it is very important for students to see other ways to solve one problem even if they do understand it the first way. This will bring out more options and give a better chance of getting the right answer. It is no fun to be the one person stressing out because you don't understand what's going on, and if, as a teacher, you just move on with the lesson, the student will be even more lost and checked out than before. With that said, I must be sure to break down every bit of the lesson, making the explanation simple and understandable.
If the roles were reversed, I would be an algebra teacher and demonstrate to my students patience as well as persistence. Math may be a more difficult subject to learn because of the time you must put in to practicing, however, it isn't as hard to teach. To teach a math class, you must understand that students learn differently and that's perfectly fine, but you need to come up with all the different ways that the lesson can be taught. I feel I understand this process and would be an excellent math teacher if the roles were reversed.