Ummm...Trust Me, NO One Wants Me Teaching Their Kid Math. Do They?

#Newmath, #Newyear2024

As the end of the year approaches, I am thankful for the incredible learning opportunities I have had in 2023 at VIU. I have learned so much from my outstanding professors and even more from collaborating with my fellow student teachers. With 2024 comes the launch of a new semester, and honestly, I am filled with equal parts excited anticipation and reserved dread. There is a reason my speciality areas are Music and English language arts. The biggest reason is that Math has always been so far out of my wheelhouse that even some of the most basic concepts elude me. It is the only subject I failed in high school and the only subject I have personified as my 'arch-nemesis', which brings me to the 'reserved dread' part of 2024. One of my classes this semester is 'Methods for Teaching Math'. I am trying to go into it with an open mind, but it isn't easy when your arch-nemesis threatens to expose your ultimate weakness to fellow classmates and professors you respect so much. To make matters worse, since I went through high school, they have changed math methods altogether under the deceptive name of 'new math'! "New Math"? What the heck!?!? I could barely get a grasp on the 'Old Math', and now they go and introduce this old dog to a new trick! I feel I will be leaning heavily on my more left-brained, logically/mathematically attuned colleagues for this one. To be honest (if you can't tell yet), math intimidates me. It is a subject I find akin to an alien dressed up as the school bully. However, I hope that when this course is through, the 'alien' will be a kind, healing one like E.T. and that this bully class will seem a bit friendlier. Perhaps my love/hate relationship with math will help make me a better teacher. I intimately understand how intimidating math can be to some people. It is like learning a foreign language that some people can speak naturally, and others need to really work at. Perhaps I can find ways to teach the syntax and language of mathematics so that people like me will find it easier to understand. Then maybe...just maybe, I won't feel like ME teaching math to young minds should be illegal.