Teaching for Success by John

Teaching for Success by John - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

My favorite subjects in school included a wide range of topics: The War of 1812, Bohr’s model of the atom, a complex computer programming problem, magnetic and electric fields, and fascinating novels such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood or Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Among these subjects, the one subject that I cannot stand, even though I excel at it, is mathematics. Its rank as my least favorite subject is the result of attempting hundreds of algebra, geometry, and calculus problems I have mulled over for hours on end and feeling as if I achieved nothing. I could not understand why it was essential to find the integral of the sine function because I did not see any reasonable application of it in the real world. However, if I were to teach a class, I would not want to teach history, chemistry, physics, English, or even my major, computer science. I would instead choose to teach my least favorite subject because I realize the value it holds in society and the economic world.
As a teacher, my main priority would be to prepare my students for success in the business world. Math classes become exceedingly harder as one progresses through school, and while it is easy to see the usefulness of basic addition and multiplication, advanced concepts like polynomial graphing and derivatives can leave students wondering why they are so important. The reason that there is such a heavy focus mathematics in American education is because of the world’s reliance on the subject. Manufacturing companies rely on math to calculate profit and loss margins and to figure out how many items they should produce to meet the demand of the local economy and maximize profit. Television show studios employ math to compare ad revenue to production costs and decide where to cut or increase cash flow. Even museums and historical buildings have to use advanced math techniques in order to estimate ticket costs, new exhibit fees, and the number of customers expected to come on a given day. These are only three cases among thousands of others that exemplify the necessity of math in the professional world. It is hard to see how math can be so beneficial to our work when we solve seemingly irrelevant problems on paper, but its uses lie deeper than the eye can see into the corporate machine.
Even though I do not enjoy doing math, I find it to be the most valuable knowledge in higher education. Earlier I mentioned how I could not see the relevance of math to the real world, which I believe is the major obstacle of most high school math students as well. It is difficult to see how the abstract examples in the classroom apply to job opportunities outside of school, and as a teacher, my goal would be to relate mathematics to my students’ job interests so they, too, may realize how imperative math skills are in the business world. None of my math teachers in school tried to apply our lessons outside of class, and that is what led to me being frustrated and confused as to why math was so important. Eventually I came to learn how many different jobs use math and how it could be used to enhance the job skills one already possesses. Becoming literate in math helps us find trends and correlations between things in the world. Having advanced knowledge in mathematics make a more appealing employee to an employer because the employer knows how crucial math skills are to his or her business. Teaching my students mathematics will help them achieve their goals and become more successful than they would be without experience in the subject.
Throughout my educational career, I’ve enjoyed a number of unique subjects, but math was never one of them. Though if I were to become a teacher instead of a student, I would definitely choose to teach mathematics because, after years of ignoring its usefulness, I have found exactly how essential it is to one’s success. As a teacher, my priority would be to prepare my students to live as successful lives as possible, and I would make the biggest impact this way through teaching math.