Hello everyone!
As most of you may already know because I have said this mostly in every class of this program throughout the week, that I am here because of a high school math teacher who helped me fall in love with math. It's because of him that I decided to become a teacher because almost every class taught by him had at least one "wow" moment that I can recall to this day. One of the best memories of mine with this teacher was when he announced in the class that whoever learns to solve a 3by3 Rubik's cube on their own and can solve it in front of him in 10 minutes will get some bonus mark on their overall mark. He knew exactly how to excite his students and motivate them to learn more and especially focus on self learning; although he was always avaiable whenever we needed him. If I can remember correctly, more than 80% of the class decided to learn how to solve the Rubik's cube and I was one of them. I taught myself using YouTube videos and getting help from my peers who knew how to solve it from before. I was able to solve it in less than 4 more minutes and he gave me the bonus marks but I felt so proud of myself for being able to do something that the majority of the people think of as a cool thing to do. I would take it everywhere I go and show it to my friends and family and feel really proud. I feel like this is part of the reason I felt like I was a mathematician and wanted to pursue that in my post secondary education. I would love to incorporate such cool ideas in my teaching career so I can inspire my students and help them find their passion for math.
Another experience that is not so inspiring was from back in the day when I was in grade 8. I studied in India till grade 10, so this experience was with a teacher from India. I used to terrible at math because I had never had a teacher who could help me see math the way I see it now. Anywho, my teacher was really fed up of me for failing almost every test she gave me that she decided to punish me for not doing well on my exams. One day I had a test and I failed it, again. As she was giving me my exam back she slapped me so hard on my face that I felt like the world was spinning around me. Not just that, she humiliated me in front of the whole class by showing my marks to everyone and told me that I cannot leave the class during the lunch break today as I have to redo the test after the break. After being humiliated and physically abused, I decided to do everything I could to pass this test. I cannot believe when I look back at this experience now that I decided to memorize the answers to the questions on the exam so I could pass the exam. I wrote the redo exam and I passed because I simply memorized the answers. It saved me from being tortured any further but at the same time I thought I had found a solution to my problem and that was to memorize the answers. This technique worked in the exam that was a make up exam for the one I failed, however, it obviously was not going to work for later exams. I failed all my exams up until I changed my school and got a teacher who had better teaching techniques. I started to gain confidence at this school and eventually got to a point where I was considered to be good at math.
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