How It All Began and Continued to Grow

I remember that in 3rd or 4th grade having to sit next to a very annoying and distracted boy. I asked to be moved since I was sick of telling the boy to stay on task. The teacher said that was exactly why I was sitting next to this boy because I kept him on task and helped him. I took this in stride and continued my guiding without frustrations. Maybe it all began here at this moment.

Then sometime in 5th grade I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. My answer was to become a teacher. I don't really remember this, but I saw the work saved in the house somewhere. I however did not loose this idea.

I continued to want to be a teacher in middle school. The grade and subject changed as I had some more fabulous teachers. I at one point thought I would teach 7th grade social studies because I loved the Greek unit that the teachers presented. I enjoyed challenging myself and reading the high level version of The Illiad. I loved Greek mythology and how our whole school wore Kitons. Our Greek state made sure to bring presents to our Patron goddess. I was then reminded of this passion when reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. So yeah I was a big geek about and wanted to teach that.

However in the 8th grade I was placed into core math. For some reason half the classmates from the previous class were in the core math class and the other half in algebra. Once when I was coming into my core math class one of the algebra students remembered I was the smart one in his class last year and asked for help with algebra. I was flattered, but had no idea. I felt like this was a moment where I wondered why I was in the core math class. I was finishing the work early and writing notes. I often tried to help students around me, but occasionally was given consequences for doing so. I became so bored with proportions that I just stopped paying attention. I constantly asked my teacher when we would get to cooler stuff, but the rest of the class was never ready to move on when I was. My best friend was eventually recommended to be switched to the algebra class by another teacher. This was the breaking point where I demanded to switch classes because I knew I was smarter than my friend. I easily caught up with the class and began to actually be challenged. I continued to ask my teacher to challenge me. At the end of the year I was given an award for my math abilities. I think this struggle and fight to keep math interesting was what really got me interested in teaching math.

I went on to high school tutoring and volunteering in as many math classes as possible. I worked hard to gain lots of experience in teaching math. I often asked my math teachers for opportunities. They passed my name along to parents who were looking for tutors and talked to other teachers for me to work in their classroom. I began to fall in love with the math that was taught in high school. The quadratic equation, Pythagorean equation,  Pythagorean triples, Conics, parabolas, solving complicated questions, the unit circle, and so much more became absolutely fascinating to me.

I also had two amazing math teachers who also just happened to be female. One challenged me to my greatest excellence. I didn't struggle in that class, but did have to work hard. She assigned a project where we graphed our favorite cartoon character on our TI calculator. This project tested our knowledge and skills of ellipses, circles, and other forms of equations. It also brought in student interest since we were trying to graph cartoon characters. It was a great performance assessment. The other great math teacher I had for two different years. She challenged me and kept me interested as well. She let me explore shapes in different computer programs and pushed me to follow my dream. She pulled me aside once when a classmate had made fun of my passion of math. She said that I should not be discouraged from continuing my study of mathematics. I had not even really registered the comment, but it meant a lot to me that this teacher made sure I continued to study math.

I went on to Willamette University where I got my degree in math. I couldn't believe how my passion for mathematics grew. I also saw amazing connections between the mathematics I did in high school and college. I realized all my work with matrices was a simplified version of Linear Algebra. I realized that I had been doing proofs by induction in high school, so it was nothing new when I learned about induction proofs in foundations my sophomore year. I finished a problem for my junior Abstract Algebra class and finally realized that the quadratic formula and complete the square were the same. I just liked complete the square better because I like step by step processes. So all in all my college math career was academically stimulating and led to revelations that changed my teaching philosophy.

So after twelve years of wanting to be a teacher the time has finally arrived that I teach my own class....